Global markets

I'm lucky enough to have a job where marketing matters: all the projects I've worked on have been externally funded. Not only do we have to market projects to potential funding bodies, but increasingly these funding bodies demand "supporting statements" from relevant academics, explaining the value of a proposed project. For example, the Tower project produces catalogue records for "non-academic" books published in the nineteenth century. The project is funded partly by the Mellon Foundation, but as part of the grant application process we have to ask academics to write letters of endorsement for the project. Since the Mellon Foundation only funds projects of international academic importance, it's more effective if the academics are not all from Cambridge.

So marketing matters - how well are we doing it? The 'Cambridge University' brand is a strong one and we rely on it heavily. The UL senior staff have many international contacts that we can call on. I have to admit that personally I could do a lot more, especially on the networking front. If you haven't built up contacts over the years, it's more difficult to approach academic staff and ask them to write an endorsement for a future project (though Cambridge staff seem pretty tolerant of this). As I work a few hours a week in the UL Rare Books reading room I must confess to "highjacking" readers who request several books from the tower and telling them about the project. Conferences held in Cambridge are also a useful way of meeting relevant experts, even if this sometimes feels a bit like stalking. On the web, we've had a web page for the Tower Project for a few years, it's a way to showcase some of the best images from books in the tower, but having worked even this far through Cam23 I can see we need something interactive. Which will be:

The Tower Project blog. Work has already started on this (not public yet, so don't rush off to search for it) and during next week we'll be trying out various looks for the blog, identifying stuff to write about, and setting up defences against spam comments (had no idea these existed till this week). The great thing about a blog is that people can comment and have some sort of online conversation about what the project is doing. The Tower Project featured in Mary Beard's blog back in 2006, and that post is a great example of how to connect funding bodies, academics and libraries, and attract comments.

And here's a preview of one of the things we'll be blogging about:


1896.10.81
The cot / M. Waterson.
London : Dean & Son Ltd. ; New York ; Philadelphia ; Chicago : Wolf & Co., [1895?]
Gold-decorated paper and cloth structure forming a three-dimensional cradle, with a book of illustrated verses forming the child's bedding. The whole structure also folds flat.
Fetched to the Rare Books reading room. And that's not grass in the picture background, only our strange office carpet!