Rebranding the Library: Generating Visibility in the Virtual Age

Academic libraries (and libraries in general) need to relate and reflect the value they provide back to their users and their overarching institutions. When libraries provision access to digital information resources, there is very little visibility to the user of the library’s role in providing access to that resource, especially if the user initially discovers the resource via Google Scholar, Bing Academic, or other discovery tools that are not provided by the library itself. We propose a new approach to help libraries increase their visibility when they broker access to resources—a library branding service. This service brands information resources that are provided by a library, including licensed resources. In this paper, we describe the branding concept, as well as an initial pilot of the concept.