Last month I attended day one of the Te Puna Libraries’ Forum. It was billed as an opportunity to learn about and discuss, new additions to the service, and international trends in resource sharing and cataloguing, and for users to have a say in the future direction of Te Puna.
Te Puna provides access to a suite of tools, which includes Te Puna Search (access to the National Union Catalogue), WorldCat,(a global catalogue of library collections) and Te Puna Interloan & cataloguing.
I was in Stream B which was for Interloan practitioners and covered topics such as the planned upgrade in the interloan lending and borrowing software VDX (Virtual Document eXchange). There were a number of speakers, panel discussions and activities wedged into the day, I have summarised some of the main themes of the day below:
Speed date with a Question
I found the Hot Topic session very entertaining. There were six tables which seated about ten people, each table held a question related to interloans, how you think the process could be improved, or questions about Te Puna in general, etc. You had five minutes to discuss the question with the other participants at the table before moving on to another table with another question and another group of people. It was interesting because many of the participants were from different types of libraries (special, academic, large public) where they have quite different customer needs and quite different interloan priorities and concerns than we have.
Growth in the Complexity of Reference Queries
Patrons are increasingly using the web to find answers to their questions, and to source and purchase articles, books, and music directly. If they can’t find what they’re looking for they approach the library, so library staff are being asked for more difficult to source materials, obscure or complex subject matter than in the past.
Empowerment of the ‘End User’
Self-help (i.e. the customer does most of the work) is growing in popularity, both with library staff and customers. The customer can now go online to request a reserve or an interloan and track where the reserve is in the system. When it’s ready to be picked up, they can collect it off a self-help reserve shelf in the library, issue it to themselves using a self-issue machine, and later renew it online or return it through a RFID return box. Why do something for a customer when they want to do it for themselves?
Reconsider the services you provide and how you provide them
All services the library provides should be an asset to the customer AND the library. They should be value for money and a valuable use of staff time. You should be regularly re-evaluating your services to ensure they are worthwhile, sustainable and being carried out in the most efficient way.
Customers do not always behave in the manner you expect from them. Expect the unexpected!
Louise
Te Puna Forum Presentations:
Maximising Te Puna Value programme, 62 Page Report:
http://www.natlib.govt.nz/downloads/MTPV_Project_2_Systems_-_Processes_Report_v1_0.PDF
Thanks Louise, very interesting. I liked the Speed date with a question – great idea.