As someone who was a stay at home mom for years, operating in a noncash economy of traded labor for carpools, babysitting and–yes–taking people’s kids to activities at the library, time is truly money!

Given all that has been said, I know this is not a compelling argument for discriminating between patrons. But when a solo parent wends his or her way to our library on a school night with a 7-year-old in tow, I am very sensitive to the fact that the patron pays a price for every minute in the library–dinner delayed, the kid’s routine disrupted, unfolded laundry still piled. The IM patron can be multitasking or supervising at home. The solo parent paid at least 20 minutes of travel time just to talk to a reference librarian in person. This patron is very invested in getting help.

I know the analysis can be finessed but I’m thinking of the basics here. The larger issue, as many already said, is new technology which lowers the transaction cost of information so dramatically that libraries are pricing themselves out!

In the case of a walk-in and phone-in patron with simultaneous requests, the person with the tightest time constraint is the person I’d start with first. And I’m not picking on parents in particular…this is just a kind of situation we encounter often on school nights.

As someone who was a stay at home mom for years, operating in a noncash economy of traded labor for carpools, babysitting and–yes–taking people’s kids to activities at the library, time is truly money!

Given all that has been said, I know this is not a compelling argument for discriminating between patrons. But when a solo parent wends his or her way to our library on a school night with a 7-year-old in tow, I am very sensitive to the fact that the patron pays a price for every minute in the library–dinner delayed, the kid’s routine disrupted, unfolded laundry still piled. The IM patron can be multitasking or supervising at home. The solo parent paid at least 20 minutes of travel time just to talk to a reference librarian in person. This patron is very invested in getting help.

I know the analysis can be finessed but I’m thinking of the basics here. The larger issue, as many already said, is new technology which lowers the transaction cost of information so dramatically that libraries are pricing themselves out!

In the case of a walk-in and phone-in patron with simultaneous requests, the person with the tightest time constraint is the person I’d start with first. And I’m not picking on parents in particular…this is just a kind of situation we encounter often on school nights.

I just came across this post and I was wondering if I could reproduce your post in our in house newsletter (complete with URL back to your site) ?