The Customer-Focused Library

Book excerpt: A top library consultant offers specific recommendations for helping libraries adapt to their changing role in the community. What is the future of the public library? How can libraries embrace the forces of change and provide the resources—and the resource-gathering environment—today's patrons want? The Customer-Focused Library: Re-Inventing the Library From the Outside-In answers these questions by proposing a transformative alternative, a reimagined library in which the collections, the services—even the building itself—are designed and built from the customer's perspective. Written by one of the country's foremost library consultants, The Customer-Focused Library shows how perceived threats to the traditional library model are in fact exciting opportunities for change. The book lays out the steps by which professionals and patrons together can help invent a new generation of libraries, with discussions of hiring guidelines, merchandizing, the library website, even the building plan itself. It is a proactive, consumer-based approach aimed at helping librarians focus on underexamined ideas, underexploited trends, underused assets, and the as-yet unvoiced needs of library consumers.