Att blogga biblioteket - en kvalitativ undersökning om marknadsföring av folkbibliotek via bloggar

Författare

Sofia Boberg
Kajsa Ragnestam

Summary, in English

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine how blogs are used by public libraries for marketing purposes, and how librarians who blog perceive their blog as a marketing tool. The thesis is based on a qualitative study conducted using asynchronous e-mail interviews with librarians representing eleven different library blogs. The theoretical framework and concepts are taken from marketing theory, including Kotler's marketing mix, relationship marketing, and theories on the marketing of non-profit organisations, knowledge organizations, the Internet, and blogs. Our results and analysis reveal that libraries use blogs because they are an easy tool to use, they represent a new way to inform users about the library, they are a way to improve contact with the users and a way to reach potential users. According to the librarians we interviewed, blogs can be used to market libraries in a number of different ways: by disseminating information on the library and its various media and events, by providing a forum to demonstrate the skills of the librarians, and as a way of changing the image of the library. The blog is a communication tool that allows librarians to use a more personal voice, but we could not reach any conclusions on how blogs affect the library's relationship with users. The level of interactivity on the library blogs is generally low and the majority of the librarians would like to involve the users more. Possible developments that the librarians can foresee in the future include the integration of the blog with the library's other web pages and the involvement of more writers in the blog. Some of the librarians are more sceptical about the future potential of the blog. One of our conclusions is that the librarians are using blogs for the purposes of marketing, although few librarians mention this as a conscious objective.

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