Customers need change
Someone who works at a public library and is ‘studing an MSc in Information and Library Studies’ at a University was terribly irritated by that piece on libraries the other day.
The article is awash with dismay over the move to allow library users to eat, drink and, heaven forbid, actually talk. Interestingly, they talk about the ’silence rule’- a concept that is completely alien to either myself or just about any other person I have encountered who works in a public library.
Ah, is it indeed. Why?
Don’t bother asking; the library student never says. It’s such an absurd, outdated, stuffy, elitist, stupid idea that it’s simply self-evident what’s wrong with it. Which is interesting, because one would think (or hope, forlornly) that people who work in libraries would have at least a glimmer of an idea why people who frequent libraries would value silence while they do it. But apparently not.
If these people have their way, the public library would be nothing more than a physical manifestation of all that was bad about the 1950s. Time moves on, society changes, customers needs change. Libraries must, therefore, change.
Why? Again, the student doesn’t say. Society does change, of course, but why that means libraries now have to be raucous instead of quiet is not clear, nor is it clear why ‘customers’ need noise in place of quiet. But then of course we are not students of Information and Library Studies, so naturally we do not understand.
[O]ne thing is for certain, things need to move forward. There should not be enforced silence (we don’t and it certainly isn’t noisy, despite what the critics might assume), there should be an attempt to make the library a cool place to hang out…and, above all, the library should be open and welcoming to everyone, regardless of who they are. Elitism will kill the library service. Eradicating the old-fashioned perception of libraries might just save it.
‘It certainly isn’t noisy’ – well I wish that were the case in the public libraries I know, but it isn’t. I don’t ‘assume’ they’re noisy, I know damn well they are because I use them. I use them, but I don’t consider them ‘open and welcoming to everyone’ – I don’t consider them welcoming to people like me who want to be able to read and think in libraries. They are welcoming to people who want to make noise, they are welcoming to people who want to treat the library like an auxiliary living room or a part-time kindergarten, but they are not welcoming to people who want to use the library as a library.
Why does future librarian assume that being open and welcoming to everyone requires being noisy and raucous? Why does future librarian assume that everyone wants noise and raucousness all the time and everywhere? Why does future librarian not think it is possible to be open and welcoming to everyone by offering quiet in one place and noise in others? Coffee shops are open and welcoming to everyone but they don’t serve fish or provide Balkan dance troupes. Rock concerts are open and welcoming to everyone but they don’t provide quiet and desks and books. Why can’t libraries be open and welcoming to everyone in a library way instead of a different way? Library student doesn’t say, and neither do the three commenters, one of whom has worked in libraries for 25 years. Which is depressing for the future of libraries. Apparently what one learns when one studies ‘Library Studies’ is that libraries should be abolished while (inexplicably) retaining the old name.
I saw library student’s post via a post at Tom Morris’s place. He is eloquent on this subject.
‘the ’silence rule’- a concept that is completely alien to either myself or just about any other person I have encountered who works in a public library.’
Really? This alien concept rule is strictly enforced in my local library. Every weekend, the reading room, the student study room and the main body of the library itself are all jammed with people silently studying or reading.
For many people here, I suspect the library is the one place where silence is guaranteed.
Here being Hong Kong, many have mobile phones in their pockets and occasionally have to leave quickly, or are told to by librarians if they try for a whispered conversation.
Burnham and his acolytes apparently don’t know, to borrow a phrase, either their core mission or their customer base; nor I suspect, have they tried sustained reading and study in noisy environments.
As far as I know libraries do not have “customers.” They have patrons. Future Librarian should wake up and smell the bacon.
And there is little evidence that library patrons’ needs have changed. Indeed I recently invented a new need, as a library patron. I mentioned to my university librarian that I need to have the books I want delivered to my office in a nice package tied with ribbon. But she says that my wish is not a need at all. And that my needs have not changed, especially not in that direction.
If Future Librarian thinks that the people inside the library are customers, there is a surprise waiting when he/she gets her/his first job.
Yes, the Freudian (no, probably not) slip of “customer” for “patron” is at the heart of it. So many degradations follow on the heels of that kind of substitution. The “I paid my money [or I’m taking advantage of others who pay taxes] and I WANT stuff MY WAY” whine has infected everything from common courtesy to higher education standards. Students at university are now “customers,” brazenly demanding “superior outcomes” (read: undeservedly high marks) for their “investment.”
I suppose libraries had to adopt the “customer” terminology. After, all, its straightforward, honest application has been abandoned everywhere else. Being a customer is just too, too declasse anywhere else. Diners in restaurants aren’t customers anymore, but guests. I thought that was awful enough when I made my living slinging hash, but I knew the civilized world had come to an end when I noticed clothing and grocery store employees referring to customers as “guests.” Really? Am I invited in for tea and conversation, with no recompense expected save a reciprocal invitation?
If local authorities want to make libraries part of complexes with coffee bars and places to be “cool”, that’s fine. But the library is the library, and people go to read and study. You might make the case that a reference library (reading and studying) should be quieter than the lending library (browsing and borrowing), but I’d wish to make a case for their being quiet, too. If people want to hang out, be cool, talk, then build the library into a wider complex – but soundproof the library walls, please! Whoever suggests that libraries should reflect some purported new need for noise is a moron – whether he’s a student of librarianship or not.
Libraries have customers? I thought the preffered term was ‘stakeholder’ these days.
“Time moves on, society changes, customers needs change. Libraries must, therefore, change.”
Libraries need to change with the times that are in it – by providing up-to-date desks which allow lap-top customers their own private space. Not small tables, where lap-top customers are foisted upon each other, whether they like it or not – because they have to share plug sockets for their lap-tops – or because there is no other proper seating arrangements in libraries. The lap-top customers get a raw deal. Some libraries do not even have wall sockets.
Today, a lap-top chap was asked by a library staff member to sit at a crowded table – he was seated on a chair in a quiet spot, with lap-top in place where it was born to be -it was not good enough.