“Why should we be named after our building?” A study of marketing the librarians

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to investigate different ways of illustrating the information literacy of librarians and with a pragmatic view survey what has been written about marketing the librarians. The thesis is based on a marketing theory introduced by Philip Kotler. He believes that marketing is a social process and that everything can be marketed. I have reviewed three marketing strategies and their significance in marketing the information literacy of librarians. The strategies are marketing mix, event marketing and services marketing. The thesis has two parts and the first is a literature exposition of the marketing and the economic frames, investigations about the role, identity and rank of librarians and the marketing of librarians. The second part is an investigation that consists of interviews with four librarians with different experiences of marketing within the library. My conclusion is that there are useful strategies for marketing the information literacy of the librarians. Services marketing in combination with event marketing have good potential for success. A second conclusion is that it is necessary for librarians to market their competence and in that way indirectly also promote the library. With an effective marketing of the librarian competence there is also a reason to keep the title “librarian”. The competence lies not in the name, but within the person.Uppsatsnivå: