What do customers really want? LO5985

NEANY@aol.com
Tue, 5 Mar 1996 08:25:52 -0500

Replying to LO5971 --

JPFasked the non rhetorical question!!!

>More relevant to my direct application, how could a library unit that
provides basically full-scope library service - from acquisition to reference
to circulation to financial find out what its customers want, when the
possibility exists of the unimagined state of best service?

You certainly cause me to thinking about many things with your
'expectations and perceptions' and 'what would the customer want if s/he
really knew s/he could have such things' statements. My assumptions and
mental models of what my organization offers to it's clients certainly
colours (or worse) what I think I'm asking and what I believe I have
heard. (make sense?). I am from time to time shocked when I find the lack
of congruence in all of the above,... which brings me to the library
customer.

What is my mental model of what a library's full service. Certainly it is
archaic at first blush. Soooo..... I put on my dreamers hat and asked
What do I need? What don't I need? What do I want? ...don't want? Are
there things I don't wnat or need that I don't know I don't want or need
(and don't get) them from the library?

Do I have to go to the library to get any or all of these things? By
definition I'd guess that it's a collections of books, periodicals, music,
etc arranged so I can find what I want. In a building or room
someplace...

I happen to have discoverd a new library for myself. It's the 'net'.

Should a library be a 'virtual core' of any and all that I want to learn
about? I think yes. A library should be my community of learning and
mental recreation. With or without buildings, with or without people at
the same place and time with me. Oh, yes, a library should not always be
clothed with an air of silence.

When I start on these things I think of the song "Ramblin Rose" because
that's what my mind starts to do and I'm never sure of the sense that I
may make.... and heaven knows I'm not really going to re read all of this
to check that out!!!! Enough for now.

Joe DiVIncenzo
NEANY@aol.com

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NEANY@aol.com

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