College and Research Libraries


The Guidelines do not, however, resolve 
other important issues. Surprisingly they 
say nothing about measures of library ef-
fectiveness and productivity and little 
about nonprint material and interlibrary 
cooperation. 

Thus, even though they have taken 
"Standards for College Libraries" a step 
further in some respects, the Guidelines 
leave gaps that future sets of standards 
must address.-]asper G. Schad, Wichita 
State University, Kansas. 

The Marketing of Library atid Information 
Service. Ed. by Blaise Cronin. London: 
Aslib, 1982, 359p. ISBN 0-85142-153-9. 
Marketing library and information ser-

vices seems to be on everyone's current 
agenda. "Techniques for ... " appear on 
the Library and Information Science Re-
search Agenda for the 1980s developed by 
Cuadra Associates for the Department of 
Education Office of Libraries and Learn-
ing Technologies. Special Libraries Asso-
ciation's "Highest Priority Issues" list re-
fers to the need for developing strong 
public relations programs, and every 
recession-conscious public, special, and 
academic librarian has begun ruminating 
about, if not embracing wholeheartedly, 
the marketing concept. 

Whether you agree with John Berry that 
"a library is a necessary public service" 
and shouldn't have to be "sold" like 
toothpaste, or with Fred Glazer that 
"pap" (persuasion, agitation, participa-
tion) is called for more than "quiet dig-
nity," this volume of reprints brings it all 
together and lets you decide for yourself 
what marketing is, or can be, and how im-
portant it is to the future of libraries. 

Blaise Cronin has selected, organized, 
and intelligently introduced many of the 
important articles on the subject. He be-
gins with Theodore Leavitt's classic 1960 
article from the Harvard Business Review, 
which introduced the oft-paraphrased an-
ecdotes detailing the demise of the rail-
roads and the buggy whip industries ow-
ing to a lack of the understanding that in-
dustry is involved in ''customer-
satisfying'' not ''goods producing'' pro-
cesses. Definitions of the library user, 
nonuser, and information consumer, the 
variety of library products, marketing 

Recent Publications 83 

tools, and techniques, the measures of ef-
fectiveness, target groups, and commu-
nity analyses are recurrent topics for dis-
cussion in this collection. 

In this fourth volume of . the Aslib 
Reader series, the editor has limited selec-
tion to articles pertaining to the marketing 
of library services (as distinct from the mar-
keting of scientific and technical informa-
tion). Each essay approaches the subject 
differently and thus justifies its inclusion. 
There's general theory here as well as dis-
cussions of applied marketing principles 
and practices, and results of research on 
marketing methodology. The book's only 
drawback is the reduced print of many of 
the articles reproduced from larger-format 
journals. 

Although published by Aslib, the ma-
jority of articles are by Americans-Robert 
Wedgeworth, Fay Blake and Edith 
Perlmutter, Shirley Echelman, Douglas 
Ferguson, Martha Boaz-these people will 
be instrumental in whether there is a fu-
ture market for libraries and will play a 
major role in how library service is mar-
keted. 

Whether your interest is in'' selling'' the 
necessity for support of the public library 
as a free institution to the taxpayer, or you 
want to focus on the needs of your aca-
demic patrons for a computer searching 
service or review various pricing tech-
niques for commercial information ser-
vices, this book is highly recommended as 
a useful and important source. The re-
viewer believes with the authors that the 
survival of library services is a real con-
cern, and, as Levitt points out, survival of 
any service organization always entails 
market response and change. Knowing 
your user, knowing your product poten-
tial, and knowing how to communicate 
and what to change are the basic tenets of 
successful marketing-and survivaL-
Shelley Phipps, University of Arizona, Tuc-
son. 

Marketing the Library. Ed. by Philip M. 
Judd. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: 
Association of Assistant Librarians, 
1981. 124p. $11 paper. 
This slim, edited transcription of a 

"weekend school" leaves much to be de-
sired, even though there are some highly