









































PaPers  23

The Joys and Fantasies of  
Library Marketing
Navigating the Road of Hope, Success,  
and Vague Ambitions
Anthony J. Elia, Director and J.S. Bridwell Foundation Endowed Librarian, 
Associate Dean for Special Collections and Academic Publishing, Bridwell 
Library, Southern Methodist University

ABSTRACT Value is at the heart of human existence—the value of one’s 
job, of people, and of time spent. How this all translates into a successful 
model in libraries is a constant challenge; one which negotiates the existen-
tial questions of our institutions with how we portray ourselves and seek to 
connect with the public. This is where “library marketing” comes into play. 
While an old concept that dates back at least a century, marketing has come 
to serve a prominent role in modern libraries. Since the late 1990s, market-
ing publications have proliferated and theological libraries have sought to 
be part of that trend. The primary challenges, though, have come in the 
form of finding solid marketing objectives, overmarketing circumstances 
that may not interest patrons in meaningful ways, or identifying suitable 
financial support from parent institutions. This paper will explore the dy-
namics, struggles, and hopes of marketing specific to theological libraries.

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENTS OF MODERN MARKETING

“We really need to find ways to get people through the door; to mar-
ket our product, to get the word out, so that people know who we 
are and what we do.” This line is so common now that it could refer 
to anything from NGOs and non-profit work to libraries. Certainly, 
most of us have heard some variation on this sentence at one time 
or another in recent years. It is something that I have heard for a 
long time, and something that has both intrigued and troubled me. I 
am very much for promoting our institutions, our libraries, our ser-
vices and staff resources, for sure. But my concerns are about the 
underlying reasons, structures, and intentions of doing the promo-

PAPERS



24  aTLa 2022 PrOCeeDINGs

tion, marketing, and outreach—the why question. We most likely 
and regularly assume that it is done for the good of our workplaces, 
our institutions, and the spaces we occupy, simply “it’s what we do 
nowadays.” But there is a more entrenched and underlying set of 
assumptions that deserve our attention and interrogation, because 
much of it is tied to not just our behaviors and attachments to the 
social, cultural, and intellectual spaces we inhabit, but also in the 
nuance of our own existences as librarians, individuals, and human 
communities of commerce and social contracts. We market and pro-
mote, because we want someone with whom to engage and utilize our 
products, even if we are not necessarily selling a viable commodity 
that yields a sale or profit.

Herein lies part of the dilemma too: the very language I have 
used in this last sentence is an extension of the language we all use 
in marketing and promotion. We are effectively inducted into the 
ceremonious language of selling products, we are salespeople with 
goals and metrics and quotas—even if we do not hold ourselves to 
the same standards as a team that is required to show products, as-
sets, or profits. Within this wheelhouse of business language, which 
demonstrably has increased in usage since the early 1990s, when 
corporations consolidated industries like healthcare and consumer 
sales and even forms of education, we give it no second thought to 
speak in these terms, because it has now become natural and com-
monplace. Many debates in theological or church communities of-
ten echo statements like “churches aren’t businesses,” because that 
somehow conflicts with a theological perception of pureness that God 
somehow neither cares about nor has anything to do with money. 
Though, within our paradoxical American context, some might argue 
that religious institutions, including those in higher education, are 
in fact businesses, unabashedly (cf. Prosperity Gospel proponents). 
On the most practical level though, I would argue that God requires 
an accountant of the soul and the wallet.

Returning to the primary concern of marketing, one could write 
an extensive history of the matter, which might include everything 
from how Christianity spread through sociological and cultural 
means—arguably tied to how religious practices, social norms, and 
family ties were marketed to peer groups, hierarchies, and regional 
powers—to what we do in seminaries today to market online pro-
grams or library reference via e-chats. Of course, marketing must 
be accompanied by assessments of those who control commercial 



PaPers  25

and informational channels. This effectively means that those with 
(or in) power, coercively or not, have the upper hand at compelling 
society to think and act in a manner they wish.

For our sake, a cursory review of modern marketing back to the 
eighteenth century is sufficient and provides us with a consideration 
of what we now use in our own theological toolkits to draw patrons 
to our libraries. Josiah Wedgewood (1730-1795), the famed creator 
of the namesake china and dinnerware, is noted as one of the pio-
neers of modern advertising and marketing. His practices included 
such novel experiments as money-back guarantees, buy-one-get-
one-free offers, catalogs, and free deliveries. The enticements of ser-
vice, where clients and customers experienced an easing of access 
to material culture may be seen as the earliest examples of modern 
customer service to which we still adhere to today.

