High Tech, High Touch: Library Customer Service through Technology

Citation

Turner, R. (2005), "High Tech, High Touch: Library Customer Service through Technology", New Library World, Vol. 106 No. 1/2, pp. 95-96. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800510575393

With the increasing automation of libraries and other information services, there is usually a commensurate decrease in staffing levels. However, users of libraries still need help and support to access the services available. Also, automation itself leads to increased expectations from the client group as they become increasingly IT literate. This book explores how library services can use the technology to provide solutions to the issue of customer services using real‐life lessons and examples from libraries in the USA.

This study obviously focuses on the American experience but its lessons are certainly transferable to other nations. Lynn Jurewicz is the director of Mooresville Public Library in Indiana, while Todd Cutler is the director of E*vanced Solutions, so the authors represent both the library and technology environments.

High Tech, High Touch is primarily a book about how technical solutions that are often created for business in general can be tailored and adapted to library services.

The eleven chapters are all well written with practical examples and a bibliography where relevant. There is also a general bibliography of largely journal articles so that the information and ideas presented are current. The index is detailed and thorough to ease access to the work.

The opening chapter looks at libraries on the Internet. The authors point out that libraries are having to move on from simply providing links to their catalogue to using the Internet as part of their information delivery system. Libraries have also diversified from traditional services to offering multiple formats, online reference services, meeting room reservations, electronic newsletters and in‐house electronic databases. The need for libraries to develop and purchase systems that meet their own criteria and the needs of their patrons is stressed.

From this starting point, Jurewicz and Cutler proceed to look at what libraries can learn from business. This chapter also considers the importance of empowering patrons so that they can “shop” for services on library websites, while also addressing the needs of the individual through customisation.

A more specific chapter explores the use of e‐mail and how automatic e‐mail notification systems can assist in promoting products and services in a similar way to organisations such as eBay and Amazon. This section looks at the technical aspects of setting up such a system.

Developing this theme, the authors go on to consider a dynamic web‐based event calendar with a sign‐up system. Again, this solves the issue of less staff in libraries and for those staff to be freed from mundane duties. The people who run the individual events can control the calendar themselves to ensure that it is up to date.

The next chapter looks at the potential of an online meeting room reservation system, similar to those used in businesses or for the diaries of people in business. Although written from the perspective of public libraries, these issues are also relevant to all sections of the information profession.

On a wider theme, the work then looks at portals, gateways and directories to facilitate access to information for the customer. Portals offer relevancy to the individual user. At a time when people are flocking to the Internet for information, portals and gateways make libraries and their collections still viable. Because of the organisational skills of librarians they are in an ideal position to provide such services.

A further chapter then looks at local history, with considerations of on‐line obituaries, photographs and local newspaper articles through advances such as digitisation.

The use of the internet to gather statistics and such projects as summer reading programmes is also looked at. The use of online access to users who are not library members is relevant not just to public libraries but these issues and solutions apply to academic libraries and others.

Of particularly interest is the marketing of all these web‐based library services so that there is good customer service to all of the potential client group. This chapter explores newsletters, interactive web sites, e‐mail advertising, in‐house promotion etc. And for non‐users the concepts of community partnerships with, for example, business and schools, and newspaper advertising are considered.

In general this book is an excellent point of reference for any information professional wishing to develop the use of technology to ensure that their services are both technologically accessible and customer focused. Although perhaps overlooking those patrons who are not computer literate or who have access to the technology, the issues and lessons studied in this report are both practical and transferable to different sectors of the profession. It is also heartening to read a book on the technological aspects of librarianship that does not overlook the human ones.