Marketing and elevator speeches

Another useful link from one of the groups I follow on LinkedIn - On men, elevator speeches, and market segments.

"But who uses a library nowadays, anyway?" 

"I can get books somewhere else."

I hear those two phrases much more often than I'd like. The blog post linked above suggests having two or three ideas prepared for people who will ask you "what's the benefit of a library?" In particular, the post concentrates on men, but keeping some suggestions on hand is a great idea.

Usually I counter 'what's a library good for' by listing the features of my local library system:

1. You can get books from all 33 branches and, given a bit of time, they will be sent to the branch of your choosing, which makes it easier to pick them up. You can't do it last minute, since it could take a few days to cross the city. Still - 33 branches is a lot of books. Not being limited to one branch is amazing.
1. You can order books from home. You don't even have to go into a library if you don't want to. Sometimes this is where I throw in something like 'you don't even need to get out of your pajama pants', depending on who I'm talking to.
2. 'You can return your books at any branch' is great for selling this feature, too. 
2. The library doesn't just have books - they also have DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, ebooks, and video games. Usually this garners a look of disbelief - DVDs? Video games? WHY? To make them available to everyone, as long as they have a library card... which is free.
3. Databases! I love databases so much. And I always forget...
4. Book recommendations. Reader's advisory. I am hesitant to offer it out, because reader's advisory is difficult (in my opinion) and hard to do if you haven't read books in the genre the patron's looking for. I fear someone approaching a librarian looking for science fiction only to be told they 'don't know the genre' and 'can't be any help'.