Marketing the library

Posted by admin on Dec 5, 2007 in News | 0 comments

This fall, Trinity Western University’s Marketing 430 class chose the Norma Marion Alloway Library as their client for the class’s semester-long project. Professor Don Hill and seven business students, with input from the library staff, created a variety of ways to measure the library’s success and get students’ opinions on how the library is serving them.

The class used an online survey, which they sent to a focus group by email. A few students stood at the entrance of the library directly interviewing people as they exited about their experience. Questions centered on what students expect from a library and whether they feel adequately served there.

For reference librarian Sylvia Stopforth, this is research she has wanted to do for years. While the library often receives informal feedback, these surveys allowed staff to formulate specific questions to guide them in becoming the best possible resource for students.

“What excites me is that students are interviewing students,” Stopforth said. She hopes for candid responses from students so that the library can have their honest opinions and implement the sort of changes students want to see.

“If you don’t get structured communication, you make decisions based on assumptions,” said Stopforth. In addition to providing the answers to the survey, the class created a marketing strategy for the library with recommendations on how to meet the needs presented in the survey answers.

Stopforth believes what students want in a library may be changing. A need for the silent study space typically provided at libraries may be shifting towards a preference for a more communal environment to work. Other study methods are also changing, with the Internet responsible for a significant shift in how students do research and what resources they now expect from a library.

Stopforth hopes the findings from the Marketing 430 class will provide insight into how the library can constructively respond to these changing student needs and study habits. The goal, she says, is to determine how to be relevant. Potential changes in how the library is operated may be needed to achieve this.

On November 30, the class presented their findings to library staff. Details on the results are forthcoming. Visit www.twu.ca/library and link to the library’s blog for more information.