To compete, libraries take page from retail
Mall branches, cafés lure users
At the new mall outlet there's a window display of best-sellers. Inside is a café and a greeter who, with the help of a handheld computer, suggests titles you might like, based on your past selections.
Looking for ways to adapt to the fast-changing tastes of a public accustomed to the gleam and glitz of a commercial world, libraries across the country are taking lessons from retailers, conducting surveys to determine customer preferences, opening drive-throughs and mall branches, designing catchy storefront displays, and training staffs in the delicate art of customer service.
''There is tremendous competition, and people have options that didn't used to exist," says Karen Hyman, a librarian who is teaching a 12-step course on customer-centered libraries at the Public Library Assocation's 11th National Conference in Boston this week. ''Libraries have to keep working to be relevant. Are we copying Barnes and Noble and grocery stores? Yeah. Retail is a specialty and a profession, and it's not ours, but we can learn from people in retail."
The 12,000 librarians, educators, publishers, and authors who have come to learn the cutting edge in the field this year can attend seminars on video games and romance novels.
Best-sellers are in. The Dewey Decimal System, at least in some places, is out, replaced with subject groupings similar to those in bookstores. There is Internet checkout, e-book downloading, and 24-hour live chat with librarians.
''The idea is that we do these things to make the library convenient," said Daniel Walters, president of the library association.
The old image of the librarian as a woman with a tightly-coiffed bun, shushing visitors from behind a vast and foreboding desk, is also ancient history. The new librarian is modern, mobile, and customer-service oriented.
''We are getting librarians out from behind their desks to roam the libraries with handheld computers," said Ann Ramsey, director of the Chester County Library in South Carolina. She said county librarians are encouraged to act more as salespeople, escorting customers to find books or other materials.
It appears that nothing is safe from change: In Chester, librarians are now called ''informational navigators."
In the Cincinnati library system, one librarian moonlights as a romance novelist, intimately knowledgeable about this popular genre that the association says is not well understood by most librarians.
Video games, bodice-rippers, and blockbuster bestsellers may smack of a dumbing-down of libraries, long regarded as places for more erudite endeavors. But Walters says that among all the new aspects of libraries, that controversy is quite old.
''I remember a time when the only records at libraries were classical," Walters said. ''I remember when there were controversies over including best-sellers in library collections or about whether libraries should offer films, then videos, then DVDs."
Boston is home to one of the nation's first libraries and has long had a reputation for library excellence. A recent study of 77 big city libraries said Boston ranked 59th for the frequency of materials checked out and concluded that it was underperforming compared with other urban systems.
The Boston Public Library's president, Bernard Margolis, disputed the study's conclusions, saying that circulation has jumped significantly in recent months, partly because of some cutting-edge changes by the library.
''We are setting the pace. People at the conference are envious of us," Margolis said, adding that Boston's public libraries have wireless access everywhere and will soon be the first library in the country to offer downloadable videos. The library is stocking more best-sellers and making them available for borrowing the same day they hit the bookstores.
Margolis said he's getting some new ideas from what other librarians at the conference are offering teenagers in their communities. A preview of what could be next for Boston's libraries: Friday-night karaoke and video games.
