The Western New York/Ontario chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (WNY/O ACRL) invites you to a day-long conference on multiple facets of marketing. Please join us at scenic Canandaigua Inn on the Lake where we will explore promoting our libraries, learn how to better understand the needs of our users, and how to establish collaborations with our faculty.

Ron Dow has been the Andrew H. and Janet Dayton Neilly Dean of River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester for the past ten years. Over his thirty-five year career, he has worked at Hamilton College, Dartmouth College, New York University and Penn State in public services and library administration. He also directed the largest financial library on Wall Street for eight years. Ron holds a MLS from Syracuse University and a PhD in Higher Education from Penn State.

We all need to gather perceptions from our library users to inform decision-making and measure success. Surveys or questionnaires are effective ways to collect such information, and can also be useful marketing tools. In this session, Deb Kalvee, Associate University Librarian for Services at Brock University's James A. Gibson Library, will discuss how the Library has used surveys to gain information, what was learned, and what worked.

Deb worked in various paraprofessional positions at the University of Calgary before acquiring her MLS at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She was the Assistant Government Documents, Maps Librarian and Cataloguer for 3 years at the University of Wyoming. She then worked at the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, where she was the Government Documents and Maps Librarian, and then the Head of Cataloguing and Acquisitions. Deb is currently the Associate University Librarian for Services, at Brock University's James A. Gibson Library.

Change has become the constant of the library environment, and concern for the quality of our services is growing on all sides. Many of us are re-examining our goals and approaches to service. Self assessment and self critiques are paramount. Understanding our users is essential. But how can we be sure that we are on the right track? As our library services are being reinvented and adjusted to the changing world around us, we need listen to what our users are telling us even if we find their messages inconvenient or uncomfortable. This presentation will reflect on and discuss how the University of Guelph uses focus groups to inform service model adjustments and the ways we have re-adjusted our messages and services based on this specific type of user feedback and consultation.

K. Jane Burpee works at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. When not managing the library's five reference service points and the information literacy program, she is training, teaching and advocating information literacy skills to undergraduates, library users, and administrators on campus. Jane is currently serving as a Councilor on the WNY/O ACRL Executive Board.

In this five-person panel, we will explore two successful collaborations between librarians and faculty.

Crouse and Kasbohm have collaborated over the past several years to create a "learn by doing" information literacy instruction program for graduate teacher education candidates. They will discuss how that collaboration began, how it evolved, and the challenges it has posed. They will also share how their own knowledge has benefited from their collaboration as they continue to work to develop instructional models for educational research.

Warren Crouse is Director of the Center for Excellence in Catholic Education; a partnership between Niagara University and Stella Niagara Education Park. He also teaches educational research at Niagara University. He has a PhD in educational research from the University at Buffalo. Kristine Kasbohm is the Information Literacy Librarian at Niagara University. She has an MLS from the University at Buffalo and an MA in history from Syracuse University. They are the authors of: Crouse, Warren and Kristine E. Kasbohm (2004). Information Literacy in Teacher Education: A Collaborative Model. The Educational Forum, 69(1).

During the summer of 2003, Kimberly Davies, Reference/Instruction Librarian at SUNY Geneseo, began collaborating with Dr. Ellen Kintz, Professor and Department Chair for SUNY Geneseo's Anthropology program, to design course-integrated library instruction into Dr. Kintz's anthropology classes. Lauren Hare, current senior student at Geneseo, was one of the students involved in the original experimental anthropology course, and now works as a reference assistant at Milne Library.

Davies and Kintz describe student engagement in an experimental anthropology course and the path that professor and librarian have taken to perfect their approach over the past few years. Combining unique contributions of librarians, professor, and students, information literacy skills are designed to connect course content and the enhancement of student research. To promote a successful library instruction program, librarians and administrators rely heavily on the systematic results seen on an individual class level. Preliminary assessments, student feedback, and continuous readjustment of course content, pedagogical approach to that content, and meaningful activities aid in fostering positive improvements in students' understanding of the research process. Librarian, professor and student will present expectations, course format, assessment, and revisions for continued and expanded collaboration.

How do students write papers? Whom do they ask for help? Where and when do they work? Do they use library collections or facilities, and how? The River Campus Libraries of the University of Rochester have been investigating these questions from 2004-2006 under the guidance of an anthropologist. A variety of different qualitative techniques were used to collect data. For example, students were interviewed about writing research papers in videotaped sessions. Students took photographs of their dorm rooms, their communication devices, and favorite study spots. Others recorded their activities from the time they woke up until they went to bed in a mapping diary. Library staff visited dorm rooms at night and videotaped students, paying particular attention to how they used communication devices (i.e. personal computers, mp3 players, cell phones, etc.) The results of this investigation will help the Library improve facilities, reference outreach, and the libraries web presence by supporting all the components of the undergraduate research process including environmental, social, and communicative factors.

