Perhaps more than ever before, library staff – regardless of sector – seek to engage with those who will shape the library's destiny. Users should be engaged when they visit libraries. Library staff need to understand why some people do not use libraries and draw them closer. Stakeholders such as admin istrators of funding bodies need to be engaged to ensure alignment of library values, vision and mission with the wider organisational goals.

This book, based on modern engagement and marketing planning principles, has been written as a practical guide to support staff in libraries of all kinds in their efforts to encourage users, non-users and other stakeholders to engage with library services.

Successful engagement arises from a well-managed combination of outreach, advocacy, campaign marketing, user experience, customer service and external relations. Strategic marketing planning offers a process to manage and deliver the major benefits of each of these in search of authentic and sustained engagement with library communities, whether geographical or communities of need or interest.

Although some of the terminology characteristic of these disciplines has been retained, the overriding concern has been to use easy to understand language and avoid jargon wherever possible. Similarly, where there are models that simplify some of the concepts discussed in the book, they have been adapted to have specific relevance for libraries.

Examples given in this book are drawn mainly from public, academic, health services and corporate libraries to explain and inspire.