Comments on: Outreach is (un)Dead. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/ The murder victim? Your library assumptions. Suspects? It could have been any of us. Wed, 25 Nov 2015 16:46:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3.1 By: Emily Ford http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-2343 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:42:02 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-2343 Thanks so much for your comment, Victoria. I think you’ve shown that this topic is not just isolated to the professional library world.
I agree with you that incorporating the word “community” into a definition or term to describe what we do makes more sense– and does contribute to the point, that we all need to be involved.

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By: Victoria http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-2341 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:46:13 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-2341 Thank-you! I am an Outreach Intern at a large church. I have argued, unsuccessfully that outreach is not an activity for one group of people but is an important function of the institution and all who represent it. I’ve also been trying to banish the word “Outreach” and call it “Community Ministry”. When someone complained that this doesn’t describe Outreach because “lots of different groups in the church do this” it made me chuckle.

I love your examples to explain “what is Outreach” and will credit your comments to your site.

Blessings!

Victoria

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By: Emily Ford http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1807 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:13:17 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1807 I really love the marketing plan. I wonder how common this is in libraries? It seems so “business-y” I wonder if it’s adopted much. Do you have a sense, Kathy, of how common these plans are?

I think also in previous comments someone mentioned the need for a coordinator for marketing and outreach type activities and I couldn’t agree more. The problem might be making the argument for boards/institutions to fund such a thing for the library…

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By: Kathleen Houlihan http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1696 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:35:38 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1696 I didn’t mention this in my earlier response, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot (particularly as my department has instructed me to come up with a new title without the word “outreach”). Some of the things I do certainly fall under marketing (which I took in grad school…thank goodness!), but many of my other duties have to do with providing access to library services & materials to those who can’t come into a library — the incarcerated for example, or children in childcare centers with working parents. This is a separate definition of “outreach”… but I’ll admit I’m at a loss as far as what else to call myself if I’m not an “outreach librarian”… what else encompasses everything I do? Access librarian sounds so… unappealing.

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By: Kathy Dempsey http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1623 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:30:46 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1623 There is so much going on in this post and its comments that I’ve been thinking hard about how to respond to all of it. Sorry that’s made me late to the party.

First, I notice several people referring to “marketing” as “the M word” so I feel compelled to point out that I contribute to a library marketing blog called “The M Word.” (http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/) My blog partner Nancy Dowd and I are fighting to make “marketing” less of a dirty word to librarians!

Second, some of these thoughts do relate to semantics, but they are important ones. Most librarians do not know the difference between these words, which is why I always start my conference sessions and workshops by defining them. Briefly, MARKETING is the top-tier activity; everything else you’re talking about falls under that. Advocacy, outreach, promotion, advertising, are all part of MARKETING.

As to know how and why to do all of these activities and make them work: this points out the need for every library to have a unified marketing plan (which should fall under its strategic plan). And, in my dreamworld, every library system would have a full-time position that coordinates all of this. Technically, that position should have “marketing” in the title, since all related activities (inc “outreach”) fall under that umbrella term.

Yes, what is necessary to make all of this work is a major shift in thinking and in organizational culture. I’ve been waiting a decade to see this happen and I’m still disappointed. All talk, little action.

I agree w/ what Jennifer Parsons says. She gets it. Her back & forth w/ Sarah hits on important points. What I think they are missing (most libs are missing) is actually understanding, and IMPLEMENTING, the set steps of what I call True Marketing. (see explanatory chart on my website: http://www.librariesareessential.com/library-marketing-resources/cycle-of-true-marketing/)

People in libraries do bits & pieces of marketing, then wonder why their efforts fail. Tired of watching this happen, I poured all of my knowledge from editing the Marketing Library Serivces newsletter for 15 years into a book. It came out in July, and it’s called The Accidental Library Marketer. It answers many of the questions that are being discussed in this post.

One other thought: yes, outreach, promotion, elevator speeches, etc should all be part of every librarian’s responsibility. BUT that requires training and practice. One reason that outreach itself is insuffient is that it has only people in those positions only reaching outside library walls. Library schools have not prepared staffers to do any sort of outreach or marketing. (Another reason I wrote the book.) So people in these positions need to also view fellow staffers as target audiences for their messages.

So my main thought on Emily’s orginal premise is this: I don’t think we need to kill outreach positions; they should be part of marketing positions. I don’t feel that killing the word will help make the activity part of everyone’s work. I think that librarians desperately need to be trained to reach out, to promote their work, and to shout about their own professional value. But there does need to be a position that coordinates all of this — just asking everyone to do “outreach” w/o direction and coordination leads to what we have now — lots of enthusiasm, very little serious success, and almost no way to measure (and therefore prove) that success and value.

It gets depressing when you really think about it, doesn’t it? We have a very long way to go.

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By: Connecting Librarian » Blog Archive » The M word in focus http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1495 Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:27:09 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1495 […] view , looking at why and how I am doing things, not just what. Then this morning I read a blog post Outreach is (un)Dead at In the library with the leadpipe.  It expressed some of what I had been thinking about and is […]

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By: Jennifer M. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1494 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:43:03 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1494 UMass started a University Without Walls in the ’70s. Your article made me remember that, and wonder if we could use a similar reference, maybe not as a defining phrase to replace Outreach, but at least as a phrase we could use on our web page to direct users to a variety of services “Beyond our Walls”.

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By: » what is outreach? moviebuffkt http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1427 Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:26:32 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1427 […] OUTREACH IS (un)DEAD […]

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By: Radical Patron http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1424 Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:13:08 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1424 Hi – I’m a patron who thinks a lot about
public library advocacy. One thing that
is desperately needed, I believe, is an
organized national campaign to save and
nurture our public libraries. This would
be in addition to the personalized, community
outreach that libraries do in their local
communities. There are so many people
doing good things throughout the country
and I dream of collaborating around our
shared purpose rather than working extraordinarily
hard at strictly local levels.
By combining our voices, we’d have
a better chance of focusing the public’s
attention on the national treasure that
is our public library system. By actively
curating a centralized advocacy center,
we could provide high quality resources
to library friends and staff, and information
to the public and the media. Through
this center, we could facilitate a vibrant
exchange among these various constituencies,
to expand upon the dialogue (for example)
among librarian bloggers and citizens
responding to stories from prominent
news outlets (see the recent
Boston Globe article
with 465 responses).
I believe there is pent-up public demand
for civil discourse, trusted information
and re-affirmation of values such as
community, personal dignity and appreciation
for diversity, respect for privacy and
intellectual freedom. I know of no better
institution to meet these needs than
public libraries. Folks just need a
reminder that they’re out there …
and that support goes both ways; libraries
need it in order to provide it.
I have a proof-of-concept developed
for a campaign and resource center and
am seeking contributors. Please contact
me
if you’re interested — I’d
love to hear your ideas and share mine.
Jean

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By: Juan Tomás Lee http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/outreach-is-undead/comment-page-1/#comment-1423 Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:04:50 +0000 http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1581#comment-1423 Sarah, thank you for your thought-provoking article. Two quotes that helped me realize that library outreach is not just having a table with booklists at the local “5 de Mayo” celebration:

Outreach = (social services) “Provision of services to those unable to seek them.” (Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, 1989)

“In order to meet the changing and growing needs of our communities, it is becoming a basic service to reach out beyond our walls and make library services not only accessible but also relevant… This means service that goes beyond the traditional realm of what we have offered in the past, and far beyond the clientele to whom we have offered it.” Marcia Trotta, Managing Library Outreach Programs: A How-to-do-it manual for librarians (New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 1993).

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