While the social tools libraries might use to reach their online users are free, they still represent an investment and should be treated as such. It’s an investment of time and attention instead of money. I was pleased to find that Darlene Fichter make a similar point (much more elegantly than me, I fear) in the December/January issue of Online magazine:

Marketing is more important than ever. Although we’ve strengthened our collections with electronic resources, we face competition. We’re no longer the only game in town. While we can argue that we have unique, high-quality resources that aren’t available elsewhere, the fact remains that many users don’t see it that way - or they simply don’t care… While we don’t charge monetarily for our services, the user incurs costs in terms of time and effort. For many users, libraries are simply not worth it… users have high expectations, shaped by their experiences online with the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, and myriad other sites that are responsive, highly usable, personalized, and well-designed.

So if we’re to serve our users, it’s not enough to provide the novel, accurate, and unique; we also must save them time and effort. Our online resources are only as good as the paths we build to them.

Tags: darlene fichter, information, interface, investment, Libraries, Services, and Librarians, marketing, social tools

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