Where do librarians get their librarian news?
May 23, 2017 5:04 AM Subscribe
I've created a nifty new (free) website that could be useful as a reference and research tool, and I would like to share it with librarians (university level, primarily). What blogs, mailing lists, forums, etc... could I politely and non-spamily reach out to that might be interested in sharing such a resource?
The site is focused on social science, economics, and policy for the time being.
The site is focused on social science, economics, and policy for the time being.
Response by poster: Just to clarify: the site is for patrons. I.e. my thinking (/hope) is that librarians might be interested in sharing my site with their patrons.
posted by ropeladder at 6:24 AM on May 23, 2017
posted by ropeladder at 6:24 AM on May 23, 2017
Best answer: Librarians are pitched to almost constantly. Nearly everything can be a "resource" for patrons. I don't say this not be discouraging but just so you know what you are working with here. I am a well-known librarian and I get an average of an email solicitation every day from someone who wants me to share their resource with my patrons, and I don't even work in a library! This would be higher if I worked in a library.
The absolute best way to let librarians know about your product is to get ahold of them directly at a conference or other appropriate venue by being a vendor or sponsoring something at a conference. Librarians do a TON of professional development and there is an annual conference in each US state every year. They're often looking for sponsor type things and one of the things you get with your sponsorship is some way for your brand to reach lots of professionals in the proper venue.
The other places librarians learn about resources are professional publications like BookList, Library Journal or American Libraries magazine. Librarians also spend a lot of time on mailing lists discussing library stuff. However, only certain places/locations are appropriate for promotion and it's worth figuring that out.
Seconding strongly what wingless_angel says, academic librarians are primarily responsible for supporting the schools programs and faculty, so figuring out beforehand if your project has relevance to them in that regard. They have large ERM (electronic resource management) systems to manage most of the resources they use, they're rarely in the "Hey add a link to our website" arena. It's possible that you have a thing that is both extremely relevant and (for some reason) virtually unknown but keep in mind it's very unusual for that to be the case and more usual that someone's trying to pitch a thing to 100 libraries in the same way.
That said, I would be happy to take a look at your thing and give you some real talk about what I think you could be doing with it. Email in my profile.
posted by jessamyn at 7:24 AM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
The absolute best way to let librarians know about your product is to get ahold of them directly at a conference or other appropriate venue by being a vendor or sponsoring something at a conference. Librarians do a TON of professional development and there is an annual conference in each US state every year. They're often looking for sponsor type things and one of the things you get with your sponsorship is some way for your brand to reach lots of professionals in the proper venue.
The other places librarians learn about resources are professional publications like BookList, Library Journal or American Libraries magazine. Librarians also spend a lot of time on mailing lists discussing library stuff. However, only certain places/locations are appropriate for promotion and it's worth figuring that out.
Seconding strongly what wingless_angel says, academic librarians are primarily responsible for supporting the schools programs and faculty, so figuring out beforehand if your project has relevance to them in that regard. They have large ERM (electronic resource management) systems to manage most of the resources they use, they're rarely in the "Hey add a link to our website" arena. It's possible that you have a thing that is both extremely relevant and (for some reason) virtually unknown but keep in mind it's very unusual for that to be the case and more usual that someone's trying to pitch a thing to 100 libraries in the same way.
That said, I would be happy to take a look at your thing and give you some real talk about what I think you could be doing with it. Email in my profile.
posted by jessamyn at 7:24 AM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
I think the site needs to make a better case for its use-value before you share it with a whole lot of people at once. The guided tour gave me the impression that its main point of interest was its web of arguments, but looking at the existing "lists" (argument webs), they're looking pretty spare, with all but one not even citing any evidence/articles -- which gives the impression that you're looking for people to create for your site more than you're looking for people to make use of what's there already.
But clicking around some more on my own, it looks like the site's primary value as-is is showing webs of citation, since those seem to be automatically populated from the academic databases. Maybe the guided tour should be reworked to start people with one of those example "evidence" nodes (which should probably be renamed something like "article" or "publication") or "author" nodes, since people could get immediate value out of clicking through the web of citations to find other articles of interest?
Or if you stick with keeping the "argument" webs front and center, I think you have to make those existing ones more compelling/valuable/detailed before you can expect others to come in and create their own (and the tour in that case should be less about teaching the UI and more about demonstrating what someone looking to learn about a topic can glean from those argument webs).
posted by nobody at 8:21 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
But clicking around some more on my own, it looks like the site's primary value as-is is showing webs of citation, since those seem to be automatically populated from the academic databases. Maybe the guided tour should be reworked to start people with one of those example "evidence" nodes (which should probably be renamed something like "article" or "publication") or "author" nodes, since people could get immediate value out of clicking through the web of citations to find other articles of interest?
Or if you stick with keeping the "argument" webs front and center, I think you have to make those existing ones more compelling/valuable/detailed before you can expect others to come in and create their own (and the tour in that case should be less about teaching the UI and more about demonstrating what someone looking to learn about a topic can glean from those argument webs).
posted by nobody at 8:21 AM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
I manage web services for my library and we get so many emails recommending websites to us that we have a canned response for the occasion. ("We do not accept unsolicited links.") Granted most of these are SEO
spam type deals, but frankly we're not going to spend the time trying to separate possible wheat from chaff because we get so, so much.
posted by kittydelsol at 10:52 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
spam type deals, but frankly we're not going to spend the time trying to separate possible wheat from chaff because we get so, so much.
posted by kittydelsol at 10:52 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks very much for the feedback, everyone.
posted by ropeladder at 2:44 PM on May 24, 2017
posted by ropeladder at 2:44 PM on May 24, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by wingless_angel at 5:38 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]