the customer is always … what?
Benjamin over at InfoBreaker has a good point. As we try to open our communities and have patrons “join the conversation” and bemore interactive with users, how do we learn to set new boundaries? He outlines a case of a patron not wanting to make a phone call to renew books when she was on vacation, thinking that should be something the library could do themselves, knowing she was on vacation. I think about other examples that have been getting a hearing lately.
If the library was totally democratic, would users still fine themselves? Implement noise policies? Shirt/shoes dress codes? We know they would be unlikely to, as a group, create their own ILS or their own classification system (no, folksonomy is not a classification system, yes it is very useful on its own). So my question is and has been, what is the role for the librarian, the supposed “information expert” in our 2.0 vision of ourselves? We facilitate access to information surely. However, there are many people, librarians and patrons, deeply in love with the idea of library as place. Then there are our board members and taxpayers who also like the idea of “money as thing,” that is the money that funds the library, pays the salary, keeps the lights on and leaves the pockets of taxpayers who are convinced that libraries are a Good Thing. Once your library is 100% in Second Life and not a side project of librarians who work in brick and mortar library buildings, who pays for their health care?
I know that in my job at MetaFilter, the money that pays me comes directly from user signups and advertising that others see on the site. Since we’re not claiming to be a public-sphere institution, I don’t have a problem with ads helping pay the bills of keeping the site running. I’m fairly secure in the site owner’s scruples, as well as my own. However once the library has ads for Amazon in its catalog, or preferences iPods as MP3 players over other available products, or stops buying VHS tapes in favor of DVDs, we’ve made a consumer choice, and we’ve made it for the public. I always get a little fidgety when people talk about brand consciousness and “markets” when they’re talking about the library, but I also realize that’s really the way the world of information is going. That’s getting a little off the topic of whether or not a patron on vacation should be able to have the library just say “oh you’re on vacation, we’ll just auto-renew your books until you come back.” but it is along the same spectrum.
How much do we bend to meet our users? How much do we expect them to bend to meet us?
October 21st, 2006 at 11:48
[...] This is “How much do we bend to meet our users? How much do we expect them to bend to meet us?” as Jessamyn asked recently in the customer is always… what? [...]
October 23rd, 2006 at 2:55
People will authorize automatic payments to the cellphones, credit cards and etc, and don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to auto-renew or get autopayment deductions for their fines (through paypal!).
One library I work for, just got rid of the 3 DVD limit. This makes life easier as the people who kept arguing or haranguing us for more DVDs or try fenagling with the system are plain and simply gone. Now instead, I get to see a family check out 19 DVDs and watch the late fees accrue.
I get to pull out 100s of those yellow locks day in and day out. My poor wrists! and naturally I don’t get benefits for working there.
People have expectations of service and are disappointed when we the library do not meet them. see a need, fill a need. However, at what price?
Now with respect to that,
“The customer is always, needy.”
It’s the price we pay for being so popular, so perhaps we’re doing something right afterall.
Much like Stephen Covey’s bias against quick-fix paradigm solutions, we have to consider the balance of long term results over the short term results.
Sadly enough, one conversation I had with a old-fashioned eccentric customer, who complained, “It’s too noisy in here and everything new is always checked out.” where I replied “We’re a lot more popular now.” to which he responded, “You should exclude or be pickier who gets a library card.”
At this point I shutup before I told him what was on my mind, “That is a short-sighted maligned version of a selfish despot if I ever heard one.”
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:12
I think you worry too much. Most library users are too set in context – if you don’t bring these ideas up then neither will they. Likewise, most still treat the internet as a combination game machine, letter box, and vertical file. Those other apps won’t even occur to them. -And don’t even whisper terms like auto-renew and auto-pay!
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:00
[...] Jessamyn West was kind enough to link to me in relation to my rant post a few days ago. The question comes down to, what is our job as librarians? Are we simply purveyors of books? A video rental outlet? A storage facility for journals and books the faculty can’t fit in their office? Sometimes, as I study our “professional ethics”, it seems that we are a neutered profession. Don’t make judgments, don’t give advice and whatever you do, the customer is always right. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “The right to swing my fist ends where the other mans nose begins,” referring to limitlessness of our rights, providing they do not infringe on other people’s rights. Should I have waived the fines for the woman who was in Florida and didn’t want to call? Well, there are two ways of looking at it. It would certainly make her satisfied (I hesitate to say happy because it was something she simply expected of us), but then that book is not circulating, the opportunity for that little piece of serendipity for another user is gone. Or what about the person who found it in the catalog, saw it wasn’t available, and went and found it somewhere else? Who’s got the “right” in this situation. It’s hard to say. I am currently preparing an essay on the library as public space, the idea that a good that people can share non exclusive of the fact that other people are sharing it has a solid grounding in philosophy and is why I’m inclined to favor our nebulous “other patron” in this situation. 2.0 or not, our policies need to be designed in such a way that we maximize the publicness of our public libraries. That as a resource, it remains for as many people as possible to use. Our collections, our services and our missions ought to be developed and judged by their betterment of the public good and the public’s access to resources, rather than the tech savvy, the teens or the people who are standing in front of you at the time, and often that means stopping one person’s swing to keep the other’s nose. [...]
October 24th, 2006 at 6:55
Kind of off topic but about stopping VHS and moving solely to DVDs: our suppliers have stopped selling VHS and cassette tapes (except for books on tape) and now only sell DVDs and CDs. Our VHS movies still circulate well although I do deal with the occasional patron who ONLY has a DVD player.
November 4th, 2006 at 10:54
[...] Bottom line – of course, it is all about the customer. Without patrons, there would be no need for libraries. However, how far can we realistically go to meet the needs of customers???? Jessamyn West asks “how do we learn to set new boundaries?” in a post over on librarian.net. This is an important question. She asks it in response to a post over on Info Breaker about a patron who thought her books should have been renewed by the library because she was in Florida on vacation (she says that she told someone at the library this bit of information). [...]