Marketing—whether volunteer-based or through designated staff—is an essential component of the modern library. Informing students of resources, aiding faculty with curriculum goals, and demonstrating impact to administration all fall within the scope of library marketing. Beyond reaching these groups, marketing allows library staff to reassess offerings, improve services, and better understand patron needs.

After presenting on “marketing from the heart” on an ACRL panel, Stephanie Espinoza Villamor, eLearning librarian at the College of Southern Nevada, teamed up with Kimberly Shotick, student success librarian and assistant professor at Northern Illinois University, to write Practical Marketing for the Academic Library. Combining community college and four-year institution perspectives, Stephanie and Kimberly crafted a guide that underscores the need to accurately and successfully market your library in an age of increasing competition—student union spaces, online depositories, and, of course, the Internet writ large.

In this four-part series, Stephanie and Kimberly walk through practical steps to understanding your audience, crafting messaging, and forming effective teams to accomplish this work. They also discuss how to apply a DEI lens to marketing elements and integrating DEI into assessment and overall outcomes. In this first episode, our guests introduce themselves and differentiate between “marketing” and “outreach.” They also highlight how library messaging has evolved over the years, and answer the basic question: why does a library need to market itself in the first place?

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