I was just reading a blog post on Seth Godin’s blog about stuff being interesting. His main point – is it interesting because it happened, or is it interesting because it happened to you?
That made me think – what stuff do libraries do “for our customers” that we find interesting or useful or amazing … but our customers – not so much?
Think about some of these things libraries have, for example:
- Library Catalog – interesting to our customers?
- Article Databases – interesting to our customers?
- Periodicals reading room …
- Reference desk …
- Dewey Decimal System …
- etc
I don’t have a big problem with anything listed above. But still – libraries pour a LOT of time, money, and expertise into each of these fairly traditional things libraries have and do. Do our customers really … REALLY … find them all that interesting?
Asked another way – is your periodicals reading room standing-room only? Is it hard to find a public computer because so many customers are using the catalog? Get the idea?
I think our goal should be two-fold:
- spend time, money, and expertise on stuff our customers care about
- do stuff that our customers care about
Not always easy to do, huh?
photo by abeckstrom