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III. Promotion

III 1. Overview of promotional activities undertaken

III 1.1. By Elsevier Science

The launch of TULIP and the related promotional activities were the primary responsibility of the universities. To support the universities a toolkit was developed, consisting of:

posters;

banners;

TULIP lapel pins;

newsletters;

TULIP home page on the Elsevier WWW;

server with links to the journal entries in the Elsevier Internet Catalogue;

sample copies of TULIP journals.

All of these were offered to the universities during the course of the project, with the largest interest being in the posters, which were customized per university to give relevant information on the specifics of that university’s implementation. In addition, some initiatives were taken to develop promotional material together with individual universities, with varied success.

III 1.2. By the TULIP universities

In addition to the promotional material made available by Elsevier Science, the universities utilized a wide range of promotional items and activities, such as:

Web promotion: e.g. pointing to new services on home pages;

announcements on electronic bulletin boards;

E-mail messages;

letters sent out to faculty with printouts of one of their articles from TULIP database;

other targeted direct mail;

announcements on departmental (physical) bulletin boards;

attract attention in the library (e.g. balloons), if a new database like TULIP is installed;

articles in campus newspapers, faculty newsletters, etc.;

(display of) handouts with information and instructions;

organizing introduction meetings;

training sessions for groups as part of regular library services trainings or separate (“introduction of”);

one-on-one training of key potential users;

trainings for faculty who in turn will train classes.

Most universities felt that training should be minimal, either because the users were already accustomed to the interface (library systems interface or Web interface), or because they felt a system such as this should be fairly self-explanatory. Minimal attendance at training sessions and the results from the focus groups seem to corroborate this view.

For more detailed descriptions of the universities’ actions, please see the university reports (appendices I-IX).

III 2. Conclusions and recommendations

Although there clearly are a whole suite of conditions for a service such as TULIP to become a regularly used tool, such as technical, user expectations, contents, etc., promotion does have an important and continued role in the degree of success that can be achieved. Recognizing that meeting user needs is primary, promotion and training are crucial for a service such as TULIP to develop a base of regular users. Most of the TULIP universities do not actively promote the paper product since it is deeply ingrained in people’s research method and people know where and how to find journals. However, there is a definite difference between the need for promotion of paper and electronic products.

Some quotes from university reports:

“It is clear, though, that any new service that challenges a user’s pattern of work requires a steady diet of promotion and training. Because faculty members (perhaps our most significant, and certainly our most stable, user group) have typically found a pattern of journal use that satisfies them, changes to this pattern have to be sold to them before they will use a new service such as TULIP. Promotion clearly fulfills this role. Training is also essential, but in a different way. If an information product requires a steep learning curve, users who have either already found a simple method for getting similar information or have invested time in learning an alternative way of getting similar information, will hesitate to switch. The new system will be most readily accepted if it requires minimal training. So, it is essential to promote a new delivery mechanism as not only as good as the one it replaces (or, in the short term, supplements) but better. In terms of training, users will require, and often request a brief introduction. After this, though, the delivery mechanism will have to prove itself as not merely as easy to use as their previous methods, but easier.”

and:

“TULIP clearly demonstrated that student and faculty use of electronic journals for actual study and research requires a behavioral change. There is some evidence that this is beginning to happen, but it will not happen until such time as electronic texts are delivered in a way that fits the use that the individual has for the information. Promotion should be continued, but will only be useful if the product is one that meets users’ needs and the quality is such that they will continue to use the product. Training should be incorporated into the regular ongoing library instruction teaching that is already occurring.”

Although many people like electronic information services, these electronic services need more promotion. There are many new products and services; people do get confused. They must be shown that there are new means available that might answer their research questions. It is important for any new service to get a position in the “research toolkit” a scientist is using to stay up to date and to find information to solve his specific problem-oriented information needs. The key question is how to create awareness, get users to try the system and then generate repeat usage. To achieve this, (repeated) promotion is important, to keep the service “fresh in the mind” of the end user.

Even in cases where repeated promotional activities took place, several universities reported that a segment of the user population could apparently not be reached:

“Despite all of this promotion, however, one of the most frequent comments by users on the paper survey forms was that they were unaware of the availability of the online versions. This is perhaps indicative of the endemic communication difficulties within the academy.”

Furthermore, as was also the case with, for instance, the technical implementation, the amount of effort needed for the promotion and training has been systematically underestimated in many places:

“Promotion and training is a time consuming effort, but is a very important component in the attempt to modify users’ behavior in regard to journal use. However, the amount of promotion and training that can realistically be done needs to be balanced with the degree of stability and long term availability of the program being promoted.”

and:

“As with so many other aspects of the TULIP project, our promotion and training effort seemed to require of us much more work than the final results appeared to justify. Despite frequent references to TULIP, we were unable to shift much use from the paper to the electronic versions, and we did not bring in nearly as many users (especially faculty) to our training sessions as we had hoped.”

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