Based on comments from the post, The Customers do not want to return Research materials (Wednesday, July 29, 2015; http://www.computersavviness.com/2015/07/the-customers-do-not-want-to-return.html)
Abstract. When some students are shown how to use the public library, they are either late in returning the book or they never return the book and keep it for themselves. Some special libraries and archives have also experienced their own staff “hording” books and hiding them in their offices. In both scenarios, these customers have started to create their own personal libraries that no one else could use.
Introduction
In some special libraries, corporate
libraries, and state archives, I have encountered losing library material to
staff due to some of the staff hording it in their offices for their own
personal use. I have also experienced, in some academic institutions, college
freshmen refusing to return books to the library. Once returned, others could use those books. After reviewing your comments to my posting
on the Computer Savviness blog called “The
Customers do not want to return research materials”, I have compiled the
following thoughts, from your comments to my post, about how to get library customers
to return library materials to the library by
increasing the collection development budget, creating the e-book
attraction, and incorporating library literacy programs in all course subjects
through K-20 grades.
Increasing
Collection Development Budget
As many of you have noted in your
comments to me, it would be a dream for all librarians to be given a blank
check for collection development. When
books disappear off the shelf, replacement copies could be purchased to meet
the demand from the library community.
The library could also meet the informational needs of the library
customers by purchasing books that they have requested and/or books that will
help with their work, school, and personal research projects. Your comments suggested that when there would
be a need for e-books, then the library would design, acquire, and implement an
e-book collection. Not all e-books meet
all of the informational needs of the library customer so the librarian would
carefully guide the library customer to the physical collection of books to
cover the topics needed.
Create
the e-book attraction
Through your comments, many of you wanted
to offer e-books and physical books to the customer. This way the library customer would have a
wide selection of topics in both formats of books. They could select and have a desire to come
back to see what else the library had waiting for them.
My undergraduate college freshmen loved
their e-book collecting ability through their tablets, smartphones, and
laptops. They told me that it saved them
time and money to borrow an e-book from the public library or from a friend’s Kindle
bookshelf. Amazon actually gets library
customers to follow the pattern of borrowing a book. Amazon has stated that “you can lend a Kindle
book to another reader for up to 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a
Fire or Kindle device and can read the book after downloading a free Kindle
reading app. A book
can only be loaned one time. Magazines and newspapers are not currently
available for lending. You can loan
eligible Kindle books from the product detail page of a book you purchased on
Amazon. During the loan period, you will
not be able to read the book that you loaned… If the loan is not accepted after
seven days, the book will then become available in your content library and you
will be able to loan the book again.” (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200549320).
So you would have to know someone who
had the book on their Kindle bookshelf in order to “borrow” a Kindle book to
avoid having to pay for it. Through the
convenience of the library customer’s tablet, smart phone, or laptop, the
following is how to lend a Kindle book:
1.
Go to the Kindle Store from your computer, and then locate the title
you'd like to loan.
2.
On the product detail page, click Loan this book. You will be sent to
the Loan this book page.
3.
Enter the recipient's e-mail address and an optional message…Be sure to
send the Kindle book loan notification to your friend's personal e-mail address
and not their Send-to-Kindle e-mail address.
4.
Click Send now.
Since the library customers would be
accustomed to checking-out a Kindle book, they would not have difficulty checking-out
an e-book from the local library. As
some of you noted in your comments to my post, there are still some limitations
to the e-book subjects. Not every book
is in e-book format. The publishers
still use the print format for their books too. This would also encourage library customers
to come back and return any books that they had checked-out. They can browse through the physical
collection for new and old books to meet their informational needs. The library would meet the informational
needs of its library community. If the
library has something the library customers want, then they will be back to
browse through the collection again.
As your comments discussed how the
problem is sometimes with the library customer wanting to go the supposed “fast-track”
and get a question answered through Google, Neil Gaiman, author, stated about
librarians at the annual McFadden Memorial Lecture Series hosted by
Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library on April 16, 2010, that “In a world
where Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back
the right one.” This encourages the
library customer to come back for face-to-face help from a human being, the
friendly librarian.
Library Literacy
Programs in All Course Subjects
Your comments to my blog post have suggested having, field
trips for students and staff. If these
library customers are shown how to use the library in their area, they will
learn that it is a place to come back to for more research materials that could
answer their informational needs. They will
have to keep coming back and returning their books in order to see if there are
any books meeting their needs.
The library literacy programs, as your comments noted,
should exist throughout the K-20 grades related to all of the course subject
areas that library customers would experience throughout their lives. Some higher educational institutions have
created library literacy programs to be embedded, as needed, in some college
courses. As you also noted in your
comments, this type of program should not be “as needed” but should be part of
all courses. The skill of using the
library has strong relationships to Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. The skill has to be encouraged and reinforced
just as all other skills taught in the educational system.
Thoughts on the Subject
All of your comments suggested ways to
bring the library customer back to the library.
A library collection that meets the informational needs of the library
community (special library, archive, university, and public library) seems to
have a possibility of luring library customers back to the library to return
books and check more out. The accessibility
that library customers could have to the library through an e-book program, is
another way to attract the library customers to the library to check books out
and return books. Some of you have
noticed, that library customers sometimes do not come back due to not finding
what they needed in the library and/or not having time to come back due to
various commitments. Meeting the
library customers’ fascination with e-books could be one of several ways to
start an attraction of the library customer to the library.
Many have commented on taking kids on
field trips to the local library. If
they have no one to take them or do not have the need to go, they will not
go. If they have to get a grade in
school for a research project or a prize in a Summer Reading program, they will
go to the library. That event of going
to the library could be an eye-opening time where they see a book they
want. They take it and read it. They do not want to let go of it. They do not know that they could possibly
experience this thrill again if they returned that book to get another
book. They want that “one” book that
answered their question or questions.
When students and staff take them home,
they cannot find them but if they books return them to the library, they would
be able to find the books that they have checked out. It should be emphasized that the library is
the best storage place where the books are organized to easily find them
again.
How do you get them to return the book
after that “experience” of finding the answer? How do you deal with their fear of
not being able to find that answer again in any other library book or source?
Have any
thoughts on this topic?
