To deliver a user experiencethat really has meaning, librarians must provide deeply personal and private value, as well as demonstrate larger social need. There is much labor to be done at both ends of this continuum. But first, we ought to lay out all the dimensions of “reference user experience.”
Let’s describe the first dimension as the quality of the library’s customer service. How is the user treated? The issue here is courtesy.
The second dimension is the competence of staff and the depth of library resources. How effectively are the user’s reference needs met? This is all about content.
There is a third dimension. In a time when we are grappling more deeply with the nature of securing support for libraries, we need to think more carefully about the continuum of librarian visibility.
Valuing visibility
I recently worked up a chart that sketches a range of user experience based on this third factor (see illustration this page). On the side of subtle librarian presence I suggest that we are the servants who wait. We design systems to assist our users in ways that don’t require a lot of intervention. We step in only when our systems fail.
We have a ways to go to realize this vision. A reference user experience that depends on thoughtful design requires a much more integrated and direct approach than what we offer today.
A virtual example: the first use of a library website might trigger a few questions to build a user profile. It might ask: What are your interests, hobbies, current classes, professional needs? What kind of alerts or reports would you like to receive in your mailbox? How would you like to set up some virtual workspace to keep track of previous searches and discoveries? This profile would drive, behind the scenes, an assortment of databases and displays that were tailored to the user.
Most libraries, now, either don’t aggregate or poorly aggregate various information resources. That design decision, that user paradigm, forces the user either to conduct the same search multiple times in different locations (and using different interfaces), or seek professional assistance. A more elegant design would handle those searches, and their delivery to the user, in the background. A truly professional approach doesn’t make the user work so hard.
On the side of invisibility, the user experience is one of privacy, almost anonymity. There’s nothing wrong with that. When the librarian is invisible and the design works, expect this: nobody worries about what goes right. A silently successful library lives in the background. In one respect, that unquestioned support could represent a triumph. The money flows to our cause, and no further statement is needed.
Suppose library resources falter? At that point our silence, our invisibility, is also our failure.
At the other end of the continuum is a transparent library that highlights both the presence and the value of the librarian.
Promoting expertise
This profession is all about connection. One level of that connection is the shift from servant to leader. Visible librarians link a bustling central hub to the community. They are readily available (friendly, polite, responsive) and highly expert. The in-depth reference interview is paired with technical savvy. This librarian is as comfortable in front of a classroom as at the computer keyboard.
Whereas the invisible librarian offers the user an experience that is highly private, the visible librarian is engaged, actively managing the relationship between institution and user to assure the highest quality results.
The visible librarian has a prominent seat at the community decision-making table, actively clarifies choices, provides reputable and relevant information, and through every action trumpets the unique contribution of the professional.
What is the user experience here? Users are involved in a profound and continuing conversation. They understand inherently that quality service has a price.
It is not possible to deliver an excellent reference user experience without a librarian somewhere, whether in the projection room or on the screen. But we need to be far more strategic about both the application and the presentation of the librarian—the user needs us across the continuum.
Author Information
James LaRue (jlarue@jlarue.com) is Director of the Douglas County Libraries, CO, and a frequent speaker and writer on library issues. See jlarue.com for more information
Reader Comments (13)
You lost me at "customer." Libraries have patrons. We are not a business and should not be one.
Posted by Heelbiter on November 24, 2010 07:33:31AM
Heelbiter, it is unfortunate that you feel that way. It is all about the customer and we are running a business. Libraries that don't adjust to this new reality will cease to exist.
Posted by Director, Service Excellence on November 24, 2010 09:52:37AM
I absolutely agree. If librarians don't learn to follow a business model
that addresses customer service and marketing they will be left
swallowing the dust of more socially sophisticated for-profit resources
that do not necessarily focus on providing authoritative, reliable
information. Librarians can no longer remain passive gate keepers;
they must be dynamic, enthusiastic information leaders.
Posted by concerned on November 24, 2010 08:35:21AM
I'm sorry that heelbiter would dismiss a whole set of ideas based on the
presence of one word, his/her issue with which isn't even relevant to the ideas
being presented.
I wonder if this polarity between these two things is really the right way to
think about it. I don't think we are either visible or invisible: We should strive
to make our private/impersonal systems work very well for users, while still
presenting ourselves as the live, engaged, and helpful people behind them.
We should be visibly active in our communities, while still allowing users that
private and personal interaction with library resources and services.
Thanks for bringing up the invisibility of librarians: I think we don't really talk
about it very much, and you're right, it's going to matter in how we get
funding.
Posted by laura k on November 24, 2010 08:46:24AM
This whole discussion between "patron" and "customer" drives me crazy and seems to miss the point. I don't believe that libraries are businesses and that a business model is or should be blindly emulated. As recent events have demonstrated, banks and most other business enterprises are not our friends. The goods and services provided are designed to provide their owners wealth regardless of the cost to society as a whole. The library, on the other hand, operates as a "best friend" -- carrying out it's core missions for the benefit of society and its individual users not the organization itself.
I do believe courteous, capable, and creative approaches to serving the public are critical (not to mention alliterative). I've always been fond of the British term "the readers" but that, of course, is too limiting in today's multimedia universe of information, knowledge, and recreation. I personally find nothing wrong with the term patrons but perhaps a broader term such as "the public" would work for those who find it too old-fashioned.
I believe that words matter and customers has never seemed to me to be the right one to describe the many people who avail themselves of the services offered by the library. We don't actually receive their custom....but we do receive their patronage.
I'm sure someone will discover or coin the perfect term but as for me....I'll just go on serving the public as best I can.
Respectfully....
