Preface When we first embarked on writing a practical guide to academic library marketing, Kimberly and I were both actively involved in not only our own library marketing (Kimberly at a technology-focused university in Illinois and myself at a 2-year community college in Southern Nevada), but also as coleaders of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Library Marketing and Outreach Interest Group. During our time working on this project, we both experienced major life events from Kimberly moving to a new job to the birth of my first child. Then COVID-19 hit and everything changed. During the pandemic, everyone’s worlds turned upside down, and that included the academic library world. Although my eLearning Librarian position meant that the majority of my work prior to 2020 was online already, our college had to quickly adapt to unexpected closures and safety precautions that moved at least 90% of our classes and student services online. Due to the work of a fantastic team, even my librarian colleagues without an eLearning title were able to adjust the way they viewed librarian- ship in order to serve students in a new environment during an unprece- dented, uncertain time. I couldn’t be prouder of our team. But, of course, this time period did present a major challenge to our aca- demic library’s marketing. How do you advertise your resources to students who are struggling just to stay afloat in an online class they didn’t intend to take? How do you show the human side of your services when you’re at a distance and behind a mask? By spring 2020, we were all basically in sur- vival mode with very little outside marketing taking place at all. Our Communications/Outreach/Marketing Team did meet virtually during the early days of the pandemic, trying to decide if we should move our book- mark contest online or postpone it and discussing the logistics and budget for ordering and distributing hand sanitizer to students. We quickly realized
Previous Page Next Page