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Librarians Speak Up
How do you get to know your users?

Penny Carnaby, Chief Executive, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand

Like many of the world’s national libraries, the National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, is exploring and imagining what the next generation of our library will look like. It has been a year of tremendous change for us. The passing of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa Act 2003 has provided us with an opportunity to think strategically about the library of the future.

“We are committed to developing a world-leading, next-generation national library, but we cannot and will not do this without understanding the hearts and minds and aspirations of New Zealanders. So, we will soon engage New Zealanders from all walks of life, inviting them to imagine what they want for their National Library. We have given ourselves four years to complete this transformation.

“It’s always a continuing conversation and we continue to listen and converse with our various communities. The messages from the library and information profession in New Zealand are clear and we are in the process of responding to their needs. Our EPIC project has provided access to 16,000 online journals to all libraries at minimal cost. Another pilot project, Online Librarian, provides online support for school kids looking for quality information on the Internet and complements and enriches the services already provided by school and public libraries.

Gwen Bird, Head, Collections Management, WAC Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Of the many ways to get to know users, the most rewarding and valuable for me is still the face-to-face encounter with individual readers at the point of need. Working in Collections Management, it's a high priority for me to put in a few hours each week on the main reference desk in our Library, and also to staff the virtual online reference service on a regular basis. Of course, there are any number of other ways to get to know users — the Library surveys our users regularly and makes sure our results are statistically valid, we hold meetings and invite community input, host receptions for faculty members, we sit on campus committees, go into classrooms and offer course-integrated instruction — all of that. But there's really nothing to compare with meeting with a reader who is actually seeking research material, and coming to ask for assistance in doing so.

Tian Lesheng, Vice-director of the Library, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

There are two approaches we use to learn more about the information needs of our users: direct and indirect. The direct way is to communicate with the users face-to-face or via telephone or email. Users are always very pleased to recommend to us the documents and resources they want. There are also many channels by which you can determine user requirements by more indirect means, for example, teaching plans, curricula, scientific research projects being undertaken within the university, borrowing and reading records or the lists of references cited by our scientific researchers. As a librarian, you find that every corner of your campus is full of information indicating the needs of faculty and students for library resources so long as you observe attentively and serve wholeheartedly.

Stephen Prowse, Journals/Document Delivery Coordinator, Information Services Centre King's College London, Guy's Campus, London, UK

There are plenty of opportunities at King’s for library staff and users to get to know each other. We have a number of committees, such as site-based user committees, which meet regularly and give users a chance to have their say on items that affect them, as well as enabling library staff to showcase new developments or report changes to services. Last summer we undertook a major survey of our users to find out their opinions on a range of issues. This year we have formed a Customer Services division, with a new appointment at Executive level as the head, comprising those teams that have the most day to day contact with our users – Information Specialists who work closely with the Schools of the College, the Enquiries team and Counter Services staff. This change in structure emphasizes a more customer-focused approach to our users.

Tracy Y. Allen, Head of Access Services, Augustus C. Lon Health Sciences Library, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Columbia University has a vast and varied assortment of users and materials.
In an attempt to understand what is vital today and will be vital tomorrow, we utilize a number of ways to get to know our users. We attend university wide seminars, and join committees outside of the library — here you can find out where the next big push will be, and begin planning accordingly. We visit, lunch and “shmooze” — in a relaxed setting people are better able to communicate what they would like to see in the library and you can also discover what’s working and what’s not working regarding library services and resources. We also keep statistics — both at the point of service and at the department level — to help identify which departments use which resources. Inquiring about patrons’ work can also be helpful — if a patron asks a unique question, we try to delve deeper and ask about their research.