Article Note: On word-of-mouth marketing

Citation for the article:

Alire, Camila A. "Word-of-mouth Marketing: Abandoning the Academic Library Ivory Tower." New Library World 108.11/12 (2007): 545-551.

This is a short article discussing the idea of using word-of-mouth for marketing. I have always been a firm believer of using word-of-mouth to get your message out. It just seems like common sense. If you get some people to give spontaneous good word about your service to others, then you are bound to get repeat business. I know. During my time at UHD, that was one of the things that worked for me in growing the instruction program: getting the instructors who came in to tell their colleague about their services. Often, I had a new instructor call to schedule a class saying, "so and so told me about what you do for students. I was wondering if you could do the same for me." So, I can attest the idea works, and that you should definitely be using it. And it is not just for instruction, but to market your library overall. On this, Professor Alire writes that "the fundamental objective of word-of-mouth marketing in academic libraries is getting people to talk to others about library services so that those services are more heavily utilized" (546).

The article argues that marketing is an important concept for academic libraries, pointing out that this is often an idea that academic libraries neglect. Alire tells us that we cannot take our audience, the academic community for granted. Also, we in academia need to realize that there are other places for students to get their information. Her article then describes how the technique was used at the University of New Mexico Libraries. The reason for them doing it was to tell the libraries' story and to help "in obtaining the necessary funding to continue to serve their students, faculty, and staff" (546). In the end, a lot of this is about justifying our existence. Whether we like it or not, administrators think more in business terms and the bottom line. What value does the library offer? That is the common question. Marketing then tells the story of that value. I think using a library blog is one way of nurturing this idea, but we also need to remember the personal contact element.

Alire draws on the work of George Silverman, referring to that author's book The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. In discussing academic libraries, Alire takes some of his tips and applies them to academia. I am reproducing her list here for my notes. The italics are in the original, indicating Silverman's concepts:

• "Using experts. This could include putting together an advisory group of appropriate participants. In academic libraries, this could be a special advisory group of various library users or a faculty governance library committee. This could also include librarians used as experts to share information of academic library resources and services."
  
• "Using seminars, workshops and speeches. This could include presentations or a speakers program. For academic libraries, either librarians and/or trusted advisors could be participating in these formats for sharing information about the library."
  
• "Canned word-of-mouth. This could include CDs, web presentations, audiotapes, videotapes. More specifically, academic libraries could develop PowerPoint presentations with the most relevant information for others to use in their presentations." (I have to say I found this suggestion intriguing; I have to give it a bit more thought).
  
• "Referral selling. This refers to the use of testimonials. One of the strongest ways to use this is to get university students and faculty to offer testimonials on how their libraries have helped them be successful."
  
• "Networking. This means to be visible at events and meetings as well as helping people get information on the library's resources and services. Most library employees have networks that could be utilized for word-of-mouth marketing. However, the most effective is having faculty and students using their networks to to word-of-mouth marketing." (This is another thing I believe in, which is why I try to make it various campus events as I can. It's about visibility).
  
• "Using the different media. This includes customer service as a 'word-of-mouth engine,' using PR through advertising, brochures, etc. Academic libraries can simultaneously be doing systematic PR while others are conducting their word-of-mouth marketing efforts" (547).

Other ideas from the article I found interesting:

• On why this makes sense: "It only makes sense that this collegial type of environment where ideas are exchanged on a daily basis would make word-of-mouth marketing second nature" (547).
  
• I liked the idea that the concept should be part of a library's strategic plan. This is definitely something we should be considering as we move on with our own assessments and new plans. Alire writes, "One of the strategic directions was 'Telling the Libraries' Story.' This was the fundamental basis for our marketing efforts; and the strategic plan was our guide for our word-of-mouth marketing endeavors" (548).
  
• We need to remember that a large part of our efforts should go to building better relations with the campus faculty.
  
• They had a brand: "Our brand became: University Libraries connecting you to worlds of knowledge" (549). On our website, currently, we feature the following brand line: "Your digital doorway to scholarly research." It's not bad, but I am thinking we may need to either increase its use (in publications, so on), or maybe come up with a new one when we unveil the new website design next summer.
  

