The Reference Desk, Points-of-Sale, and the Building of Loyalty: Applications of Customer Relationship Management Techniques to Library Marketing

This article argues that the reference desk is a primary interaction point for direct marketing of the library and remains, despite all the other marketing methods (e.g., posters, speaker's events, email announcements, brochures, RSS feeds), an extremely potent agent to act as a physical point of sale for the library, so necessary in producing a loyal community of returning scholars. This method of marketing the library by the reference desk librarian has much to do with face-to-face interactions. Summaries adopted from Customer Relationship Management literature are discussed as marketing guidelines for the reference desk librarian.