More ideas about the library brand

Recently, I have read The Purple Cow:  Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin.  While not everything in it applies to libraries, there are a few nuggets of wisdom worth discussing.  The title comes from Godin's observation that after we've seen a lot cows, they are unremarkable, but a purple cow would be truly remarkable.  One caveat--remarkableness is not permanent.  With the passing of time, a person or a business or an entity will have to find new ways to be remarkable.  Below I have typed some quotations from the book with my remarks afterward about how I think Godin's thoughts relate to libraries.

Instead of trying to use technology and expertise to make a better product for users' standard behaviour--invite users to change behaviour to make the product work dramatically better.

At first glance, this seems counterintuitive, however, let's put a library spin on it.  Right now there are tons of studies about students' searching behavior.  I am not saying we should ignore them, but what if instead of trying make libraries fit the mold of Google searching, we came up with something creative enough to entice students to use it?  I am currently working on a presentation about the Invisible Web that may be the ticket.  What if we could make searching with something other than general purpose search engines exciting, secret, really smart?  What if we played to students' desire to be savvy web users, and then showed them how to be really savvy?

Instead of investing in a dying product, reinvest in building something new.

Really?  This isn't an earth shattering idea, but again, apply it to libraries.  What is dying in libraries? The answer may be different for different libraries.  For me, it is print reference.  Now, a lot of other librarians will say, yeah, that died a long time ago, but here, until recently, teachers were still requiring some print reference materials on assignments.  However, there has been a subtle shift this year, in that databases are considered equal to print sources for lit crit and other reference uses.  That is not to say that I do not have some fabulous print reference that I will pull out for certain units, but I do not think I will be investing any more money in it.

Differentiate customers.  Find the group most likely to sneeze [spread the word about you].  You shouldn't cater to the masses, you should cater to the customers you'd choose if you could choose your customers.  Emphasis mine.

This is something I have written about before, several times, in fact.  We need to find the group that already loves the library, or has the potential to love the library and work with them.  Stop wasting time on people who think they don't need us.  Chances are they will NEVER get it.  Give yourself permission to stop banging your head against a brick wall.  It's OK.  I give you permission to stop it.

Make a list of remarkable products in your industry.  How did they happen?

In our case, we could list remarkable librarians, libraries, or services, or choose something else to focus on.  Here's my short list:

• Buffy Hamilton and the Unquiet Library--she wins the library branding award of the century.
• Joyce Valenza
• The Harvard University Libraries and Robert Darnton--especially the Open Access Articles at Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH)
• The Library of Congress
• Oprah's book club--whether you like her or not--she got people to read the same book and talk about it
• The Help
• Libguides
• Shelfari, and other virtual book shelves/book clubs
• Shmoop
• Finding Dulcinea and Sweet Search

You get the idea, I could make this list very long.  What is it about each of these things that makes them remarkable?  Could we duplicate it?  Could we make it work for our libraries.  I think we can, we just have to do it.

Do you want to grow? If yes, embrace the cow--the only route to healthy growth is to be remarkable.

Enough said.