They also had a message regarding the increasing cost of scholarly journals and periodicals. This is not a new issue in academic libraries, but it is one that is ever present. It is also an issue that we should get faculty involved in our side. We face it here as well, but we also face significant lack of funding for monographs (as in it does not exist. We buy books when there is money left after everything else). This should be part of the story we tell as well. Not necessarily in the negative sense. I am thinking we could use some of that word-of-mouth marketing from students. There have been more than a few times that students come in looking for a specific book, or they need books on a topic, only for me to find we do not have them. And while ILL is a wonderful tool, it should not be one that I should constantly be referring students to. A while back, in my scratch pad, I was wondering how to translate this experience into evidence I could use as part of the narrative, the story of the library. You see, those with the funds don't always think of books as something glamorous to fund; they would rather fund a monument or something more tangible. I could certainly make the case that a good book collection could make a good legacy as it would impact the education of many future generations, but that would probably be a separate post someday down the road.

Finally, Alire gives a small list of references. I already mentioned Silverman's book. There are three other books on Alire's list of references, so I am going to list them here for my own future reference (citation format as provided in the article):

1. Balter, D. and Butman J. (2005), Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, Penguin Group, London.
2. Harris, G. (1995), How to Generate Word-of-Mouth Advertising: 101 Easy and Inexpensive Ways to Promote Your Business, The Americas Groups, Los Angeles, CA.
   
3. Kirby J. and Marsden P. (Eds.) (2006), Connected Marketing: The Viral Buzz and Word-of-Mouth Revolution, Elsevier, London.

Presentation Notes: Management Colloquium

I attended the following event on Friday, November 30, 2007.

* * * * *

From the campus flyer:

Topic: "Managers as Facilitators of Learning, Informal Workplace Learning, and the Learning Organization: A Research Agenda."

Presenter: Dr. Andrea Ellinger, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Summary of the session: "This session will present selected research studies Dr. Ellinger has conducted on managers as facilitators of learning, informal workplace learning, and the learning organization concepts that collectively represent the focus of my research agenda. Dr. Ellinger will also overview some of her current research and writing projects and discuss how these efforts will guide future developments in her research agenda."

* * * * *

The simple translation for that summary is: the professor will pretty much list her vita publications and tell the story of how she did some of the studies leading from her research. However, no actual substantial discussion of the work itself will take place. Basically, the presentation was an outline of her work with titles and minimal citations. While she gave very broad strokes of her work, I did not really get a whole lot out of the session in terms of what I was interested in, which was learning about informal learning and learning organizations. The ideas sound great, but a bit more on what the actual findings are, what we can learn from them, and how they can apply specifically to different situations would have been nice to hear. I guess I will have to hunt down a citation or two if I want to get an actual sense of the research and its implications. Having said all this, for students, especially graduate students, I can see where such a session is beneficial to give students a sense of how scholarship is developed. It specially illustrates an old concept I learned in graduate school: the concept of salami slicing. In other words, do a study or some research, and then take the results and turn them into a series of articles for publication. The professor, like most academic scholars, is pretty good at salami slicing.

Anyhow, here are notes I took while I listened:

• Guiding question: how managers develop people.
  
• The professor conducted a "managers as instructors" study. She was looking at how managers train others, then how those go on to train others, and so on. This was called a cascade training strategy (I need to look this up in the literature. A cursory search revealed it was something for training large groups of people swiftly).
  
• Found one worker who expected the manager not be a formal trainer but did expect the manager to support her own personal training. (Now, I wonder how this might work in librarianship given the need for librarians to continue learning. How do their managers/directors handle it?)
  
• This concept is what led to the professor's dissertation on "Managers as Facilitators of Learning in Learning Organizations."
  
• From the dissertation.
  
• 13 behavior sets define manager roles as facilitators of learning. It also looked at those managers' self-efficacy when it comes to them facilitating learning.
  
• Citations to articles derived from the dissertation: HRDQ (1999), Journal of Management Development (1999; this one is on Volume 18, Issue 9. I had to dig it out of Emerald. Would have been nice if the professor gave better citations), Management Learning (1999; this one is in volume 30, issue 4. I found via it Sage).
• Creating a learning culture matters and can have a positive impact on an organization.
  
• See HRDQ (2003).
• Watkins theory of workers being challenged and about learning triggers (I may need to look this up too. I got the gist that the triggers idea goes along with motivation to learn).
  
• What is it about workplace context that encourages someone to develop others, and that encourages self-learning? Think of things that help and obstruct.
  
• Some positive factors found in studies (I think this can have significance/can be something to think about in our profession too):
  
• Learning-committed leadership and management.
  
• Internal culture committed to learning.
  
