Reference Renaissance: You Bought It, Now Sell It

The fourth session I attended at 2008 Reference Renaissance was called, "You Bought It, Now Sell It!: Merchandising Reference Services" with presenters:

• Karen Long, Farmington Public Library
• Bernadine Goldman, Los Alamos County Public Library System
• Lizzie Eastwood, Los Alamos County Public Library System

Karen spoke on her library's efforts to market their reference services. Not just chat reference, but reference by any venue the library does. The first step was designing a logo. They settled on a puzzle piece with the words "just ask!" which you can view at Farmington PL's web site at http://www.infoway.org/. The next step was to put the logo all over their library (including large versions plastered to the ref desk), web site and brochures. They also have some of their employees wear "just ask" pins. They also use mp3 "cordmen" earbud holders to promote the IM part of the "just ask" service. Karen emphasized that it was important to do demonstrations of chat reference for your staff. They have to understand the product and its potential before they can promote it to others.

In addition to the "in the library" measures above, Karen talked about the importance of getting the message out into the community. She does this in part by radio spots and attending rotary club meetings.

After Karen was done, it was time for Bernadine and Lizzie to talk about their promotion of reference collections. Bernadine had the goal of "To make sure that all users of the reference collection are aware of all the resources available, and are introduced to them all in one place." The idea was to show patrons and other staff all the tangible AND electronic resources the library had to offer on given topics in the reference collection. Bernadine led the reference department to do this in three main ways:

1. Rearrange the physical collection into broad subjects without abandoning Dewey entirely.
2. Integrate electronic resources into the physical collection through the use of lists and brochures
3. Create displays of reference materials in the low shelving areas of reference.

For the rearrangement of the physical reference collection, Bernadine came in over a weekend and created several sub-collections in reference including: Aging, Health, Weapons, Environment, Culture, and Jobs. She then brought all the books together on these topics regardless of Dewey classification. For example the Health section includes Public Health items from the 300s as well as medical books from the 610s.

The next step was to comb through their databases and the list of RUSA Best Free Reference Websites list and classify them into the same keywords as the reference books. These lists of "resources by keywords" were then posted by their corresponding section in the physical collection.

Finally, books and resource lists were put on display using low shelving in the reference area. Another promotional tool used with highlighting the availability of 10 free photocopies from books in the reference collection. This seemed to give patrons permission to use the "don't check out" collection.

No formal assessment has been done to judge the effectiveness of these measures, but comments from patrons has been positive. They received one comment that the library has "doubled the value of the collection."

At my library, we're busy trying to highlight our circulating collection, something we really hadn't focused on for the past few years. We're creating more display space and trying to push interesting looking books through our RSS feeds. So we're going to complete that process before moving on to reference.

But these seem like intriguing ideas for promoting reference. What do you think?

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Note: By August 20, 2008, all of the presentation slides and handouts for Reference Renaissance will posted to the conference site at http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/index.html. Later in the year, Neal-Schuman will be publishing conference proceedings. I’m looking forward to those, since I (or anyone else) could only attend 1/6 of the offered sessions, plus the Keynote and the Plenary Session.

Also, as I write up sessions, I very much welcome comments and corrections. Just as I was physically unable to attend all 36 sessions, so too I might not have picked up on everything in the sessions I did attend or I might have accidentally misinterpreted something. Or maybe you’ve got a different take on the session you’d like to share.