Taking the library to patron

Abstract

Underutilization and decreasing budgets have posed an immense pressure on the librarians’ role and the public perspective of a library as vital community center in the society. The question of “why conventional libraries seems underutilized?” need to be raised. Conventional “come and get it” mode of operation for libraries will no longer applicable in the modern liquid social paradigm. Emerging electronic information platforms are pushing the boundaries of the traditional brick type business of the libraries in the age of Google. Strive marketing and promotional endeavor need to be embarked upon conventional libraries to attract more users to the library. Social marketing in the library context better to be outreach and it is totally a non-profit relationship-based movement. Proper adoption of suitable marketing toolkit and a promotional plan may uplift the library from underutilization and shortage of budget allocation from the top management. Librarians should aware the patrons about the products and services in a manner that they can understand. Present empirical investigation attempts to test the effectiveness of the noticeboard as a promotional medium to aware the people who knock the physical door of the library. A monthly medical magazine, “The Doctor” was used to prepare the promotional notice following the A-I-D-A sequence. Promotional notices were displayed on 30 different sites around the campus for one month commencing form 23rd April 2018 and a subsequent data collection step was started using paper and pencil-based questionnaire. Results revealed that there was a strong, positive correlation of the future wiliness to read the magazine after visualizing the notice in the noticeboard, which was statistically significant (τb = 0.780, p = 0.046). This will shed light on the products and service promotion in academic libraries that, promotion through library noticeboards are effective mean of marketing. Transforming the way of library operations and a, paradigm shift of marketing strategies adopted need to be apply in order to enhance the better utilization of library resources. Cognitive plurality in the postmodern social context needs to be considered when planning promotional practices in future. Libraries and the role of librarians should paradigm shift by taking an intellectual endeavor to promote academic libraries with a new world outlook.