[Publib] Brief and possibly muddled meditation on

[Dale McNeill]

Different things will work in different libraries.

We use a lot of self-service where I work, in New York City.  We do that to
keep up with the volume of use in the libraries.  We haven't reduced
staffing and when I speak with people about self-service (including
organizing a presentation at PLA with directors of the Queens Library and
the Westbank Library--a very small library near Austin, Texas), I emphasize
that self-service generally doesn't lead to reduced numbers of staff.

In many urban areas, especially, many (if not most) library users work in
service industry jobs.  Many of them are very tired of talking with people
and are happier to do their own check-out and pay their own fines.  However,
if this system were implemented in a couple of the smaller libraries I've
worked in, I don't think people would accept it at all.

Much, I think, depends on the experiences people have in retail settings.
If the library's service seems nicer and easier than the average retail
experience, whether "full-service" or "self-service", then I think people
will be happy with the library.  People do have, a rightly so, higher
standards for library service than for other services provided by the same
local governments.  At least that's been the finding of survey research
that's been done in libraries I've worked in previously.

Regards,

Dale


On 4/4/08, Tom Cooper <tcooper at wgpl.org> wrote:
>
> Thanks Kathleen for helping me understand my long-standing aversion to
> the self-service trends that proliferate at grocery stores and gas
> stations but which I find totally out of place at the library. We are
> not trying to move customers (and their cash) through in the most
> expeditious manner: we are working with people, our patrons, to make
> their library visits warm, friendly and beneficial. A self-check kiosk
> will, to my knowledge, never have read the same book or listened to the
> same CD the patron is checking out, and will never recommend something
> else that patron may want to read. It will never get to know the patron
> on a first-name basis or ask about his garden, or her grandchildren, or
> whether her mother is home from the hospital yet. I was at a meeting
> recently where some librarians were talking about a new automated
> service, and they were very happy that the transition to the automated
> format had brought almost no patron complaints. But we have to bear in
> mind that just because they're not complaining doesn't mean they're
> happy. They may just accept that it's the best they're going to get
> because it's what they get everywhere else. I want to keep trying to do
> better.
>
> Tom Cooper, Director
> Webster Groves Public Library
> 301 E. Lockwood
> Webster Groves, MO 63119
>
> (314) 961-3784
> tcooper at wgpl.org
>
> The universe is transformation, and life is an opinion
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20080404/2631df0e/attachment.htm