Pam!

My mum turned to me and said 'I'm taking Pam to Vietnam.'

Me: Wha... who the hell is Pam??

Mum: Pam, you know, Paamm.

Me: What the? Why would you take a stranger with you?

Mum: No, you know, Paam!

As she's packing her luggage she pulls out a can and shakes it at me.

Me: Oooh, SPAAMM...

This is what it's like when I come across something I have no idea about, then clarity strikes and I don't feel so dumb. The blog is my journal of learning, or as the subtitle suggests, it's a documentation of me meeting challenges of Web 2.0. and other weird stuff that I have no idea about. It's gonna be awesome.

Anyway I looked at the Annoyed Librarian blog, it's pretty funny, there's an entry titled "Is Marketing Really So Easy Even Librarians Can Do It?", where the question of librarians taking the role of marketing and business in libraries is poo-pooed. She is saying it is a bad idea for a library to be run like a business instead of a library.

It's a pretty purist way of looking at libraries. Libraries should be run like a library but need a department that does the business side of things run by people who know what the hell they're doing.

From a personal point of view, our publications at work used to be done individually. BAD. Most of them were epic FAILS that made me want to gouge my eyes out. I persuade them to give them to me to be laid out in InDesign. GOOD. Then they would edit the file themselves. BAD. I have a humble BA in Design and makes me cry when they use Comic Sans or some other hideous typeface.

A library is an organisation like any other, if there is no corporate identity how do people associate with it? If marketing is needed then it should be done by professionals. People spend years perfecting their skills in business and marketing to get it right, that's how Google got so big. You can even look at countries as a brand. China has a reputation of being of poor quality but cheap. Germany is efficient and good quality. The same can be said of libraries, so the marketing should reflect the amazing things about a library. What is the point of great things happening in libraries if it is poorly communicated and no one knows about them?

Do the National Gallery of Victoria do their own graphic designs? Most of the time, no, it goes out to a proper design studio. On occasion they might get an in-house designer to do it but it is an in-house graphic DESIGNER, not curator or artist or exhibition designer. If it's to be done properly, leave it to the professionals. You never see clip art on the flags up around the CBD of Melbourne for any NGV advertising. EVER.

There. I had my little vent. I feel better.