Analyzing and Building an Advertising Image of the Library through User Interviews

Abstract

Over the past decades, advertising for the library has become a mandatory part of the activity, but the approach to its creation is largely based on accepted stereotypes that express the most common ideas about the properties of such a complex phenomenon as the target audience of the library. Advertising can be expressed through an advertising image that contains not only objective but also subjective information; it uses associations, metaphors, emotions, visualization of something that has a generalizing character, i. e. a layer of implicit information is added to the exact data and read automatically. One of the problems of creating an advertising image may be that there are contradictions between the perception of the person who creates an advertising based on a stereotype and its recipient. The article reflects the experience of the State Public Scientific Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS) in the study of two groups — “Event visitors” and “Readers”. The study involved 326 people (254 visitors to mass events and 72 readers of the SPSTL SB RAS). The author tested the method of semi-formalized interview to get relevant information for better understanding the audience’s motivation and desires. It is assumed to use pre-made plan with a list of mandatory questions, while using general wording and their variations, “close to the text”, and observing the general logic in their sequence.The author analyses the data on distribution of users in both groups (“Event visitors” and “Readers”) by the age categories and employment areas; frequency of library visits; frequency of references to forms of work that are called in demand and found interesting in both groups; frequency of references to preferred information channels. The article presents the main positions for creating an advertising image of the library. The author shows the expediency of using the semi-formalized interview method to adjust the advertising image of the library and the campaign to promote events, resources and services based on it, both for individual groups and for several segments in parallel, if the library’s event or service does not have a specific addressee. The article reveals the method of work that can be applied in the analysis of the advertising image for other libraries.