• Work tools and resources (books, the Internet, people, etc.)
• People forming webs of relationships for learning.
  
• Some of the negative factors found in studies:
  
• Leaders lacking learning commitment.
  
• Lack of work tools and resources.
  
• People who disrupt the webs of relationships.
  
• Lack of time.
  
• Too much change too fast (this should sound familiar around some of the 2.0 discussions in libraries).
• Structural inhibitors (architecture, people and how they are placed).
  
• Not learning from the learning experience.
  
• See HRDQ (2005) and Journal of Workplace Learning (2007; this one is in volume 19, issue 7. Found via Emerald).
  
• Found that significant overlap exists between effective management coaching behaviors and managerial effectiveness behavior. This was reinforced by other studies. Concluded that effective managers tend to be effective people developers.
  
• Idea: good customer service on basis of well-trained and empowered front-line workers (this could make a few blog posts I am sure for some people). Would formalized training and/or informal coaching increase value? Yes, it does, to an extent. Highly empowered workers actually revealed that too much training got in the way of performance. Therefore, not every employee needs the same level of training and coaching.
  
• But what about social capital in the workplace? This deals with collaboration and relationships built in the workplace. Can coaching help social capital translate into performance outcomes? This is the direction her research is taking now.
  

Anyways, there it is. I think there are some intriguing ideas here that could be considered in light of librarianship. I will need to seek out one or two of her articles to get a better sense of her work. If I do read any, I will make a note in the blog.

Another reason why I will always have a job

The Effing Librarian has given what has to be the "line of the day." It says it all when it comes to why a good information literacy librarian will have job security:

"As long as the Internet remains an effed-up opium den, I'll always have a job."

Nothing else need be said.

Visiting with prospective students

The first part of this post is crossposted from The Patriot Spot, which is our library's blog. After that note, I will add some additional thoughts.

* * * * *
Saturday with our prospective students

One of the best parts of my job as Outreach Librarian is when I actually go out and do outreach. In other words, it’s great when I get the chance to go out and spread the good word about the library. This past Saturday (Dec. 1), the University of Texas at Tyler held its Patriot Preview Day for prospective students and their parents to “visit our campus; meet our faculty, staff and students; and ask the college-related questions you need answered!” (from the website). The library, along with other campus groups and organizations, hosted a table during the University Showcase at the Herrington Patriot Center. This gave me a great opportunity to meet with prospective students and their parents. I greeted people: I had a chance to just chat and talk to kids and their parents about the university as well as the library. I told them about some of the services we offer, and I did emphasize that our students can access our catalog as well as our databases from home (of course, for databases, this does require a log-in, which I mentioned as well). I also answered a few questions. For instance, someone was asking about tutoring on campus, and I was able to refer them to services such as those offered by the Office of Student Success. In another example, a young lady was asking about library school, so that gave me a chance to talk a bit about what it is I do and how to get the education to become a librarian.

For me, this is my first year at UT Tyler, so the event was a learning experience for me as well. I took a bit of time to walk around as well and get some information from the other groups. I also introduced myself to other campus people. Part of the reason I did that was to get a sense of just how many and what kind of services are available on the campus. Also, it is a way for me to make some contacts for library outreach as well. In addition, I also collect some of the literature the organizations and campus offices offer. I keep a small folder in my files labeled “campus information.” This is something that helps me learn more about my campus, which in turn allows me to better serve my students and patrons. The library gets a lot of questions about other campus services, so the librarians are expected to know the answers. Attending events like this is one way for me to learn those answers. Plus I get to spend time with kids and parents.

I would like to thank the Office of Admissions for inviting the library to take part in Patriot Preview Day. I am looking forward to participating again in the Spring (March 29, mark your calendars, folks). To our visitors, thank you for stopping by and spending part of your Saturday with us here at UT Tyler.

* * * * *

Some of the things I learned:

• I probably should have grabbed the tablecloth. Our library has one, but the director had pointed out it had a small stain on it. I did not actually look at it, and it probably was not noticeable. Why do I say this? Because the tables lacked tablecloths, not even the simple cheap plastic stuff. I will remember to bring our own next time.
  
• Candy is good. Yes, we had a candy dish, and it was popular.
  
