Old is Gold- a book on marketing of information products and services.

Recently while googling, I had, by chance got hooked onto some of the literature that is available on the Net on the topic ‘marketing of information’. Even though this subject was still in its nascent stage in developing countries, then in 1994, IIMA in collaboration with IDRC and came out with a kind of professional manual / guidelines, on ‘marketing  of information products and services’, which was subsequently published in a book form in 1999. For me luckily this had happened, when I was working at EDI India, Ahmedabad. I was very closely knowing late Mr. Ashok Jambhekar, (one of the editors of the book - in fact, he was one of the interview panelists at ATIRA, Ahmedabad, then I secured my first job as Librarian , way back in 1992). Soon the book got published, I had a chance to lay my hands on this fantastic work and refer it then . It was great and quite useful.

Coming to the present, while I am familiar with the contents of this book and I just thought of re-reading it, to refresh my mind again. (Luckily, this time around the book is available online - in e-book format, at the IDRC website and also available on Google Books ). It is interesting to note that, almost more than a decade after this book was published, most of the concepts and issues discussed in the book are still remain relevant  even in today’s web 2.0 world, where user-to-user (U2U) information sharing is an order of the day, supported by numerous ICT enabled hand-held mobile devices, which come as handy tools for information searching, retrieval and dissemination..

This book is surely worth browsing yet another time, even if you have already read it. In case, if you have never had a chance to read it, you may try it now.

Some of the key concepts and topics discussed in the book include:

Introduction to Marketing of Information products and services, General Marketing, Barriers to Marketing, Key Concepts in Marketing of Information, Marketing Management, Developing a Marketing Plan, Planning Information Products, Guidelines for Product planning, Designing and Developing Information Products and Services, Promotion of Information Products, Commercializing the Products and Services, etc.

What is more? The chapters in the book end with a comprehensive list of references, which are worth further exploring on the subject and related areas.

The Book:

MARKETING INFORMATION PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: A Primer for Librarians and Information Professionals.
Edited by Abhinandan K. Jain, Ashok Jambhekar, T.P.Rama Rao, and S. Sreenivas Rao
Tata McGraw-Hill/IDRC, 1999, 480p.
ISBN 978-0-07-463206-2

The e-book version can be downloaded from: http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/817-1/    

Happy reading!
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