History of library marketing began in late 19th century when libraries (particularly public libraries) started to think about users in the form of extended opening hours to extend library facilities to users beyond normal working hours. Its root deepen when librarians in the USA started to establish ‘personal relations with users’ Public librarians started to advertise in 1896, felt concerned for managing their libraries in 1896, outreach in 1903 and extension work in 1908.
It is believed that the concept of ‘special libraries’ are the outcome of segmentation, in regard to collection, users, and services when public libraries started thinking on those lines in the beginning of the 20th century. Development of special collection to deal with diverse user need led to the emergence of special libraries. Such thinking in terms of users’ interest, their profession, their qualifications, age, significantly contributed in formation of starting such libraries and continuously grew during last one hundred years. So that these libraries can target their customers well and meet out their information needs. Thanks to 20th century librarians for their foresightedness about creation of associations like, SLA, IFLA which are empowering librarians to deal with the present day information needs of the users.
The first president of SLA, John Cotton Dana who was later President of ALA, was a pioneer of innovative ideas related to library outreach services and public relations, ‘he advocated a management style that fostered experimentation and a constant testing of assumptions to see if they held up. But he also was a pioneer in what we now call public relations, marketing, and other promotional activities. He was an early practitioner of needs assessment, target audiences, goal setting, planning, and evaluation that could be quantified. He saw performance in numbers, in customer satisfaction. If readers liked a service he made sure others knew about it. If he added a new service-like creating separate children's libraries or business libraries-he made sure everyone had an opportunity to learn of it. He used newsletters, pamphlets, posters, flyers, exhibits, newspaper announcements and speeches to groups, and special events to publicize library events and encourage library use. He urged librarians to better understand their institutions from the patron's perspective-to put themselves in the worlds of actual and potential users’.
