xvi Introduction they will both appear throughout this book because where they overlap is where we see an actionable set of best practices. We will be covering more definitions throughout Chapter 2 as we exam- ine communication, outreach, and overall marketing in more depth, but value is always at the forefront of our minds. Our students, of all back- grounds and life experiences, need to know how the library will be benefi- cial to them. Our faculty and staff members need to know that the library is valuable for their purposes. And our administrations often want to know the value of our libraries in order to justify funding and promotion on their end. Truthfully, we all have a role in library marketing and outreach. And yet, so often, libraries take this fact for granted and do not pursue inten- tional efforts to organize, measure, and act upon marketing and outreach initiatives. They need intentional action, through the identification of a “point person(s)” who is tasked with that intentional organization, through the formation of a team, through the dedication of resources— these are the intentional efforts that this book will walk our readers through. This book will provide librarians and administrators new to library marketing with a roadmap to get a formal marketing (and out- reach) program off the ground, and it will give the seasoned library mar- keter best practices and case studies to reflect on. It is the culmination of the work that has come before us, and we build on the many studies and publications that have furthered the work of library marketing. You will find the sources for each of these publications, from books and articles to our own institution web pages, located at the end of each chapter for easy reference and further reading. This book is practical. While we occasionally draw from theory, we do so with practical examples. Each chapter contains a set of best practices drawn from our combined 20+ years of experience working in libraries, the litera- ture, and from the case studies that we’ve gathered from our generous col- leagues who help us provide examples outside our experiences. Each chapter follows a structure of main content, followed by “quick tips” that summa- rize the content, concluding with those “from the field” case studies that illustrate the concept in the real world. We felt this format offered an easy- to-read guide to walk practitioners through the seven topics that we have singled out for discussion—key components of any academic library mar- keting that our audience might undertake. CHAPTER 1: BUILDING YOUR TEAM This covers a major starting point of academic library marketing—the people available to contribute to marketing. Whether formal or informal, the colleagues on your team need to understand their role in marketing the
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