On Customer-Driven Librarianship

Most Compelling Sentence: "Recently, a small cottage industry within librarianship has developed in the form of articles on the 'discovery' of the success of plush, superchain bookstore outlets (like Barnes & Noble) as a place to browse for and read books" (Buschman, 113).

For me, this quote brings me to the question of what is the role of the library? What are the jobs and services that can be provided by a library and its staff? As we can see in our very own College Library (Helen C. White), the services provided by a library can be vast. College Library has its own coffee shop, you can borrow a Nintendo Wii, the computer lab is extensive. So, College Library has positioned itself as a different sort of library. To define your library in a much different way from the stereotype of the quiet, dusty, library of old is a bold gesture. Like corporations, libraries can position themselves in different ways in order to jockey for patronage.

As discussed in class, how does this change how the library views the library user? Even the nomenclature can become different depending on your library's goals. In the case of the library that positions itself similarly to a modern bookstore, users could literally become "customers". Perhaps in the quiet and musty library referenced above, library users remain patrons. Certainly though, such language and attitudes towards libraries must be a sign of the times. Ever since the Reagan years, America has moved more and more towards privatization and commercialization. Moving the library toward the realm of a marketable sort of business is in keeping with this trend.