Marketing the Engineering Library

Marketing is a tool of librarianship that is infrequently taught to library professionals, yet plays an important role in outreach to students, faculty, and staff. This paper shows the process that Purdue University's Engineering Library faculty utilized to develop and implement a marketing plan. As the process evolved, an inventory of current programs, an analysis of current patrons and current marketing methods, an assessment of available marketing venues, a map of marketing venues for target patron groups and a plan to supervise marketing projects were designed. Future plans include evaluating specific marketing venues for their effectiveness in reaching specific target markets.