Mark Kirkby

Mark's thoughtful and creative work on the Creating powerful promotions course was driven by a passion for helping readers discover something great to read and a broad knowledge of the library collection. His contribution to the course was outstanding.

Throughout his work, Mark showed himself to be an eloquent, engaging and inspirational member of the library team. His curiosity about - and respect for - his reading community is reflected in his ideas for opening up readers' choices and challenging their assumptions about what the library has to offer.

01 Promotions that target different readers

Mark has developed creative and practical ideas for promoting books and targeting different groups of readers to tempt them to try something new to them. The starting point isn't the books - it's the readers, and the question of what would draw a particular group towards a particular part of the collection they hadn't considered.

02 Small displays doing heavy lifting

Mark's careful and detailed analysis of effective ways of selecting and designing a tempting display is a valuable skill - particularly when reduced browsing means small displays have to do the heavy lifting. When readers can't spend time wandering the shelves, the display itself becomes the recommendation, and Mark's work focused on making sure browsers can spot something quickly and easily.

03 Opening up choices, challenging assumptions

Across his contribution, Mark's ideas come back to the same place: opening up readers' choices and challenging their assumptions about what the library has to offer. The respect for his reading community is what drives the work - not telling readers what to read, but giving them the materials to make a different choice than they would have made on their own.