Like x, “I want the best product at the best price with as little fuss as possible.” Which I get at my little local branch library – those folks are efficient! (La Mesa branch, San Diego County PL) But one day I went in and had this HUGE fine and the gal said, “It’s because you don’t renew your videos! Renew your videos! I hate to see this happen to you because you’re one of my favorites.” And it meant so much to me that she said that, because I was new to the area and didn’t know anybody and was (ok, am) unemployed. It just meant a lot that she noticed me. And I still go there and our relationship is no different – I check stuff out, she checks it out to me – but my bond with my library is a lot stronger because of that one thing she said.

Personal service is tricky – it takes some finesse. It takes people people, not information people, and sometimes libraries have a hard time valuing people.

As a librarian, I find the profession moving rapidly away from my values, presenting the experience as the product instead of information as the product.

This post is anonymous because one of the many corporate habits my library has adopted is punishing dissenters.

Nonetheless, I agree with some parts of StephenB’s post. Some patrons, customers, clients, consumers (whatever you want to call them) want to be treated well, want to talk to someone who is knowledgeable, want a satisfactory experience when they go to a library, a Starbucks, etc. (Some customers, on the hand, shop for the best price and don’t care about the experience.) Having worked in a large, medium-sized, and now a very small library, I have come to believe that small libraries can deliver a far better “experience” than larger libraries. The students where I work are amazed that I know their names and that I remember what they are interested in. In terms of personal satisfaction, does it get any better than that?

nobody in their right mind pays $4 for a lukewarm latte – sorry, no dice

I also used to work at a library that used the Starbucks idea of being “exclusive” very well. We advertised storytimes in the newspaper, with specific days to enroll. Any child who missed more than 3 sessions of the “term” (which was about 9 weeks) without notifying the library in advance had officially canceled. When the storytimes were full, we developed a waiting list. It wasn’t anything like the ordinary “drop in” storytime”. Our director felt that children needed to interact with the same children for a few weeks and that parents needed to understand that this was a quality professional service. Also, it mean that the children’s librarian could build on concepts from week to week.

Now, in reality, any child who had “dropped out” was allowed back in, often to any other day or with another librarian. Everyone on the waiting list was accommodated, generally very quickly. But the structure felt more like something you had to pay for.

This was in a small town, where the library director could explain easily the the elected officials how this worked and that it truly excluded no one.

I work four hours a week on the general reference desk in an academic library. I enjoy the variety, but, with some exceptions, most of the faces are unfamiliar and, like Starbucks employees dealing not just with coffee but with complicated drinks and a growing variety of foods, I can’t possibly bring the same knowledge and experience into all of the conversations that I do in my own core subject.

But I spend most of my time working with communication studies students in the communication neighborhood. It’s not a physical location. I interact with students in classrooms, in my office, via Meebo and e-mail, on subject guides and course pages, via the Comm Department’s e-newsletter, in the dining halls, on the shuttle bus, wherever and whenever. It’s their neighborhood, and they know I’m there and how to find me. And unlike the reference desk, if they have to come back they know they’re going to get me again.

In this neighborhood, I not only know many of the students, I know their courses, their assignments, the quirks of their professors, the kinds of problems other students have run into, and, of course, how to find and make use of available resources to help them.

This may not work everywhere and for everyone, but for many libraries and librarians it’s one of the ways we can leverage specialization and personal recognition to become part of the neighborhood and build a unique user experience.