LIANZA conference

Heather Stone, service line lead attended the LIANZA conference in Christchuch on 12-14 October 2009. Following are some notes from the sessions she attended.

The librarian as a bookseller: empowering the profession to take their knowledge to the reader
I have a confession: I decided to go to the session because it looked interesting, rather than good for me. I am so glad I did – John McIntyre, children’s bookseller from Kilbirnie was simply inspiring.

He talked about getting out from behind the counter and engaging with the customers in the library.. He talked about the importance of building this relationship as a vehicle to share your passion, know-how and experience to ‘sell’ customers books. He hammered home the point that it doesn’t matter if these books entertain, inspire, inform or educate –the important thing is that the books we recommend meet our customer’s needs.
He said librarians can make a difference in people’s lives and then to convince us read the autobiographical piece by children’s author, Gary Paulsen. It was a great session.

Customer education: what's the point?
Kim Clayton and Rebecca Waechter from Wellington Public Library gave an overview of WP's revamp eighteen months ago of the customer education programme. With little literature available on this subject for public libraries, they undertook a survey of 1000 customers across 12 branches. In a nutshell the results were overwhelmingly in the favour of one on one lessons which were short in duration (15 minutes), topics determined by the public rather than by library staff, and delivery taking place when required by the public. The confidence of staff in the delivery was pivotal in the success of the lesson. Customer education has been revamped to reflect the results e.g one on one mini expos of resources taking place within the library at peak times using a television screen and a computer so members of the public walking by can also see it.

Revitalising the library and the self serve generation
Joanne Smith from Hobsons Bay Libraries, Victoria, Australia was awarded the Margery C, Ramsay Scholarship by the Library Board of Victoria. Joanne's presentation highlighted her research on the changing face of customer service in this self serve age. Libraries have to adapt the design, and layout of the building and opening hours to reflect community needs. By selecting technology that offers the same or better service than staff can, staff can be redeployed to engage more with customers. In addition, librarians need to move from having a gatekeeper and 'book police' mentality to a customer centric position. Joanne's lecture resonated with the ACL customer centric focus.