Marketing Reference Resources and Services Through a University Outreach Program

Nice vs. Necessary: Reference Collections in ARL Member Libraries

“…Cruickshank and Nowak (2001) provide a case study of the Outreach Program at Mississippi State University Libraries. They argue that successful marketing often involves close, long-term collaboration between academic faculty and reference librarians and significantly aids librarians in their 142 N. King attempts to align the reference collection with faculty and students.…”

Instructional Outreach Across the Curriculum: Enhancing the Liaison Role at a Research University

“…The American Library Association defines "outreach" as any program of activities "initiated and designed to meet the information needs of an unserved or inadequately served target group" (Young 1983, 160). While "outreach" is a term most commonly associated with public libraries (Cruickshank and Nowak 2001), outreach activities are not new to academic libraries. Academic library outreach activities have expanded and evolved in recent years in response to changes both in the library profession and in the broader environment of higher education.…”

“…Over the past decade, there has been a steady rise in interest among academic librarians in the idea of outreach. While there are many potential explanations for this new attention to a familiar subject, some of the most common include the increasing diversity of the student body (Westbrook and Waldman 1993), the rising importance of information technology and electronic information sources in higher education (Arant and Mosely 1999, Jacobson and Cohen 2000, Schillie et al 2000, and the desire to provide specialized library services to target user groups, e.g., faculty, administrators, distance learners, international students, athletes, and transfer students (Cruickshank and Nowak 2001, Neely et al 1999, Peyton 2000, Stebelman et al 1999. Outreach from the academic library can take many forms, but it is often built around a commitment to instruction.…”

“Database of the Week”: Successfully Promoting Business Databases to Faculty

“…. may be rather limited" (Cruickshank & Nowak, 2001); however, librarians hoped that a well-crafted message could tempt faculty to take a closer look at the featured database. Keeping in mind the caution that, in the words of Lyons and Kirkwood (2009), "Librarians have long struggled to find the most appropriate terminology to describe the services and resources they provide" (p. 337), I concluded that if the message had minimal library jargon and the focus were on short, informative paragraphs rather than an extensive narrative, the faculty members were more likely to read the e-mail.…”