What you can’t see, aren’t there : Marketing at some School libraries

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to discuss marketing as it applies to some school libraries. Today’s marketing is about relations. It involves the establishment, maintenance and development of relations with users, non-users and other library related relationships. By looking at how a number of school librarians do and describe their marketing activities I want to find out what they have for ideas, opportunities and limitations. By highlighting their actions and perceptions, I want to try to understand the marketing position of the school library in the school world and discuss the results with the help of Kotler’s Strategic Marketing Planning Process (SMPP) and Elliott de Sáez applications of Kotler’s theories in the library field. My empirical data consists of seven qualitative semi-structured interviews with school librarians working on seven different schools. The survey shows that all librarians share a positive view of marketing. It also shows that School libraries weak¬nesses are time and staffing shortages. Personnel, continuity and knowledge of the users are on the other side considered to be one of the school library's strengths. The marketing methods used by school libraries are the mouth to mouth method and expositions. The study points out that the librarians don’t have the proper skills in marketing. My conclusion is that Strategic Marketing Planning Process could be a useful strategy for marketing school libraries