February 23rd, 2010 Brian Herzog
I like to think I’m the kind of person open to the opinions of others, and I certainly don’t expect myself to be right all the time. However, it’s still rare for me to advertise when I think I am wrong, yet today is one of those days.
Last week my director received the following email from a patron and forwarded it to all the department heads to see what we thought about it:
Ms. Herrmann,
I just heard about Red Box doing a trial with Libraries across the country. This is a fantastic idea, there currently is no Red Box in Chelmsford Center. Attached is a link for you to look at.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jan/27/henderson-libraries-become-redbox-locations/
In case you’ve never heard of Red Box, they are dvd vending machines which rent new movies at $1 per night. The machines are located outdoors and are available to the consumer 24/7. Red Box pays the library and also allows the library to free up cash from having to purchase current films.
It would be great if Chelmsford could get in on this trial!!
I had heard of libraries using both Redbox and Netflix, but never really gave it too much though. So I was kind of surprised at my response to my director:
Maybe this is just a reaction based on the kind of day this has been, but I have mostly negative feelings about this. Based on http://tametheweb.com/2009/07/01/red-box-rentals-at-princeton-public-library/ is seems any money we get is minimal, and I’m always reluctant to give
businesses a green light to target library patrons.
If we did put one of these in, I sincerely hope it wouldn’t mean we’d be buying fewer DVDs and rely on this as a crutch, because just like Rosetta Stone, they can pull out at any time and we’d be left
scrambling to fill the holes in our collection.
Its biggest benefit would be providing patrons access to DVDs 24 hours a day, but it also means patrons have a reason to be at the front door 24 hours a day, doing who knows what - the police department might not like that idea. Then there’s also the patrons who return the RedBox
DVDs in our dropbox, those who put ours into the RedBox, patrons demanding refunds and tech support from the circ desk, blah blah blah.
More reading on this:
I know Conway makes money off our printers and the FaxVend people do too, but RedBox feels way more commercial - like letting a dealership put used cars in our parking lot to make it easier for patrons to shop for cars. Or letting a bookstore set up a table of bestsellers in the lobby and sell books so patrons don’t have to wait on a long reserve list.
I don’t know exactly why I don’t like it, but right now I’m leaning against it - but again, it might just my mood. Blah.
So my question is this: why I am wrong?
I don’t feel like I’m right, because I can see positive aspects to a Redbox being in front of the library (especially for libraries that already charge $1/DVD), and it’s unusual for me to be this negative. I don’t think that every new idea or technology has a place in every library, but still, my answer on this surprised me.
So I thought I’d ask the wider library world for your opinions on Redboxes and libraries. Lots of good comments were posted on Tame the Web when Michael talked about this last year, but I’m still not entirely convinced. What do you think?
Tags: business, commercial, dvd, dvds, libraries, Library, machine, public, redbox, rental, Service, vending See Also
Posted under Library, Service, Technology | 16 Comments »
February 20th, 2010 Brian Herzog
Sometimes I can’t tell if patrons asks for something because they think we actually offer it, or if they just figure there’s no harm in asking. To wit:
Patron: You know how when I have a book on hold, someone from the library calls me?
Me: Well, yes, but it’s not a real person - we have a computer system that automatically makes the calls.
Patron: Yeah, exactly - since it’s a computer, can you set it to call me really early to be a wake-up call?
Me: Um, no.
So I can go two ways with this. First, I mean, yes, technically, we could absolutely do this, without really any staff involvement. And when we could do something, I feel bad saying no - but really, we have to draw the line on the services we provide somewhere, and here be that line.
But since he actually was looking for a free wake-up service (and didn’t necessarily need someone from the library to do it), I searched around to see what I could find. I knew that hotels offer this for their guests, and have never thought of this in any other context before - but plenty of people must:
Some of these are free, or at least have a free trial (which would be good enough for a one-time call). Lifehacker also has suggestions for free wakeup calls from Telepixie and automating calls with Skype. They also reference combining Skype with Google Calendar - so many options.
Happily, I never need to be to work before 9am, and my house has lots of windows, so I generally just let the sun wake me up. Ah, the blissful life of a librarian.
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Posted under Library, Reference Question | 1 Comment »
October 27th, 2009 Brian Herzog
I know that as a library, we are here to serve the community. But on a day-to-day basis, I don’t work with the community, I work with individual people.
Are the two mutually-exclusive? This is all just rhetorical thinking on my part, but two interactions this month brought this dichotomy to light and got me thinking about it.
Situation 1
In my library, patrons are allowed to use a computer for one hour (or longer if no one is waiting). A patron came in to complain to the Director that our computers are full all the time, which makes it hard for him to use one. His complaint is that often, he sees kids playing games or checking Facebook for hours at a time, and he is frustrated because he wants to spend half the day looking for a job.
Situation 2
A patron who does a lot of historical research asked if we could digitize our collection of Town Annual Reports - and not just scan them, but OCR them so the text is searchable. That is, of course, a huge project, and we are in the process of indexing all historical town records, but due to limited resources, we’re not going to get to the annual reports any time soon. She got agitated when I explained this, and told me “the Library is here to serve the residents of Chelmsford, and I AM CHELMSFORD.”