With the rise of the Industrial Revolution and industrial society 
itself, consumerism as both an idea and practice were on the rise. 
But consumerism was not a singular idea that was tied to objects—
it could also be applied to services and religion. The particularity of 
late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century religious awakenings 
cultivated a populist appeal that was both egalitarian and consum-
eristic. The public preachers were selling religion, just as the mis-
sionaries sent across the new American nation and out across the 
globe were effectively marketing particular brands of Christianity.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, one could easily find 
religious and moralistic stories becoming more common, and in turn 
those stories were used to sell both religion and commercial goods. 
Most notably, the story of Ben-Hur was based on biblical tales, but 
later it turned into a marketing phenomenon that sold everything 
from coffee and flour to chocolate and cigars. The original story was 
selling religion, while two decades later the revival of the story in 
theater and film began to sell commercial products.

It was around this same time in the 1890s, notably a time of ram-
pant wealth accumulation and disparities in the United States, when 
marketing began to take form in libraries as well. The most notable 
exponent of this was John Cotton Dana (1856-1929), who is often 
seen by scholars as being the great democratizer of the American li-
brary. His approaches include such tactics as opening stacks to public 
browsing, easing of library card access and associated restrictions, 
lengthening of library hours to accommodate working-class read-
ers, and the welcoming of children into library reading rooms as the 



26  aTLa 2022 PrOCeeDINGs

heirs of future society. All of these measures, and more, were part of 
a new approach to marketing the library for the twentieth century.

In terms of marketing as a social science, its path took on a more 
sophisticated turn after the Second World War, when scholars like Er-
nest Dichter (1907-1991) applied Freudian psychology to marketing, 
by discerning desire and consumer wants in books like The Strategy 
of Desire (1960) and The Handbook of Consumer Motivations (1964). 
Such approaches afforded new ways to look at the public through 
the lens of human motivation, which in turn could be applied to 
both commerce and intangible assets, like museums, libraries, and 
churches. Yet, it was not until the 1990s, with vast and previously in-
conceivable changes in technology, information, and instantaneous 
communications, when marketing began to take off as a field of study 
related to libraries. The number of books specifically on library mar-
keting went from nearly zero to scores in a matter of a few years. 
Such titles by Gayle Skaggs, Ned Potter, and Debra Lucas-Alfieri are 
but a few to mention. Today, we are overwhelmed with such titles 
and can find that library marketing has become commonplace at 
library conferences, in iSchool curricula, and among professional 
positions in academic and public libraries around North America.

Having outlined some historical considerations up to the present, 
we shall now turn to the complexities surrounding library market-
ing—the joys and fantasies as I have suggested, which may afford 
us an opportunity to dig deeply into why we market libraries (es-
pecially theological libraries) and what that means for our commu-
nities. Understanding meaning and value will be important to this 
consideration.

WHAT ARE THE JOYS?

For those who have chosen careers in theological libraries, they are 
generally something to be proud of, something to be joyful about. We 
work in them, manage them, explore them, share in them and their 
bounties because we have some innate desire to do so. If we did not, 
we would likely not be working in them. And because we have such 
feelings and commitments, by those very virtues we carry within 
us a certain sense of value, our axiology of place, career, and self. If 
we do not or cannot find value in our work, then we feel diminished 
and ultimately should not be doing that kind of work. Indeed, the 
best part of this career spectrum is what we have long called voca-



PaPers  27

tion in theological education—something we are called to do. Yet, I 
would venture to say that most of us live along that spectrum in our 
commitments to both our own libraries and the field of theological 
librarianship itself.

When we enter the spaces of our libraries, we consciously and 
subconsciously engage with our surroundings, our daily and long-
term needs, and all the details and extras of operations that are re-
quired of us. The joys of our work, admittedly, are entwined with the 
rigmarole of in-the-weeds politics of operations. Yet it is those very 
joys of the library that are what pull us up and remind us of our li-
braries’ special offerings, and why we are there and want to share 
in their greatness.

WHAT ARE THE FANTASIES?

Why choose fantasies as the counterpoint to joys? And what exactly 
does fantasy mean in our context? In English, the word is derived 
from the root meaning “make visible” or “to imagine.” But in its full-
est form, it is usually defined as “the faculty or activity of imagin-
ing things, especially things that are impossible or improbable.” My 
selection of this term to discuss marketing is in good part due to the 
question of why we market and what we hope to accomplish. Many of 
our hopes and aspirations around marketing, both realistically and 
theoretically, concern the cultural riches of our theological libraries. 
But on the other side of this are the unrealized desires for greater 
and more meaningful engagement of our institutions with patrons, 
alumni/ae, donors, and the public at large. Why is this a fantasy or 
even fantastic, in the sense of describing our discreet situations? 
Because it involves our most active imaginations that persuade us 
that each of our institutions is the most fabulous of places, and only 
if we try harder can we see the miraculous results of pushing mar-
keting schemes, plans, gimmicks, or policies. What is lost in this is 
that while marketing is good and is necessary, there is a disconnect 
between the steady realities of marketing and the wishful fantasies 
of the phantom megadonor, the capacity attendance at events, or 
overflow patron use of collections.

