Week 15 Prompt

I think that there are a lot of possibilities for marketing a library collection and I’ve seen a lot of them used in tandem. I feel like an effective way to market a library’s fiction collection is to use multiple marketing tools to create a cohesive and far-reaching strategy to intrigue patrons.

1. Displays: I think we can all agree that displays are an effective way to bring attention and interest to the books being display can be placed near the fiction collection close to a high traffic area of the library. The display can have information on the fiction genre and can include some suggestions of best sellers or popular and new fiction to grab interest. The display can change as often as staff resources and time will allow. I think this form of a display will draw interest from patrons already using the library facilities.


2. Online outreach: I think it is fair to say that a lot of patrons may not visit the brick and mortar library very often due to inconvenience, conflicting schedules during business hours, or any other number of reasons. This is why I think marketing the library’s fiction collection online is necessary. Depending on the size of the community the library could have links on other town websites. The library website itself could have a fiction collection spotlight, essentially a digital version of the physical display described above. It can have information on the fiction genre, include suggestions, and provide suggestions for fiction books that are electronic formats so that users browsing the library website can still have access to the content.


3. Fiction monthly highlights: In addition to the previous two marketing tools I think that a fiction monthly highlight program would be very beneficial to the regular users. The display, even updated often is really only designed in my description to draw in library users that may not otherwise have looked at the fiction collection. The fiction monthly highlights is designed to continue to draw interest from current readers. The fiction monthly highlights could be a newsletter/email/blog post that users can subscribe to to get a regularly recurring recommendation for lesser known or older fiction books in the library’s collection. Again this could be maintained by the staff and give staff the opportunity to spotlight materials in the collection that are not checked out as much, and aren’t seen on bestseller lists, or considered new.