BOOK REVIEW / CRITIQUE DE LIVRE

Kenney MR, LaGuardia C. Marketing Your Library's Electronic Resources. 2nd ed. Chicago: Neal-Schuman; 2018. Softcover: 240. ISBN: 978-0-8389-1565-3. Price: USD$65.00.

Available from:

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442278851/Writing-Effectively-in-Print-and-on-the-Web-A-Practical-Guide-for-Librarians

From the moment I saw Kennedy and LaGuardia's book, *Marketing Your Library's Electronic Resources*, I was overwhelmed with anticipation. I have always been an outspoken advocate for incorporating marketing principles into library practice. Before becoming a librarian, I completed a bachelor's degree in information and communication studies. I learned how difficult it is for information providers (including libraries) to remain valued by their clients, given the increasingly competitive landscape. Since becoming a librarian, I've realized that libraries spend a lot of time acquiring the library's electronic resources, but we don't spend nearly as much time making sure that our patrons know where these resources are or when and how to use them. As the authors of *Marketing Your Library's Electronic Resources* point out in the preface:

> If our patrons really knew and understood how much we make available to them online, they wouldn't go to alternative information providers to do their research [...] but our patrons don't know about all that we've got because our online systems don't make e-resources very accessible, and 'marketing' has, until fairly recently, been an alien word, and practice, in libraries.

Kennedy and LaGuardia define marketing as “a combination of getting the word out about what our libraries offer and what those resources can do for various clientele, getting feedback from our clientele about their knowledge and use of the library e-resources, and being responsive to their needs after having gotten their feedback.” This book is meant to help library staff enhance the visibility of their e-resources and reminds the reader that the library has

evolved into something that should not be valued solely on the usage of its physical space.

*Marketing your Library's Electronic Resources* is an incredibly helpful guide for all library and information science workers. The authors do not focus on a particular type of library, but opt to tackle marketing in general. This means that the tools and information they present can be applied in any type of library. Kennedy and LaGuardia walk their audience through all the steps to develop a marketing plan for various types of e-resources. In part 1, they teach the reader how to design a marketing plan. They do a great job at providing the reader with pictures, tables, graphs and other visual aides to help them understand the different components of marketing. In part 2, they provide 7 different examples of marketing reports from a variety of academic (university and college), public, special and electronic libraries. Many of these examples also provide “lessons learned,” which is great for those who might not be entirely convinced that marketing projects are going to be effective.

This book will help you determine the purpose of your marketing plan. It helps you create and implement your plan, construct your report, and then assess, revise, and update your plan. I particularly liked that the authors included many “web extras” as supplementary materials, such as a free SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis template to help organize your plan. A category of web extras that I believe would be helpful to the novice user are the links to Microsoft Word versions of completed reports. Readers can adapt these for their own use. At the end of each chapter, the authors recommend resources that go into more depth on topics such as marketing ethics, usability tests, and focus groups. These resources allow readers to guide their own learning. Although this book contains a lot of useful information, I feel that it does not address a pertinent issue: why it is important to market library resources. This topic could easily have warranted an entire chapter. Discussing this and explaining how to convey this message to other decision-makers would have tied the book together.

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As a librarian, I am constantly challenged about the profession's value to society beyond providing access to a building full of books. *Marketing Your Library's Electronic Resources* is going to be a staple in my personal collection and I recommend it to all library staff. Not only has this book helped me understand

how to market my electronic resources better, but it has also shown me how to incorporate feedback from patrons to shape the resources they use. This includes the decisions I make when selecting and (or) deselecting resources as well as sharing patron feedback with vendors.

**Statement of Competing Interests**

No competing interests declared.

**Courtney Boudreau**
*Community Services Librarian*
*New Brunswick Public Library Service*
*Saint John NB*
Email: boudreau.courtney@gmail.com