Potentials of Circulation Data Analysis for Library Marketing: A Case Study in a University Library

Marketing is an essential tool for customer relation management of companies. Contrastingly. non-profit organizations like libraries have not been considered it very useful. However, due to the progress of the information society, our society becomes too complex to capture the patrons's needs for them in the way they have been using so far. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance and usefulness of marketing by presenting some analysis methods of circulation data of a university library and showing what can get about the patrons' behavior. The analysis methods presented in this paper are not only some statistical ones but also non-statistical ones, such as the one for analyzing patron's borrow-return behavior pattern: in other words patron profile. Even though library marketing is in its very early stage. it has a big potential for aiding library management. We have to accumulate the case studies and establish useful marketing methodologies.