Marketing Library and Information Services

The interest in marketing has tremendously increased over the past few decades in libraries like other service centers; education, health, transportation, insurance, banking, etc. For a long time, we librarians and information professionals had enjoyed a supplier's market and we lost our interest in working for our customers, and yet we want customers to come back. However, we should always keep in mind that only satisfied customers come back and there are greater chances that an unsatisfied customer will find some other suppliers of information to meet their information need. Today marketing is whole organization concept and organization wide philosophy, which requires years of continual work. It is a way of working and a way of serving the customers in which every activity is committed to customer satisfaction. Marketing of library services is the effective execution of all the activities involved in increasing satisfaction of users by providing maximum value to them. It is a total solution for library and information centers. There have been enormous developments in marketing of library and information services around the world. The present paper explores the discipline of marketing of library services as a new academic subject in library and information education.