This article examines the relationships between library and information services, database providers, electronic journal publishers and aggregators, online search services and other intermediaries, from a branding perspective. It seeks to raise and explore the issue of the brand perceptions that users build as they undertake a search for citations and documents, and to report on the approaches that database providers, journal publishers and aggregators, and other intermediaries adopt in order to influence those perceptions. Using one academic library web site as a point of departure, the article investigates the nature and extent of brand webs presented to users through library and information service web sites, and analyses the brand messages to which they are exposed. Conclusions suggest that explicit statements of brand meaning are the exception rather than the rule. Libraries, database providers, publishers and other intermediaries need to work in partnership towards clearer articulation of individual corporate and industry-wide brand positioning.
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