Branding

Back to the issue touched on in the pre-holiday post - exploring public perceptions. Our lengthy , but interesting reading assignment included OCLC's Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources.  

Firstly, I was impressed (and I'll admit a bit surprised) at the diversity of voluntary respondents they succeeded in reaching succesfully. Kudos to the design and implementation team on that effort!

Secondly, some of the findings that caught my attention corroborate a favorite saying of a good friend and department head at my previous institution when referring to the value-add of librarians vs. the internet in an information search: "Google gets the easy questions; we get the hard ones."

• Finding of interest 1)  The survey findings indicate that 84 percent of information searches begin with a search engine. [Emphasis added].
  
    
• Finding of interest 2) Researching specific reference books is the second most frequent library activity conducted annually.
• Finding of interest 3) Overwhelmingly, respondents from all geographic regions and across U.S. age groups indicate the librarian is the first choice when seeking assistance at the library.

The difficulty pointed out by the data analysis of the report seems to be the information seekers who never consider the library or librarians as a resource in the first place.

• Finding of interest 4) Most respondents indicated they have not sought help (64 percent) when using library resources.

 It seems from scanning the included respondent comments to be due in significant part to a lack of awareness (Or I might possibly argue -only slightly tongue in cheek - attention span.) when it comes to services offered.  Question of the week: How much do we need to treat cultural institutions like a for-profit business model in order to raise "brand awareness?"