Tangent before Thing 3: branding

Three was a ‘thing’ that I knew would interest me when I signed up to cpd23 as I have always been interested in the image of the profession. The dissertation for my MA was about ‘the image of librarians in films as viewed by students, potential librarians and librarians.’ As a result of researching that I noticed that in general the public views librarians in the stereotypical way of buns, glasses, twinsets etc while (at the time- shockingly this dissertation was written 11 years ago!) the librarians who were writing about image seemed to (mostly) be coming from an ‘I’m crazy me’ angle. Luckily, judging from the blogs I’ve been reading for cpd23, librarians have calmed down a lot since then!

Image has continued to be an important issue in librarianship. People argue about the brand of ‘library,’ worrying that having a name associated with dusty books means that people won’t realise how much libraries have evolved and so stop using them. Personally, I feel that part of the problem is that the profession gets so bogged down discussing this issue internally that it forgets to market itself externally.  I don’t think muggles care if they are going to a ‘library’ or ‘learning hub’ or ‘idea store.’ What they wonder is why no-one bothered to tell them that there are free computer classes/ e-books/ rhymetimes/ information literacy courses/ homework help sessions (delete as applicable and then add all the extra services you offer) as well as free books.

Personally, I like the word ‘library’ as at least the public have some perception of what we mean and offer.  They get angry when councils, universities, companies etc remove them as a cost cutting exercise because they know that a service was being offered to them. It is difficult to have a campaign against the closure of something when you have to explain what that thing was doing while it was open (“basically.... it was the library.”) I view our role as information professionals, to build upon this image and market our new services, rather than knocking down the brand and starting again from scratch.

Well, that was a bit of a tangent before looking at my own, personal brand!

Here I am with a brand of library I have yet to work in- a mobile library in Hong Kong. My slightly nervous grin is due to the fact that a security guard is running behind my photographer telling us off for trespassing (I think that's what he was saying!)