"Illuminating the Library: Planning and Marketing Public
Programs in a Community College Setting"

Lori Annesi, Peter Genovese, Alice Harrington,
Debbie Mohr, Lindsay Stratton
Monroe Community College

In early 2005, the Monroe Community College Libraries began a project to introduce programming-lectures, book groups, exhibits, other events and activities-into the Libraries' mission and daily operations. We feel that we have a unique and blossoming program that truly is a process of understanding our users (students, staff, and faculty) by tailoring programs to pique their interests, while supporting the MCC curriculum; and a way of promoting the libraries (our resources and staff) as more than just a place to nap and check Google.

As a part of our planning and research stage, we discovered that very few academic libraries engage in public programming initiatives. Given the dearth of information, and our successes so far, we feel that our experiences would be worthwhile to share with our ACRL colleagues. Our poster presentation will include an overview of the idea's origin and implementation process. We will discuss how we identified our constraints and developed attainable goals which led to the formalization of a Public Programming Charge and documentation efforts. We will offer "how-to" procedures and recommendations (also as hand-out materials), including: collaboration with other campus entities and faculty, effective marketing campaigns, and creating events centered upon student participation. We will display examples of our event checklists, promotional materials, and show clips of select events (using a DVD played on a laptop). We will sum up with "lessons learned" and other tips and pointers.

"What…Me, Plan? Developing a Systematic Strategy
for Marketing and Outreach"

Regan Brumagen
The Corning Museum of Glass/Rakow Research Library

Many academic and research libraries are beginning to include marketing and outreach initiatives in strategic planning, prompted by the increase in the number of information providers available to our users, budget shortages, and escalating costs.

For a number of libraries, however, marketing and outreach initiatives are not represented systematically in library planning documents, but are often conducted as "extra" or opportunistic enterprises, as staff has the time, energy, or creative drive. Administrative structures outside the library are frequently not included in the planning, and other key potential partners, such as institutional advancement or marketing and public relations departments, are not fully cognizant of the library's goals and objectives.

This poster will illustrate how library staff at a research library generated a convincing and viable marketing and outreach plan, and how the creation of that planning document positively affected the library's ability to advance its promotional objectives.

"The Evolution of a Focus Group"

Jean Currie
South Central Regional Library Council

The South Central Regional Library Council offers focus groups as a service to members of the Council. Focus groups are an effective way to supplement other ways of obtaining information from and about the users of libraries. We will show why a focus group could be used, how they are planned, what happens in the focus group, how the information is analyzed, and how a report is produced.

Focus groups in themselves are a marketing tool in that they indicate that a library is interested in hearing from users about a particular subject. The results or report subsequently feeds into some action the library takes that will promote the library and its services.

"The Librarian, the Poet, and the Rooftop:
Using Poetry as a Library Marketing Tool"

Lisa Forrest
E.H. Butler Library/Buffalo State College

As academic libraries struggle with the real necessity of marketing the library as both a virtual and real place, it is more important than ever that librarians think creatively in their promotion of library resources. This presentation will explore how E. H. Butler Library of Buffalo State College uses poetry to market the library and its literary resources. Through the establishment of Butler Library's The Rooftop Poetry Club, and the hosting of poetry readings, open mic events, workshops, and campus wide poetry projects, the library is able to attract new patrons and prove to be an invaluable forum for the creative writing community at Buffalo State College.

"Creatively Managing and Promoting a Collection"

Kathryn Frederick & Sara Greenleaf
Hobart and William Smith Colleges/Warren Hunting Smith Library

In the Fall of 2002 the Warren Hunting Smith Library was charged with the stewardship of Hobart and William Smith Colleges' Art Collection. With no set procedure in place, the Library had a unique opportunity to build a system for managing and promoting the collection from the ground up. To that end, librarians created cataloging and circulation rules adapted for art works, digitally photographed the collection, and constructed an online interface for searching and browsing the collection. The final product is a creative and customized system for managing and promoting the collection that increases the visibility of and access to art works by the HWS community.

The poster session will demonstrate how the Library at Hobart & William Smith Colleges has used its ILS to manage and promote the Colleges' collection of art works by creating:

• Cataloging rules adapted for art works
• Circulation and reserve features to manage storage and display locations
• OPAC customization to provide an online, accessible search tool for art works
• Digital images for identification of works
• Tracking and search of donor information for Alumni Relations purposes

"Library Visibility in Web 2.0"

Ken Fujiuchi
E.H. Butler Library/Buffalo State College

The Web 2.0 brought us the social web that has revolutionized the way we use the World Wide Web. But how can libraries participate in the social web, and why should we bother? We will discuss how these Web 2.0 tools (like blogs, wikis, and MySpace) are being used, and how they can increase the visibility of your library, as well as the individual librarians of your institution. We will take a look at some of the popular services that librarians can try, as well as how other libraries and librarians participate in the social web.

