Nike’s famous marketing campaign says,  Just do it.”

I firmly believe that marketing is critical to libraries. And not the polite, non-profit style marketing many libraries have traditionally conducted—I’m talking about the solid, well-planned, purposeful, in-your-face campaigns conducted by the business world. I think libraries share more characteristics with businesses than many other non-profits do, and I think this, in light of the fiscal and political realities we face, is why we could benefit from a change.

I’m an assistant library director with eighteen years of experience in library administration and technology, plus a few more years of marketing research and project implementation thrown in from my Wall Street days. I don’t have an M.B.A., and my education is solidly “liberal arts,” but I’ll be starting an Introduction to Marketing course in a few weeks (and Consumer Research in the fall!) and using this blog to talk about what I learn with others.

Just do it.