Promoting the Library

Libraries are under assault everywhere. Funding cuts and budgetary crises affect all libraries whether they are in schools, universities, communities or corporations. But corporate librarians probably struggle harder than anyone because corporations view their libraries as overhead, a business cost always under intense scrutiny. If a library cannot prove its benefit to the bottom line, it is eliminated. And yet we all know that the benefits of knowledge and learning often cannot be quantified.

My previous job was in a corporate library and no one could have taught me more about promoting the value of the library than my supervisor, Mary. The company was an internationally recognized research and training organization whose faculty and research department kept us hopping. But we were always under pressure to prove our worth to the organization. A lot of image-making was involved in addition to the detailed statistics we kept. We created displays of our resources, we offered short instructional pieces during staff meetings, we partnered with other groups in the organization to host programs. And we demonstrated our capabilities by providing proactive service--service before it was requested--directing our staff to articles and resources as we discovered them. It must have paid off. In this last economic downturn, the company underwent subtantial staff reductions across its five campuses. But the library was spared. The organization focused on leadership training, and Mary's leadership in promoting the library as a research partner and valuable resource left and indellible impression on me.

When I came into my current position, the library was substantially underutilized. For a variety of reasons, the library's image among faculty and staff was suffering, and statistics were correspondingly down. In addition, as the only day time staff person, I was lonely! I had plenty of time to think about what Mary had taught me even as some of these same issues were being raised in LIBS 6142--issues of professional leadership and promotion of library resources. The first part of developing a collaborative atmosphere for information literacy instruction is to let people know what you have and that you are there to help them use it!

Besides just falling over myself to let people know I was here to help, I began with the basics--library displays of new books or themed selections, dragging book carts of relevant materials to staff meetings, circulating a new books list to everyone on campus, sending out proactive emails with resources attached, and then I was offerd a bulletin board to decorate. Now I have a confession to make. I was an undergraduate science major with 8 o'clock classes every morning and afternoon labs every day. I busted myself to graduate cum laude and was always resentful of the elementary education majors that seemed to breeze through to their Phi Beta Kappa keys doing cut outs and bulletin boards. But when confronted with the blank cork board across the hall, I panicked. I truly was not prepared to create a visually engaging, instructional display using paper and scissors. Fortunately, Hobby Lobby has great bulletin board accoutremonts and a friend suggested the catchy first question for my InfoQuiz--"Why Should You Never Google Alone?" (if you don't know, you'll have to come to the library to find out!). In any event, the effort was traumatic enough that I set the thing up so all I have to do is come up with a new question and answer each month. I figure it should be good for school year, anyway. Maybe after another education course, I'll figure out another bulletin board display :-)