I regularly suffer from promotion envy when other folk have much slicker promotional materials / concepts than me. The latest dose has been caused by this lovely campaign in the states promoting the public library service – Geek the Library (alerted by this post at It’s all good).
One of the key things for me is the combination of linking peoples passions to the ability to learn more about them through the library. The use of web 2.0 type sites gives a way to be involved and hopefully generate some discussion and improve awareness amongst a younger audience.
As an avid public library user I would love to see something like this in the UK. I have geeked all manner of things via my public library.
On the health informatics side I noticed that NHS Evidence recruited a whole stack of marketing / promotion / brand management types. They will almost certainly have more capacity in this area than NHS Libraries have ever even contemplated (more promotion envy). Should there be a lesson for all parts of the library community?
Right on cue – more planned expenditure from NHS Evidence on market research
http://www.nice.org.uk/media/07F/82/EOIUserResearchandAnalysis.pdf
Yes-you’ve struck a nerve with me as I believe it is all about promoting what you have (assuming it is any good)! I really, really like the geekthelibrary initiative and am following it now on Twitter. FYI, I geek libraries and almost everything they have in them.
I think it is a good step for NHS Evidence to tender for evaluation services, an essential step, really. Maybe that will help them come up with a better phrase for ‘conducting a specialised search’!
I’ve been using the Survey functionality in SharePoint to get feedback on the intranet portal I’ve developed. It isn’t bad, but there doesn’t seem to be an option for anonymity.