Library Revolution

Nov 21 2007

The Patrons We’re Ignoring

Posted by: Emily in Library Marketing, Library Service, Library Technology, Social Networking

A wonderful colleague of mine said something very interesting (and very true!) over lunch a few weeks ago: “Librarians like to provide services for the people that they know.” She said this with a sigh, going on to point out that this is all fine and good, but that sometimes it leads us to neglect services for other segments of the population we serve just because they’re not already coming in the door.

Please read David Lee King’s excellent post about the dilemma this puts us in.

In one sentence: “Stop ignoring your library’s rapidly-growing digital community.”

Tags: library use, service

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 10:34 am and is filed under Library Marketing, Library Service, Library Technology, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “The Patrons We’re Ignoring”

Buzzy says:
November 25th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Ah, but don’t let the excitement for serving the digital community overshadow other underserved communities who might not be so connected: immigrants, the poor, the homebound, the disabled, and others. Many libraries have been historically rather poor at serving these populations, too.
Emily says:
November 25th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
This is true. But I think that, while many libraries do not serve these populations as well as they might, at least they (usually) acknowledge that these are underserved segments of their communities. A lot of the time, I think that librarians don’t even realize that they are missing their digital community. Many don’t even realize that it’s there.
Quick Links - Librarianship and Others - 07 December 2007 by Blogging Librarian says:
December 7th, 2007 at 1:42 am
[…] - Ignoring our Digital CommunityDavid Lee King feels that we, as librarians, are ignoring our digital patrons. I guess I have to say in some ways we are ignoring our digital patrons. But we, as in MPOW, have slowly embraced the Web 2.0 wave and are making in-roads in reaching out to the digital community through our blogs. Of course, there are areas for improvement and I believe we are slowly working towards becoming more attuned to our patrons who live in the digital sphere.(via Library Revolution) […]

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The Patrons We’re Ignoring

3 Responses to “The Patrons We’re Ignoring”

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