It's difficult these days to find a piece of good news about libraries. No one seems to want to write about it being impossible to find a space in the quiet study area at Dalston's CLR James Library because it's so well used. Hardly ever are there any reviews of the thousands of pounds worth of online resources available to every library card holder – for free and accessible from the comfort of their own homes.

We get the money shots of Birmingham's sparkly new library, but what about the fact that across the country there's a whole network of warm, comfortable, safe places where you can sit and chat and read the papers, look for jobs, improve your mental health, read, play and learn without any money ever changing hands? Well, that's not so newsworthy.

The way we market and promote our national library service is one of the areas that drastically needs to change if we are to give libraries any sort of long-term future. But it's not the only area that needs improvement. William Sieghart's review into e-lending in public libraries flagged up the need to find a clear way forward with ebooks, so I guess we're all waiting to see how the OverDrive ebooks pilot pans out. We really do need to find a way forward. Our lack of agility with regards to technology is a real handicap and I'm looking forward to reading the findings of the latest libraries review.

If the library sector was allowed to spend half of what is splashed out on reviews, reports and consultants on promoting its services, we might not be in our present situation. I'm not naive enough to think that throwing money at a sexy ad campaign is the only solution, but libraries can't continue to exist in this black hole. We should be investing in joined-up, national promotion; we should be telling people what we've got.

It would be crazy to suggest that libraries commit the kind of money to marketing that companies such as Sky do (30-40%). Having said that, Tesco don't ask their store managers to script its television ads. The man who installs your Sky TV doesn't tweet on the company's behalf from his van while eating his lunch.

But in the library sector, we're increasingly relying on staff to undertake the marketing of services. On the whole, they're rising to the challenge – wouldn't you, if the alternative was to watch your workplace and your career and your whole profession sink without putting up a fight? The situation is far from ideal.

I pick up titbits of gossip that suggest the promotional activities of libraries are being sabotaged from the inside: council communications teams refusing to promote library events; library services not permitted to engage users through social media. One recent watercooler moment revealed that a certain library service is being told it can't use the council website to promote its online resources. So audience figures fall and, lo and behold, there's another justification to swing the axe.

Cityread London is a project that sets out to redress the balance. Launched in 2012, every April we ask the whole capital to pick up the same book and read together. We work in partnership with all 33 London library services and a whole heap of other fantastic partners across culture, heritage, academia and retail.

It's a campaign to put libraries in the spotlight, to celebrate them and sing about them. By working together, we're able to jointly approach funders and forge new partnerships with organisations such as Quick Reads, which will enable us to work more closely with emergent readers. We give London's libraries a shared and louder voice.

Of course its going to take more than a shiny ad campaign and some fancy-pants programming to future-proof libraries. But we sure as hell can't go forward without considering how we promote public library services in a cohesive, consistent and joined-up way.

Andy Ryan is director of Stellar Libraries – follow her on Twitter @stellarlibrary

Cityread London runs throughout April across the whole capital

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