Since the 1990s, the corporate designs on outcomes mean that we 
are forced to think about our libraries in those very business-orient-
ed terms: What is our return on investment (ROI)? Are we quantify-
ing (vs. qualifying) our patron base? Is our mailing list large enough? 



28  aTLa 2022 PrOCeeDINGs

In many ways, this vision reflects the very foundational need of sur-
vival: we market because we seek a clientele, who will demonstrate 
our necessity. This last line has been very common in theological li-
braries and their parent institutions for the last 25 years: “prove you 
matter” is how I have heard it, or “are you still viable?”

Writer Kathy Dempsey has noted in her works that such points 
as economic factors, metrics, and best practices emerged as market 
forces demanding that libraries evolve in this way, giving rise to the 
trend in marketing libraries and a flurry of books on the subject. At 
the same time, the quantity vs. quality notion began to rise with a 
particularly noticeable trend leaning toward quantity of library use 
being emphasized in library marketing. A question that we have not 
demonstrably answered is whether or not this shift in corporate tac-
tics in theological libraries, namely marketing as a tool to target both 
intangible and tangible assets (including patrons as assets), is fully 
derived from trends in the business world, or a more diffuse set of 
sources tied to everything from politics and technology to environ-
ments and theological education itself. I would lean toward the latter.

Within this framework of quality, quantity, value, and desire 
for engagement, there are a few points to consider when working 
through what may be achievable realities and those that may sim-
ply be fantasies in this sense. For example, we all have great ideas 
and dreams for what we wish we could accomplish, but many times 
these are dampened due to real circumstances and politics. We often 
seek a broad constituency in both our stakeholders and our public, 
but the paradox is that the desire for more voices often limits the 
functional implementation of ideas due to resistance or contrasting 
views. Additionally, many of the hopes for our libraries are tied to dis-
tinct groups (donors, alumni/ae, and community members), whom 
we wish will either use our resources or donate to our libraries, but 
we can be certain that the politics of donor relations in theological 
institutions is almost never driven through the library, but through 
the parent institution.

Furthermore, while we seek more sophisticated ways to engage, 
market, and entice people into our libraries, our creativity must 
increase exponentially, because the fact is that it will become even 
harder to run libraries in the future within a world that fosters and 
supports competition in all aspects of life. For example, we cannot 
ignore the impact that search engines have had on library staffing 
(many reference positions have been demoted or reclassed to part-



PaPers  29

time or non-professional, even student positions). Beyond this, a 
major point is that in order to have marketing work, and for our li-
braries to succeed, we will need to know patrons better. There will 
always be unknowns about patron use, and as marketing agents of 
the library we will need to work with the data we have to polish and 
refine our tactics and goals. This will allow us to serve the public and 
our communities much better.

Our fantasies are usually the unfulfilled wishes and longshots that 
we do not want to give up on. And maybe that is what drives many of 
us—the “only ifs.” We live in the constant tension of joys and fanta-
sies, perhaps because the hopeful nature of our work demands that 
we look toward a better future, rather than a gloomy one. While we 
want to please everyone, the truth is we cannot. While we wish to 
make decisions based on finite information, we are more likely going 
to have to deal with incomplete data. While we all want to be recog-
nized for what we do, we are more likely going to suffer apathy and 
ignorance from those from whom we seek validation. We are often 
distracted, tired, and overwhelmed, and our hopes are snuffed out 
by circumstances and politics, many times far beyond our control.

While this may sound defeatist or fatalistic, it should not be. The 
marketing of theological libraries is distinctly important, more now 
than ever. We are living through very tenuous times, times which 
are full of uncertainty in our religious affiliations, as well as in our 
financial situations. Marketing may have a complicated relationship 
with itself as much as with the institutions it serves, but it possesses 
the power of narrative and participation that makes the value of 
its community all the more significant, effective, and uplifting. The 
joys may actually be much more part of the fantasies, in the end, es-
pecially if something truly fantastic becomes a reality. And living in 
that tension is what makes us the theological librarians we are, but 
perhaps more importantly, the dynamic human beings who comprise 
the profession and give it the hope it needs.


