Saturday, March 29, 2014

Marketing, PR, and Outreach: A Brief Introduction

Marketing, PR, and Outreach are well-known strategies utilized by most organizations including libraries who are trying to communicate the value of their particular product, service, or mission to the community they serve.  While each of these strategies or “tools” may oftentimes be used in conjunction with the other and have similar end goals, the implementation of marketing, public relations and outreach plans do in fact differ.  Marketing focuses on the promotion of particular programs, services and resources to the community, where PR broadens this focus to communicating the library’s unique mission and goals while simultaneously shaping their image to positively affect how the community views the library’s role in their community. (Ohio Library Council, 2008) The library’s value within a community may further be reinforced through outreach programs.  

     

                                  Copyright 2013 Dane County Library Service


       Outreach refers to library programs and services which take place outside of the physical library to meet the community where they are at.  There are a number of people who for whatever reason are unable to physically get to the library in order to access available resources.  Whether it be children in daycare centers, the homebound elderly or disabled, incarcerated populations, or those who simply do not have access to transportation, outreach programs aim to achieve the mission of the library through bringing services and materials to any and all potential users.  (Johnson, 2011)    
          
       We invite you to follow our conversation and thoughts on these ideas as our blog aims to explore these concepts and relate them to the modern day librarian.

Sarah 

References
Johnson, Abby. (November 18, 2011) Reach Out through Outreach. American
 Libraries. November/December 2011. Retrieved from

Ohio Library Council. (2008) Public Relations. Retrieved from 

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Welcome! You have reached the LIS 6010 Group 4 Team Blog.  We will explore areas of interest within the scope of our marketing, public relations & outreach topic.  Look at the word cloud above. What is missing that we can all do?  Discover this and more in future posts. Come and learn with us.  Thank you.