Library

Marketing the library and its resources is one of the hardest things we do. No matter what type of library—academic, public, or special library—marketing our resources is essential. We know what we have to offer and what services we perform, but sometimes our patrons don’t. The goal of marketing efforts is to educate our patrons, as well as to attract new ones.

Several months ago, a colleague of mine told me the following words: “You’re not an instruction librarian. . . . but you will be called upon to teach a few (or more) freshmen-level library instruction sessions at the library.” At the time, I didn’t really pay attention. I mean, I am the Web services librarian, not an instruction librarian. I was sure I wouldn’t be asked to teach… at least not a lot. My colleague’s words proved to be more prophetic than I could have imagined, especially at the start of the Fall 2010 semester.

Service design is a holistic, co-creative, and user-centered approach to understanding user behavior for creating or refining services. Use this LITA Guide to help as a toolkit for implementing service design studies and projects at all types of libraries. It begins with directions for how to create a service design team and assembling a user working group for your library and move through the various phases in a service design journey. The authors outline the tools required to gain insights into user behavior and expectation and how to diagnose the difference between a symptom and a problem users face when interacting within the library environment. The guide features a series of examples that the service design team can use to learn how to work with library staff and patrons to find out what current user experience is like and how to refine services to better meet user expectations.

This book is a toolkit, not a step-by-step, paint-by-the-numbers book. It is geared towards libraries of all types and sizes and will provide tools that any library can use and ideas for developing a service design project that fits within the means of your library so that your project will be meaningful, useful, and sustainable. While several books have been written on how to implement service design, this book will be the first to explain how to practice service design in libraries.

Service design is a holistic, collaborative methodology that puts the user at the center of the service delivery model. Because this approach prioritizes users and their overall experience, it’s a valuable framework that librarians and administrators can use as a group to assess, revise, and create library services, spaces, and workflows. In this book, the authors use an action-oriented assortment of exercises, templates, and tools to make service design more accessible to all types of libraries. Escorting readers through all the fundamentals, this how-to-do-it manual
* introduces the service design concept, what it is used for, and how it can benefit every institution;
* includes a checklist for determining if service design is the best approach;
* describes the four necessary phases for any service design project, with key exercises for thinking in service design terms to craft a “thick description” of the library’s users and behavior;
* explains the importance of making assessment part of the fabric of the library, and offers tools following through;
* reviews real-life examples of implemented service design, spotlighting how students and researchers use library services;
* provides templates for documenting service design; and
offers advice for moving forward and managing change.

This book is the perfect primer for those new to the methodology as well as a useful reference to consult throughout a service design project.

This article introduces using Customer Journey Maps (CJM) in libraries and the role mapping can play in visualizing the user's journey in order to help library staff better understand and optimize the user's experience. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the importance and relevance of the mapping process for any library user experience. The article will also review findings from the Reed College Library use of mapping discovered during our own review of services and resource usage.

Extending the library’s presence beyond a brick and mortar structure is essential as resources become increasingly available in electronic format. One way to achieve this is to create a broad-reaching tool like a timeline using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments Exhibit (MIT’s SIMILE Exhibit), a cloud-based program that allows for the creation of data-driven websites with minimal programming or Web expertise. With this easy-to-learn technology, a library can extend its Web presence by providing online access to its rich historical collections. This article is a case study on the implementation of an online timeline, the “Sonoma County Timeline”, which was used to showcase the library’s resources at Sonoma State University. The author also demonstrates how to build a timeline using MIT’s SIMILE Exhibit software, and how a timeline can be used to extend the library’s presence to its community. A guide to managing the project, a status report for the Sonoma State University Library’s instance of Exhibit, and a discussion of best practices are also detailed in the article.

This article introduces using Customer Journey Maps (CJM) in libraries and the role mapping can play in visualizing the user's journey in order to help library staff better understand and optimize the user's experience. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the importance and relevance of the mapping process for any library user experience. The article will also review findings from the Reed College Library use of mapping discovered during our own review of services and resource usage.