The Customer-focused LibraryThe Customer-focused Library
A top library consultant offers specific recommendations for helping libraries adapt to their changing role in the community.
What is the future of the public library? How can libraries embrace the forces of change and provide the resources—and the resource-gathering environment—today's patrons want? The Customer-Focused Library: Re-Inventing the Library From the Outside-In answers these questions by proposing a transformative alternative, a reimagined library in which the collections, the services—even the building itself—are designed and built from the customer's perspective.
Written by one of the country's foremost library consultants, The Customer-Focused Library shows how perceived threats to the traditional library model are in fact exciting opportunities for change. The book lays out the steps by which professionals and patrons together can help invent a new generation of libraries, with discussions of hiring guidelines, merchandizing, the library website, even the building plan itself. It is a proactive, consumer-based approach aimed at helping librarians focus on underexamined ideas, underexploited trends, underused assets, and the as-yet unvoiced needs of library consumers.
- Illustrations and drawings of innovative library buildings and features
- A bibliography of additional print and online resources
- A complete index
Intriguing to some and perhaps disturbing to others, this high energy work explores the ways in which public libraries could be redesigned to focus on the needs of customers. Matthews (consultant to libraries) outlines strategies ranging from building a social online public access catalog (OPAC) with room for users to rate, review, and make comments on items, to actually restructuring the classification and shelving systems. Making items available is reconceptualized as merchandising. He also considers building branches in places such as shopping malls or integrating other experiences into the visit, such as the large aquarium and Old World Reading Room (with wood panels and a fireplace) at the "Experience Library" in Cerritos, California. Other visions, like making search results return items ranked by popularity or extensive weeding efforts to get rid of classic materials that do not circulate well raise questions about what would make the library different from various commercial spaces. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
A top library consultant offers specific recommendations for helping libraries adapt to their changing role in the community.
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- Santa Barbara, Calif. : Libraries Unlimited, c2009.
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