Marketing of information products and services is very vital in the present information society. Of late, marketing of information services has emerged as an indispensable tool in the library and information service industry. In the light of this, this study examines possible ways of marketing information services by the 21st century information professionals for effective utilization of resources by the clients. This chapter looks at the following: the strategies already in place, the competencies needed by information professionals in the digital era, and methodologies that can be adopted for marketing information services available to libraries and information centres in the future.
TopLiterature Review
According to Abels et al. (2003), an Information Professional (IP) strategically uses information in his/her job to advance the mission of the organization. The IP accomplishes this through the development, deployment, and management of information resources and services. The IP harnesses technology as a critical tool to accomplish goals. IPs include, but are not limited to librarians, knowledge managers, chief information officers, web developers, information brokers, and consultants.
Information organizations are defined as those entities that deliver information-based solutions to a given market. Some commonly used names for these organizations include libraries, information centers, competitive intelligence units, intranet departments, knowledge resource centers, content management organizations, and others.
There are many services offered by the library as there are many information services. Library and information services refer to those facilities, which are provided by libraries and information centers for the use of books and dissemination of information. In so doing, users’ needs are met.) The well known existing library services are cataloguing, classification, circulation services, reservation, renewal, new arrivals, current contents, current awareness service, selective dissemination of information, indexing and abstracting, reference service, document delivery, inter library loan, externally purchased database, CD-ROM databases, access to other library catalogues, access to online databases, internally published newsletters, reports and journals, bibliographic services, and so on. All these services have changed their modes to an extent, taking the dynamic web environment into account).
As said earlier, information professionals include librarians. Some of the services offered by librarians in their various libraries fall within the realm of the above-mentioned services. However, there are services that cut across all information professionals. These are described in the section below.