Give 'em what they want. You know how we're always moaning about how we pay all this money for electronic databases and then no one uses them and our usage stats are in the toilet? Well, maybe we're not marketing them the right way. I mean, let's face it, few people aside from librarians would get all shivery at the thought that Ebsco has x number of full-text journals. It's just not the sort of thing normal people care about. (Not that I'm saying we're not normal.... but.... we're not normal.)

So maybe we need to start marketing our electronic databases by relating them to concrete things that our users can do with them. For instance, I increased usage of our Ebsco database when I put a press release in the paper with step-by-step instructions on how to get Consumer Reports articles in full-text, from your home computer. For months afterwards, I'd get calls at the ref desk from people who remembered seeing the article but couldn't quite remember how to do it. So I'd just email them the press release.

I just heard another good example of this type of thing. A library created some publicity showing people how they could see the articles from the New York Times on the day they were born. This could be a great way of getting people to use that expensive New York Times historical newspaper database.  ¶ posted by Mary Martin @ 1:32 PM