Promoting Library Resources and Services of Bataan Christian School: A Marketing

Strategy Plan

Abstract:

As librarians we should be actively marketing and promoting our library services. This paper
aims to demystify marketing for librarians. Practical solutions are provided on how to implement
a marketing strategy, with particular emphasis on promoting library resources and services. It
also shows the link between promoting library services and raising the profile of the library.

Chapter 1

The Problem and Its Setting

Introduction

In this digital age, academic libraries are facing a variety of challenges such as ongoing budget
cuts, application of new information technologies, changing internal and external environments,
and changing demands of research and teaching. A managerial tool assisting libraries to face
challenges now and in the future is effective promotion and marketing. Today, academic libraries
are no longer the only choice for students, faculty, staff and other clients to go to for information.
To attract clients, generate non-user awareness, and raise awareness of available services and
resources, libraries need to find ways to promote services and resources to clients as effectively
as possible.

Marketing is frequently viewed as a set of strategies and techniques that belong to administrators
outside of librarianship. However as librarians we are all involved in the process of marketing.
UK Chartered Institute of Marketing stated that Marketing is the management process which
identifies, anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently. Thus the essence of
marketing involves finding out what the users want, then setting out to meet those needs.

As librarians we all participate in this process of assessing our users’ needs and trying to fulfill
them. Thus, we are already marketing our library information skills. However, in order to do this
effectively librarians need to embrace the total marketing function involving market research and
analysis, service planning and promotion.
Research Locale

The study was conducted in the High School Library of Bataan Christian School during the
Academic Year 2019-2020.

Bataan Christian School started as a dream of a group of mothers- a dream to build a “home
away from home”, a school that will partner with the homes in raising- up individuals who are
fully equipped for life. In rented place in Pilar Shopping Arcade, BCS Preschool was born in
June 1997. The school was gifted with 50 pupils in the Nursery, Kindergarten and Preparatory.
And in 1999, BCS transferred to its permanent site, a one-hectare lot at Panilao, Pilar, Bataan.
The structure of our buildings are very much like a home so much so that even the people in the
community thought it was a housing area. Still in the same year, we were granted the certificate
of recognition in all levels after having satisfactorily completed all the requirements set by the
Department of Education.

Figure 1 shows the map of Pilar, Bataan indicating the location of the institutional subject.
Figure 2 shows the front view of Bataan Christian School
Framework of the Study

Conceptual Framework

Theoretical Framework