"Publicity from ALEPH to Z"

Linda Hacker
SUNY Brockport

Drake Memorial Library at SUNY College at Brockport implemented a new online catalog - ALEPH. The goal and charge for the library's publicity committee was to publicize the new online catalog to the Brockport community as well as local community users. We wanted our users to not only see that there was a change, but to see and experience the many benefits of the change. We did this by showing the users how the catalog change would benefit them by its ease of use, its greater functionality, and its much improved search strategy development. This presentation will show how the publicity committee, with the assistance of the college's marketing department, successfully publicized its ALEPH implementation to the SUNY Brockport campus and outlying areas. In addition, the presentation will also show the different publicity techniques we used, how many of these techniques can be applied to other publicity projects and how some of these techniques even libraries on a limited budget can use.

"Are we crossing the line? A Survey of Library
and Writing Program Collaboration"

Isabel Kaplan
Carlson Library/University of Rochester

At the University of Rochester the libraries and the College Writing Center have been forging new collaborative links. Librarians continue to provide library research instruction in the context of specific courses and programs, and assist students at our reference desks and via synchronous chat. What is new for us in the past year is that three librarians are providing writing tutoring at the Writing Center. The collaboration has given us a better understanding of the research/writing continuum and how it impacts our students. It has increased the visibility of the library in the Writing Center, and vice versa. In an effort to learn whether similar collaborations are occurring on other campuses, we did a national survey of librarians and writing professionals. Results of the survey were recently presented at the 2006 Conference on College Composition and Communication, and will be the focus of the proposed poster session.

"Starting From Scratch: Finding the Right Ingredients
for Creating an Effective Marketing/PR Plan"

Kate Maragliano
McGrath Library/Hilbert College

The goal of this collaborative initiative between the library and students taking an upper-level communications class, COM 460 Persuasive Campaigns, is to creative an effective marketing /PR plan for the library that includes a logo and tagline. The library does not have an existing plan, logo, or tagline so the initial goals are to gain baseline user statistics regarding how the library is used. Throughout the process, the library's handouts, website, and physical plant are being re-evaluated in addition to its services and overall campus presence.

By targeting two user populations, freshmen and transfers, the COM students are using surveys, focus groups, and creative intervention strategies to gain a better understanding of not only who is and isn't using the library, but how they're using and what services and resources are used and underused. By engaging students in focus groups, the COM students hope to find out why students only access the library remotely or not at all and what enhancements the library could make to attract them. They hope to address some of those needs in the form of creative intervention strategies/programs and will perform follow-up surveys and focus groups to measure the success or failure of the interventions. The library plans to implement findings in the next academic year. COM students are learning to apply their knowledge of research, statistics, marketing, and design to a not-for-profit academic library while the librarian is gaining marketing and public relations principles from a for-profit perspective.

"Spotlight on Library Blogs"

Michele D. Shular
University at Buffalo

This poster will highlight how UB Librarians have developed blogs to promote news about library developments and collections, to market themselves and their subject specialties, and to target specific audiences of academic programs. Also demonstrated are the many benefits of blogging such as the instant publication of information, improved communication between the librarians and their faculty and students, and also a welcome surprise in the reduction of email communications among many others perks.

"Branding Unleashed: Connecting, Discovering,
Creating Binghamton University Libraries"

Caryl Ward and Kathryn Kowalczik
Binghamton University Libraries

"We're offering many services and products for our users but they don't know it!" BU Libraries' PR Committee was formed in late 2003 to publicize collections, services, and activities. Starting with a slogan "Connect-Discover-Create" that appears on all printed materials, the committee has successfully worked with campus media outlets to promote the Libraries to faculty, staff, students, alumni and other. Much of the information comes directly from other library staffers-everyone is encouraged to contact the committee about exhibits, policy changes, new databases, etc., raising staff member's awareness of the impact of good public relations. The committee has created a newsletter, purchased ads in the student newspaper, submitted announcements for the campus electronic news service, in order to spread the good word about what we are doing on behalf of our patrons.

• K. Jane Burpee: Slides (PDF) & Bibliography (PDF)

• Lauren Hare, Ellen Kintz and Kim Davies: PowerPoint Presentation (9.84MB)

• Deb Kalvee: PowerPoint Presentation