Shooting ourselves in the foot
So what is it with public libraries lately? Most have never been good at marketing per se, but now it seems that every week brings us a new story about a public library doing something incredibly stupid and patron-alienating, usually having to do with kids. It’s not enough to kick out the knitting girls, now we’re carding and turning away students who want to walk across the street from their high school to use the library on their lunch hour. (Wow, would I have loved to have a library across the street from my high school! But I digress…)
It’s one thing not to market yourself, it’s another thing entirely to create your own bad publicity — especially in an age where a negative story about one library’s actions spreads to tarnish public libraries in general, and the social web encourages others to share their negative experiences as well. Every time one of these stories breaks, you can expect the comments: “I’m not surprised — because, get what my library did to me…”
Let’s try really hard not give any more ammunition to the “librarians are mean; libraries are irrelevant” meme, OK?
tkozak:
The really sad thing is that almost all of these cases come out of a decision meant to present the library in a better light – “we’re literacy focused!” in the case of the knitters, or “We’re not contributing to truancy” in the second example.
Rules like this almost always have unintended consequences, especially when they’re rules that involve refusing service based on some fairly subjective or vague characteristic.
The other big problem is the desire for central control. Good service is all about knowing when to make exceptions, and having the authority to do that. Unfortunately with big policies like these the position of front-line staff is too often “I’ll get in trouble if I let this person in without ID,” and once the manager is involved he or she will feel obligated to “defend the policy.” All of my best managers have stressed that it’s okay to use your own judgement.
To dip into horrible business-speak, every policy needs to be looked at with regards to “finding a way to yes.” Look at the goals of the policy and make exceptions in accordance with that. For instance, the goal of the no-teens rule was to prevent kids from hanging out in the library instead of going to school – making an exception for the young-looking mother doesn’t undermine that.
6 September 2008, 12:25 amSarah W:
That whole idea about carding high school students seems like a whole lotta work for nothing. We have a lot of kids who ditch school and come to the library, but it is hard to tell them apart from kids who are home sick and their parents drop them off, kids who are homeschooled, and anyone else. The truancy officers know the kids come to the library, so they come through a couple times a day or so and sweep them out. We don’t report them, but at the same time we don’t prevent the truancy officers from dealing with them.
6 September 2008, 5:07 amI agree that it does seem like these whole issues come down to some people trying to enforce a mandate with no flexibility.
Brad H:
Why are libraries closed on Sunday? This is a day when people can go to libraries. Why not be closed on Monday? Borders and Barnes and Noble aren’t closed on Sundays. You can get into them seven days a week. They’re open until 10 pm! You can go to them after work. How easy is it to get into a library after work…not very when they close at 6 pm. Plus, libraries don’t have coffee bars. Why? I go to Borders and Barnes and Noble because they have books and COFFEE and cd’s and dvd’s…and…coffee. I get e-mails from Borders and Barnes and Noble about new titles and special offers. I never get an e-mail from a library about anything. When will libraries get it! When they’re open until decent hours and on days I can get into them and have coffee bars, I’ll go into them. Until then, I’ll spend money buying books at Barnes and Noble and Borders. Too bad.
10 September 2008, 2:23 pmRoss:
In my local library system, we recently had a case where the local school district recruited the library to play truant police. A group of students quietly visiting the library were suspected of truancy by a security guard, questioned and eventually handcuffed. It turns out they were a group of homeschoolers and students from the local Catholic High School visiting with permission. Basically doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing.
Besides the general criminalization of youth which is becoming increasingly popular, we can’t forget that public libraries are often organs of a larger civic bureaucracy and can be just as unresponsive to individual needs and act just as stupidly.
11 September 2008, 9:28 amlibrarybob:
I’m wondering how big a hole the library Ross mentioned is going to have in its budget after the lawsuits hit.
11 September 2008, 12:05 pmAmanda:
Lame. I want to be a librarian, and it sucks to have such negative press about librarians and libraries and what they even do. Come on guys, let’s not gas the fire!
Especially with the school restricting access. The school has no right to do that, and the library shouldn’t want to do that. If people are being extremly rowdy, kick them out, but there is no reason to kick out an entire population of people. Come on, someone may find themselves among the shelves.
20 September 2008, 5:14 amJeremy:
Where it comes to the students walking across the street during lunch–why not? Especially if the school library is lacking in materials.
I’ve always been against truancy, but the onus is on the school to keep students in, not the library to keep people out. Especially when the young people might not be in public school at all! And “carding” is not the solution. That’s like living in a police state, and goes against the open access foundation of libraries.
The point of libraries is that anyone and everyone should have access to them. Whether it’s school-age youths, whether readers or knitters, the library has no business denying entry to anyone.
20 September 2008, 10:21 am