From paradigm to practice: the logic of promotion

As you may well have guessed from the title of this paper I intend to concentrate today on the thinking or rationale behind library promotion. I make no apologies for the fact that my approach will be in the main theoretical because it seems to me that there is little point in discussing the mechanics of library promotion unless we first have a clear idea of why libraries should be concerned with developing what Ralph Gee referred to as a ‘promotional creed’. Despite a healthy and growing awareness of the need to, for want of a better word, sell the library and its services more effectively, there are, still, pockets of scepticism, resistance and suspicion within the profession; for some of our colleagues the principles and practice of marketing have no place in the canon of librarianship, and it's for this reason that I feel a good spring‐cleaning of our ideas and assumptions about library promotion in general will not go amiss. For that reason I'm deliberately going to sidestep the question ‘What does library promotion involve?’ and concentrate instead on the logically antecedent question ‘Why should libraries be concerned with promotion?’; that is to say, I'm going to focus on the function rather than the tools of promotion. As Patricia Berger put it recently, ‘the financial stability of public libraries depends on a continuous and total public relations program rather than isolated incidents; long range preventive methods rather than a remedial or crisis orientated approach will help public libraries persuade communities of their indispensability’.