Action Learning/Brainstorming Notes
Aliss Marketing Event, Coventry University, July 29th 2009.
How to make physical induction sessions more interactive?
Issues:
• Nobody/few attend
• Timing in the academic year (October)
• Content may be too much
Suggestions:
• Move timing to coincide with the first assignment
• Do the session in the department
• Interactive element – Cephalonian/Bingo/Public Response Systems
• Content – not too much, make it a meet and greet session
• Try to make attendance compulsory
• Identify the USP – Grades! The what’s in it for me syndrome.
• Negotiate with the teaching team on what to cover
• Identify the aim of induction
• Use the freshers’ fayre?
• What can you deliver online?
• Campaigns – drip feed induction (maybe something along the lines of
“This week in the library, learn how to reserve books”?)
• FAQs online
• Promotion/marketing – posters
• Explanation/blurb in the course handbook
• Go over and meet the students on the first day
• Get in the Students’ Union
• Link to the SU Societies pages
• Try sign-up library tours
Getting students to engage with online information literacy tutorials
Issues:
• 7 elements to tutorial
• Students not engaging with all
Suggestions:
• Suggest they complete one element per day for a week
• Hook a particular element to a specific week of their course
• This task for this assignment – e.g. referencing
• Link everything to one assignment with one lecturer
• Get year 2 students to work with the group
• Students’ union twitter or BUS facebook? – tie up with a group and
reciprocal linking from Moodle
• What’s in it for me? Ask the 2nd year students
• Helping you get better results
• Helping you find stuff for your essays
• Don’t use Google use US
• Use the library online

• Identify who hasn’t done it and email (personlised) with copy to the
lecturer
• Delicious account for permalinks to e-resources
Attendance at drop-in e-resource training sessions
Suggestions:
• Run session regularly at the same time, a few weeks in a row
• Run sessions out in the departments
• Join forces with training (cross discip) to offer training as part of an
event
• Make sure students understand the meaning of a ‘drop-in’ session –
International students may misunderstand?
• Bribe students!
• Need more publicity – put posters in pubs!
• Ask academic staff to promote sessions to students
• Add learning outcomes
• Get into timetables
Mystery shopper
Issues: Is it worth doing?
Benefits:
• Get a professional outsider’s view of your service
• See other library’s procedures and processes and learn from them
• Joint working with a partner institution – could be carried on into other
projects
• Good staff development opportunity for those participating
• Positive constructive feedback
• Improve customer perception of the library
• Identify training needs
Suggestions:
• Define a specific ‘research’ question in order to answer particular
issues
• Keep focussed
Marketing the Social Care Online database
Suggestions:
• Segment your market – traditional/online
• Adverts in key journals
• What’s new?
o Monthly email
o RSS feed
o Twitter
o Be topical – news tie-ins “behind the headlines”
• Public libraries – promote to library staff
• Private social care market
• Links with relevant charities

• Adding value to what is already done well
Encouraging student CILIP members to stay in membership once they
achieve their first professional post
Suggestions:
• 18 months for 12 promotion
• Target employers
• Publish a benefits breakdown
• Students doing some work
• Focus groups
• Small business cards – Moo cards
• Post-it notes branding
• Pick student to blog or twitter for you
• 5-6 years in career – see benefits for sound bites – student ‘ID’
• Chartership/ACLIP – send note of congratulation
• What competition?
• Maternity leave subscription holiday
• Media-PR person
• Responding on social media
How can Intute become a more Web 2.0 driven service and maintain
quality?
Suggestions:
• Wikis for resources
• Extend use of RSS feeds
• Champions for Intute in key libraries
• Partnerships with other organisations, e.g. Netskills, Government
bodies
• Video Tutorials – allow embedding in VLEs
• Allow for local customisation, e.g. Intute@Derby