Tag Archives: library

“Why aren’t you work­ing as a librar­ian?” peo­ple ask me as soon as they learn that I have a Mas­ters degree in Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence.  The short answer is, “…libraries just weren’t fast paced enough for me…”  As I say this, a ter­ri­ble feel­ing of guilt comes over me, and I ask myself: “Am I a sell out? How could I for­sake my grad­u­ate school edu­ca­tion?” But think­ing back, I real­ized there was much more that went into my deci­sion not to become a tra­di­tional librar­ian. I decided to use what I learned in a new way, and I’d like to finally be hon­est about my decision:

Rea­son #1: Many tra­di­tional libraries are not cus­tomer driven.

This may sounds like an odd state­ment, espe­cially because libraries are ser­vice ori­ented, and there­fore, must be cus­tomer focused to some degree. Yes, that is true. And, don’t get me wrong… like many librar­i­ans, I’m VERY PASSIONATE about get­ting more peo­ple to use libraries, teach­ing peo­ple to be smart about what infor­ma­tion they choose (infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy), and help­ing peo­ple make more informed decisions.

HOWEVER, my phi­los­o­phy of being “cus­tomer dri­ven” clashes with the cur­rent meth­ods libraries used to increase cir­cu­la­tion rates and patron vis­its.  While there may be some excep­tions to this, based on my expe­ri­ence work­ing in libraries, libraries seem to take what Theodore Levitt calls, “a sales dri­ven approach.”  He says:

“The dif­fer­ence between sell­ing and mar­ket­ing is that sell­ing is get­ting rid of what you have, while mar­ket­ing is hav­ing what peo­ple want.”

Dur­ing my seven years work­ing in aca­d­e­mic and spe­cial libraries, I noticed we always tried to get peo­ple to use what the library already had. My approach is the oppo­site, I believe we should have pri­mary focused on hav­ing resources that peo­ple WANT to use, not try­ing to get peo­ple to use the resources we already had. Instead of get­ting peo­ple to come to libraries more, librar­i­ans should be proac­tively going out to them, find­ing out what their infor­ma­tion needs are, what fun­da­men­tal ques­tions they have, what key deci­sions they need to make. Then libraries need to pro­vide inno­v­a­tive ways for them to access that infor­ma­tion, and help them make more informed deci­sions. Because my phi­los­o­phy unfor­tu­nately clashes with the think­ing of most peo­ple in the library sci­ence pro­fes­sion, and I knew that if I were to become a librar­ian I would have a life-long bat­tle to change the cul­ture of libraries.

Rea­son #2: Many tra­di­tional librar­i­ans behave like mar­tyrs, com­plain­ing that no-one rec­og­nizes their value.

In addi­tion to bat­tling “they must come to us” cul­ture of libraries,  I’d be up against the deep-rooted mar­tyr think­ing:  where you con­stantly hear libraries say, “Nobody appre­ci­ates us! Why do they keep cut­ting our fund­ing?” Fund­ing for libraries has gone down tremen­dously, and jobs are being cut.  In order for libraries to sur­vive, my think­ing is that libraries need to fun­da­men­tally change the way they think of their “prod­uct.” Instead of sell­ing the phys­i­cal space of the build­ing, and the phys­i­cal books them­selves, they need to invent new ways to meet deep infor­ma­tion needs.  The only way to prove your value, is to be of more value. This reminds me of the rail­road busi­ness… think­ing they are sell­ing trains, when they should have invented new modes of trans­porta­tion. Libraries need to throw out the think­ing that they are sell­ing books and dig­i­tal mate­ri­als, and should be invent­ing new modes of deliv­er­ing knowledge.

Here’s the deep truth: I don’t want to spend my career fight­ing, or hav­ing awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions with any­one about mak­ing libraries more cus­tomer focused. I just want to work for orga­ni­za­tions that value being cus­tomer dri­ven as much as I do. I want to spend my energy under­stand­ing cus­tomers’ needs, and cre­at­ing ways to exceed their expec­ta­tions. I don’t want to fight for the per­mis­sion to do it in the first place.