Marketing Libraries in a Web 2.0 world

Abstract

In August 2010 the city of Stockholm hosted the Ifla satellite meeting “Marketing Libraries in a Web 2.0 world”, where the topic of library marketing was discussed from both a practical and theoretical point of view. Several examples and interesting cases were presented, showing how fast libraries are changing because of the use of social networks, user-generated contents and folksonomies. Marketing can help libraries to handle these transformations.

Nowadays the idea of knowledge seen as the ability of giving a sense to a context by structuring and orga- nizing texts is under challenge. This strongly affects the library's role and legitimation among the commu- nity. So it is necessary a real marketing of information and knowledge, able to emphasize the centrality of books without refusing the challenge offered by interactivity, intertextuality and user-generated contents. Thus the Net can become the appropriate (although virtual) place for affirming the centrality of culture thanks to a counter-framing policy meant to reverse the prejudices of those who think that culture isn't anymore able to give a sense to reality.