Using Your Library’s Annual Report to Market Library Services

Abstract

This presentation discussed how the annual report can be an important element in a library’s marketing program rather than a chore that needs to be accomplished each year. While not every library produces an annual report, the data that goes into a report is often collected for a variety of functions and purposes already (ARL Stats, budget requests, organizational reports, etc.). By creating even a modest annual report, the library provides another mechanism to share its accomplishments and connect with both its user base and its governing body. It also helps demonstrate ROI (Return on Investment) for the library to its governing bodies (be they academic institutions, communities, corporations, etc.) The Kresge Business Administration Library at the University of Michigan is an independent library, receiving its funding from the Ross School of Business. As a departmental library that receives funding outside the main library system, there is a perception that we have to work harder to show and demonstrate our ROI to the Dean’s Office who make the financial allocations for the school. While a departmental library, we are a major operation with 21 staff members (including 8 librarians) and 108 service hours a week as we serve a population of around 3700 FTE faculty, staff, and students. Historically, Kresge Library reported to different positions at the Ross School of Business. Typically, we reported to rotating associate deans. From 2006 to 2007 and 2010 to present, we reported to the chief administrative officer of the school. The challenge for our library (and any department that reports to different people over the years) is that all administrators had different information they wanted and metrics that they considered important. One associate dean who oversaw the library was a “numbers” person and it led to Kresge staff counting just about everything we did. The presenter joined the library in 2005 and became the director in 2006. As a new director, I wanted to be able to showcase what we are doing and share that information with the school. This was driven in large part through conversations with leaders at the school who did not fully understand the scope of our operations and function at the school. Many people knew the library well—but only where their needs intersect with the library. For other work of the library, they had no idea of what we were accomplishing. In business terms, we needed to demonstrate that we provided excellent ROI or Return on Investment. And as Howes & Zimmerman recently wrote in a recent CRL News, the key values of a departmental library are: proximity, flexibility, quality of service, and learning & retention. The annual report for us is a means to showcase all of these attributes of our library. While there was no immediate history of an annual report at Kresge, we decided to move forward as a way to educate the school about what we accomplish on a regular basis at Kresge. We did not take this move without realizing that we already had all of the raw data to easily create an annual report for our community. We had been creating three documents that all told the story of Kresge and made the process of creating a public annual report much easier. First, we created an annual report for the ABLD (Academic Business Library Directors) that were shared with the top 50 business libraries in North America. While for a library audience, the report for ABLD focused on services, collections and staff issues. Second, we would create a cover letter for our annual budget request that recounted our accomplishments and the basis for our budget request. Third, we compiled collection and use statistics for Michigan’s ARL report (where our numbers are added to the rest of the University Library). In creating our annual report, we set a number of goals to make this a useful document. First, we wanted to present the information for the Ross audience by removing library jargon. Second, we wanted to present an overview of what we are doing at Kresge that is both good and no so good. Third, we wanted to focus on our collections and