3. The Consultation
In today’s world longer invisibility leads
to permanent disappearance
Kazi, N (2012) The Identity Crisis of Libraries in the Attention Economy. Library Philosophy and Practice, Paper 684.
4. Creating a positive image and
feeling comfortable with it are
required precursors of an
advocacy campaign.
DiMattia S (2011) Advocacy and image: partners in creating a value propositions, Information Outlook, 15(2), 14-16
5. Value propositions
A value proposition is a promise
of value to be delivered.
It is a statement that explains:
•how we can solve stakeholder problems
or improve their situation, and
•why they need us and not the competition.
http://conversionxl.com/value-proposition-examples-how-to-create/
6. Value proposition process
Requires reflection on:
1.our stakeholders – what they need and value
2.ourselves – what skills, knowledge and
competencies we have that can fulfil these needs
3.our competitors – how they meet our
stakeholders’ needs, and what we provide that they
do not
8. • fast access to facts
• universal sources
• ease of use and
access
• understands
customer needs
• evolving
innovative
interactions
• one port of call
• quality, scholarly
evidence to inform
practice
• full text access
• dedicated, personal
support & guidance
• subject expertise
• instruction for effective
/ efficient discovery
Customer value
My offering Competitor offering
• financial planning
• 24 hour query service
• advertiser links
9. We promote informed practice by making the discovery of evidence efficient and effective
We will help you find relevant and reliable evidence to inform your practice
• fast access to facts
• universal sources
• ease of use and
access
• understands
customer needs
• evolving
innovative
interactions
• one port of call
• quality, scholarly
evidence to inform
practice
• full text access
• dedicated, personal
support & guidance
• subject expertise
• instruction for effective
/ efficient discovery
Customer value
My offering Competitor offering
• financial planning
• 24 hour query service
• advertiser links
11. Shelli Figure 5.3 Evidence base
Goal
There is a body of evidence, with performance indicators, available
at the level of individual libraries and nationally, used for service
promotion and advocacy.
Current situation
There is no clear evidence base to demonstrate the value
of the profession and the services it provides.
13. HELP forum
Provide a discussion forum on library research
– focusing on evaluating value and impact
Purpose:
•To support each other through the research process
•Learn from each other
•Share successes and experiences
•Create consistency in methods
•Share research instruments
e.g. questionnaires / topic guides / useful references
We are enthusiastic amateurs rather than experts!
15. And finally….
See your worth through active reflection
Hear your stakeholders – what do they value?
Outshine the competition – what do you do better?
Work-out what you want to say
Organise your thoughts
Find your voice
Fulfil your professional potential
16. If we continue to value
ourselves personally and
professionally, then all else
becomes possible
Joanne Gard Marshall (2000) Determining our worth, communicating our value,
Library Journal; 125(19), 28-30
Editor's Notes
So, the consultation – why?
We believe that a successful advocacy campaign requires that information professionals have confidence in themselves and their abilities.
That is, before we can promote ourselves or ask others to promote us, we all need a clear message that expresses our worth.
To do this we can learn from those working in business and marketing, where they use value propositions.
Essentially, it is a statement that explains:
how we can solve our stakeholders’ problems or improve their situation, and why they need us and not the competition
It may be described as like an ‘elevator speech’ but has a much more structured approach.
The process requires reflection, so that we may form a deeper understanding of 3 aspects…
1. Firstly, our stakeholders: So the statement is driven not by all we provide, but how we are of value to our stakeholders.
Different stakeholders will value different aspects of our work, for example, your funding organisation may value how you contribute to the organisation’s mission, while your customers value how you contribute to their specific needs.
2. Secondly, ourselves: It’s not just about the resources we provide but about our personal and professional added value. Are you ready and able to articulate what you are good at? Why we are essential to information discovery.
2. Thirdly, our competitors: these are anyone the customer perceives can meet their needs.
What is your strength and advantage compared to them?
As an example, we may not be able to complete with Google on speed, convenience, or providing simple reference queries, so we need to focus on what we do better.
These 3 aspects can be seen in this diagram – The key point is the intersection of customer needs and value – your professional contribution – and how you are unique from your competitors. This is where you focus your message.
To illustrate what I mean, here is an example with just a few items included.
So if we take 2 items that we know customers value – the provision of quality scholarly evidence to inform their practice and our instruction on finding this evidence.
We might come up with a phrase such as I promote informed practice by making the discovery of evidence efficient and effective
Or a variation of that. ‘We foster or inspire’ evidence-based practice – what ever suits your context.
The key is to include your contribution – the library has value, but most of the value comes from the library staff – who find and organise the collection, create interfaces, choose specific resources and instruct on their use and so on. That is the story to tell.
Here is a nice illustration of the importance of value propositions.
Once you have gone through the process you are then ready to declare your value to the world.
But first, one final message from Mairea.
One obvious way to answer some of the questions needed for a strong value proposition is to do some research. This Figure was taken from the SHELLI report which we’ve all read we as librarians know that there are things that we need to do….. RESEARCH
In the NDC as you probably know we conducted a value and impact study which directly asked our customers what they value about our library.
Reflecting on this process, we realised how lucky we were to be able to work as a team during this process. We have different academic backgrounds that compliment each other very well.
So, we thought that perhaps we could start a peer group that could recreate this for other health librarians.
There was much discussion on how we would do this and finally we came up with the idea of creating a Blog.
By using a blog as our main form of communication we are opening up the group, people can blog in or out of work, time and distance isn’t an issue.
So we created a closed Blog on Wordpress and we came up with the name HELP forum.
We know some of you will be doing the Folio Maxim course so you might have something to share with the group
If anyone is interested in joining, email the NDC and we will send you an invitation to join the blog, we have cards here with the email address.
We hope to have 1 face to face meeting in May