Answers?
So, what is a librarian to do? In the first situation, the bottom line was that the patron wanted us to stop other patrons from using computers for hours at a time so that he could use a computer for hours at a time. In the second, the patron wanted us to scrap our project timeline for improving access to all Town records for all patrons so we could focus on the records she wanted.
The problem seems to stem from point of view. The library’s point of view is to serve all patrons equally, as faceless members of the community. The patrons’ point of view is that they want whatever subset of our service they’re interested in right now, without consideration to how that impacts other patrons.
Situation 1 - Fail/Win?
On the surface, perhaps looking for a job is more important than playing games or chatting with friends - but should it be up to the library to make that call? If someone “checks out” a library resource, be it by taking home a book or by using one of our computers, they are pretty much entitled to use it for whatever they want, so long as they don’t damage it.
This means that if someone checks out a book and uses it for the three-week loan period to prop up a broken table leg, they are entitled to do that. Similarly, if someone spends their hour on the computer playing games, that is their business. Libraries make information and resources available, not police how patrons put them to use. But to the first patron, us not kicking someone off a computer so he could (ironically) do the same thing they were doing is not providing good service.
Situation 2 - Fail/Win?
When the second patron said that “She is Chelmsford,” my first response (which I managed to keep to myself) was, “yes, and so are 32,000 other people.” We have to make decisions that best serve the community, and with a project like this, we’re thinking long-term. We just don’t have the resources to do what she wants.
But instead of doing nothing, we’re doing what we can, and eventually we’ll be able to digitize the records she wants. This project will not only improve access to our collection overall, but will also help to preserve it for future generations. Put like that, we’re serving the community - but from her point of view, we’re totally failing to serve her needs.
I know it’s always a balancing act, but it’s tough to tell a patron they are no more important than every other patron - that seems like the opposite of good customer service.
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Posted under Library, Service | 6 Comments »
June 27th, 2009 Brian Herzog
This week’s reference question is one of my own. I use Bloglines to read rss feeds, and a couple weeks ago they changed their interface.
I didn’t like the changes, so I used their Contact Form to express this and ask if there was an option to change it back. This was two weeks ago, and I still haven’t gotten a reply.
Then it occurred to me that perhaps Bloglines used Twitter, and maybe I could ask them that way. I found an @bloglines user, but even though he’s using the Bloglines logo, he indicates it’s not an official Bloglines account.
I asked him my question anyway (noticing he was fielding the exact same question a lot lately), and got a reply in 5 hours. And best of all, his suggestion worked perfectly, and now I’m back to using Bloglines happily, the way that suits me best.
But this experience got me thinking. It’s easy for organizations to let email messages slide, because only that one person knows they sent it in. But Twitter is public, and if someone is questioning or complaining, ignoring it won’t make it go away.
Unofficial or not, @bloglines did exactly what I would have expected an organization to do - respond quickly and helpfully.
This is what librarians do, and it reminded me of Kate’s post about their library suggestion box. I like that she’s publicly displaying suggestions and answers, because in this case, one-to-many communication seems better than one-to-one.
So I thought, why not encourage patrons to use Twitter as a suggestion box? Being public, the library has to address patrons’ concerns, but it also means all patrons can benefit from the answer, rather than just one.
I know a public forum isn’t appropriate for every issue, and anonymity can be necessary, so I think traditional suggestion boxes (whether physical or online form) are still useful. But I bet there are some libraries already doing this very thing. I know I came late to Twitter, but it really is turning out to be a very useful tool after all.
Tags: bloglines, box, customer service, libraries, Library, public, Reference Question, Service, suggestion, suggestions, twitter See Also
Posted under Library, Marketing, Reference Question, Service | 6 Comments »
March 26th, 2009 Brian Herzog
I was shopping with a friend in the L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine, and ended up in a check-out line.
It was a nice Saturday afternoon, the store was crowded, and the lines at the registers were long. But L.L. Bean is one of those companies that is totally focused on customer service, and they were doing something I’ve never seen before (granted, I don’t get out much, and I avoid shopping whenever possible, but still, this was cool).
In addition to the cashiers at the registers, there was also another employee walking up and down the check-out line with a portable scanner and barcode printer. He scanned each item a customer had, and then printed out a receipt with a barcode. When the customer got to the cash register, the cashier just scanned that one barcode, instead of fiddling around scanning each item’s barcode.
It was amazing how much faster the line moved, and I got to wondering if something like this could be employed in libraries.
Of course, many staff and patrons enjoy the informal small talk while the books are being checked out, and this would all but eliminate that. And self-check machines are there for patrons who are in a hurry. But still, I was impressed with the way L.L. Bean identified and launched such a simple service that had such a large and positive impact on the shopping experience.
Maybe we could at least get the moms with the foot-tall stack of picture books to pre-scan their items before they get to the Circulation Desk.
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Posted under Service | 4 Comments »
