The Customer-Focused Library: Re-Inventing the Public Library From the Outside-In

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

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 resourcesand the resource-gathering environmenttoday'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 serviceseven the building itselfare 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.

Reviews

Four stars for The Customer-Focused Library . . . In this outstanding work, Joe persuasively lays out the case for re-imagining what the library does from the point of view of the customer. * It's all good (scanblog.blogspot.com) *
An in-depth index enables the work to be used again and again for reference, while the writing style encourages one to read from cover to cover. This is a valuable book not only for public libraries, as the title indicates, but any library wishing to focus on the customer, or patron. * ARBAonline *
Intriguing to some and perhaps disturbing to others, this high energy work explores the ways in which public libraries could be redesigned to focus on the needs of customers. * Reference & Research Book News *

Author Bio

Joseph R. Matthews is a consultant who has assisted numerous academic, public, and special libraries in a wide variety of projects.