Posted by Ancient Librarian on November 24, 2010 12:15:31PM
I can't help but think that libraries serve both customers and patrons, and that it is correct to make a distinction between the two. Customers are the folks that come in the door, or use our virtual service. They are direct consumers and pay for that service via taxes, presumably. As such, I think it is appropriate to call them "customers" as they buy a service much like we see in the business world. However, we also serve patrons...taxpayers who pay for our service but who may not, at current counting, be using our service. They are potential customers and as they pay for our service by default (taxes are not optional) their informational needs must be part of our service offerings.
Posted by Matthew on November 24, 2010 01:40:42PM
Heelbiter is aptly named. The author used the word "user" twice before the first and only appearance of the word "customer." Words matter, but in this article, what we call a library user doesn't matter. The article is much more interesting for its discussion of a librarian's mission and how the work of fulfilling that mission might better be carried out, and of relationship vs. anonymity and community vs. privacy.
Posted by Jeff on November 24, 2010 01:45:06PM
In Mr La Rue's defense, while he does refer to customer service, he largely uses the term user to refer to the library patron/client/customer/<insert preferred descriptor here>
Posted by Jason on November 24, 2010 03:01:07PM
I'm taken by heelbiter's comment, and it's worth noting,
although it stops short of the interesting thing. Today we
are inundated by our role as consumers, and I believe that
libraries, being places where social good comes before
profit (I hope), calling patrons "customers" sends the wrong
message.
As far as library marketing is concerned, I don't think we
ought to use "business" models. We're not businesses, we're
something else. If we market ourselves in the language of
businesses, we will lose, because we're would try to be
something we're not. We need to market libraries as
libraries, and I think JRL has a good vision that works for
his community. Privacy is a hallmark of our profession and
it's important to honor that. Patrons think we're some kind
of information collecting machine, and that they have no
privacy with us. That's terrible, and CRM would hurt us
unless it's strictly opt-in. Being live and engaged,
however, I stand behind!
http://birdswithteeth.wordpress.com/
Posted by Joe Grobelny on November 27, 2010 12:07:43PM
I agree that the library should be treated as a business from the inside to the outside. The best customer (patron) is the returning customer (patron) and you have to provide the best product and service or you lose your patrons. The financial aspect of the library has to be treated as a business, so the consumer side has to be promoted as a business as well. Folks are looking for a good value with friendly, knowledgeable customer service. Libraries should be able to deliver in order to remain competitive in the marketplace. The secret is for the library staff to promote the library, and its services, without the patrons recognizing that there is a business running in the background.
Posted by Linda Tt on November 27, 2010 02:21:10PM
Joe Grobelny, your well-constructed post is cause for thought and celebration.
Here are some thoughts-in-general:
Heelbiter's comment represents a dated point in a different continuum, a point characterized by unquestioned social good. The customer service paradigm, while somewhat further along in that continuum, is too a dated point, hearkening last century's economic rationalities.
Despite using the word "customer", LaRue is talking about a third point on the continuum--beyond a place of unquestioned social good, and beyond a place of passive consumption--to the present reality of active participation and social creativity. Past points along the continuum are still relevant, i.e., libraries continue to serve a public good just as libraries continue to exist as organizations that still need to be staffed by human beings and paid for with money (however much we wish the contrary).
But the world has moved on. Media has changed. Communities have changed. People have changed. As our customers/patrons/users embrace a radically new (or radically old depending on your point of view) kind of engaging with media and with each other, we too must shift to become not merely a passive source of stuff-to-be-consumed but rather an active, dynamic capacitator of creative social interaction.
Clay Shirky says it all in "Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and Generosity In A Connected Age" (Penguin, 2010): "The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act. ... The simple act of creating something with others in mind and then sharing it with them represents, at the very least, an echo of [an] older model of culture, now in technological raiment. Once you accept the idea that we actually like making and sharing things, however dopey in content or poor in execution, and that making one another laugh is a different kind of activity from being made to laugh by people paid to make us laugh, then in some ways the Cartoon Network is a low-grade substitute for LOLcats."
To Mr. LaRue (and Clay Shirky too, if he happens upon this): Word.
Let's make a better future.
Posted by Relentlessly Optimistic on November 30, 2010 03:56:13AM
I don't use the word customer either, and though there are a lot of commonalities with the commericial business experience, there are also vast gulfs between the two. Running a library exactly the way a business would be run would, well, ruin the library, whose purpose is NOT profit, but rather excellence of service. It's a fundamentally different focus, and one that should not be ignored. However, I agree that we can and should learn from business models, who are much better at putting themselves out there, and can help us make our patrons more comfortable and more likely to consult us. (That'd be marketing and customer service, in business-speak.)
And now, to the meat of the article! I personally would balk HARD at the requirement that I fill out a user profile before beginning a search. That sort of 'front-loading' gets in the way of actually answering the queries and also leaps merrily over the line of patron privacy, dancing on the other side and making rude gestures.
That said, I think Laura K has the right of it: why not have both? The binary described here is misleading: there're opposite sides of the same excellence-of-service coin.
Posted by SK on December 10, 2010 04:48:07PM
I have to be honest. The distinction between customer and patron is huge for me. As a patron of a multitude of local and state libraries I have to say that the second I feel like a "customer" is the second I stop coming to said library. If I wanted that sort of treatment I'd go to a book shop. The library should be a place that is free of the get them in and out mentality that always (and I do mean always) accompanies treating the people that walk through your door as "customers". I love the library because it is a place I can go to slow down and relax. When a library loses it's community feel it has lost everything.
Oh and as an added note I too would be immediately put off by the search engine asking for personal information.