• "Gimmes" and swag are also good. We had pens and bookmarks. One of the pens we gave out were small pocket pens that can also work as a stylus/pointer for your portable touchscreen device. I have to tell our Instruction Librarian to keep ordering them. As for me, yes, I did get some swag too when I walked around to gather the info for reference.
• Parents very often speak for their kids. OK, I sort of knew this, but I really got to see it in action. Parents will come to the table, mine or someone else's, and do this:
  
• Parent: "Hello. My kid here is thinking about majoring in engineering, yadda yadda."
  
• Kid (just stands there, pretty much invisible).
  
• In other words, they talk on behalf of the kid, often as if the kid was not even there. I just found that curious, I guess.
  
• We do need a brochure. I became aware of this when someone walked into our library a couple of days ago asking for a short brochure about the library. I was able to satisfy that person's need with a couple of library handouts we often use for students. However, a nice, simple brochure would be nice to have. It would have been nice for the event as well. Sure, the bookmarks we used did have our library's web address and some basic information, but something a bit more colorful would be good. Guess who gets to design it now?
  
• That I love doing this kind of work. In a way, this is not really work. It's just doing something I like doing. If nothing else, it is reassuring that I am in a good line of work.
  
• And I almost forgot, the admissions folks placed nice small baggies of candy with a thank-you note for those attending the showcase event. Now that was a nice touch. I always like the idea of thanking others who help you out. Definitely something I try to do as well. As I always say, small details often make a difference.
  

Article Note: On Latin Americanist Grad Students' Research Habits

Citation for the article:

Mazurkiewicz, Orchid and Claude H. Potts. "Researching Latin America: A Survey of How the New Generation is Doing its Research." Latin American Research Review 42.3 (October 2007): 161-182.

Read via Project Muse.


This article reports on a survey of Latin Americanist grad students conducted by the authors. The survey participants were members of LASA (Latin American Studies Association). In their introduction, the authors note that students in this area often lack awareness of core resources in the field. There is a concern that the Internet's ease of use may mean these students would use core resources even less. Given that this field still relies heavily on print resources as well as some very specific online tools, too much reliance on things like Google is a significant concern. According to the authors then, "graduate students were chosen for study as they are likely to be heavily engaged in research and are the next generation of instructors" (163).

From the literature review, we learn that students in this area often rely on informal scholarly networks for their research. It really is a matter of who you know. There is less reliance on librarians. Overall, browsing and other informal ways of discovery are still important for this group. Other obstacles for the graduate students:

• "Spanner (2001) expands upon the earlier studies, and concludes that interdisciplinary scholars face distinct difficulties with disciplinary acculturation, and inadequate library collections and that more research must be done to better address the needs of this user-group" (164).
  
• "Another obstacle that Latin Americanists encounter, as identified by Westbrook (2003) in the context of women's studies, is that they work in a high-scatter field as opposed to traditional low-scatter disciplines where resources are consolidated, controlled, and standardized. The Internet, with its promises of greater connectivity and access to resources, has dramatically increased resource scatter" (164).
  

The authors then go on to describe their method followed by their results. Some highlights of their findings:

• "The growing availability of easily accessible electronic resources has not yet eliminated the use of print sources" (168).
  
• Only a few respondents reported asking a librarian as part of the research. However, visiting the library for research is popular.
  
• Use of J-Stor was very popular. The authors do see this as troubling due to J-Stor's limitations. They wonder if "perhaps the ease of online full-text access is tempting as a quick source for information, regardless of whether it is the most pertinent or current" (171).
  
• Then there is the concern that a generation of researchers fixated on full-text will skip or ignore valuable resources just because they are not available in full-text online. In this regard I'll say that some things never change. I've seen the same concern in relation to undergrads.
• "While it is encouraging that students have a relatively high level of comfort and confidence in their ability to carry out their research, when paired with a lack of awareness of some of the core tools in the field, it suggests that some students might know what they are missing" (175).
  
• An action call: "The new generation of Latin Americanists must develop the skills necessary to navigate the many possible sources of information, and the knowledge to evaluate the potential efficacy of various research strategies in various media and the value of the information found through such strategies" (176). Maybe this is something that professors and librarians can collaborate on.
  

FYI: The four core tools mentioned in the article. The only I did not know before the article was LAPTOC, and that is pretty new. The others I have used at one time or another:

1. HLAS (Handbook of Latin American Studies).
   
2. HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index. Subscription-based resource, available online or in print).
   
3. LAPTOC (Latin American Periodicals Table of Contents).
4. LANIC (Latin American Network Information Center, a portal at UT Austin).