While putting off folding laundry tonight, I was thinking about the Ted Talk we watched at last week’s staff meeting and his reference to how simply being observed by others often causes us to change our behavior in some way. I was also thinking about Michael’s latest trip on the book bike to the Johnston Little League at Lew Clarkson Park. A common experience we’ve both had with the book bike is that people are either: 1) more interested in talking about the bike than the library; 2) afraid that we’re selling something and avoid eye contact; or 3) realize who we are and keep walking (I’m sure there are more than 3 types but I’m stopping here for now). Maybe the #3s are in too much of a hurry to stop. Maybe they don’t know about the kinds of things we offer now. Or maybe they had a bad experience at school or some other library. Their teachers, parents, or whoever didn’t think they did well. They resented being thought of as a “bad” reader or student or whatever. Maybe they were left with a bad feeling toward institutions that remind them of education.
A big part of our job is not only showing people the path to the whatever they came to the library for but also trying to clear that path–to make the whole process of getting library stuff as painless as possible. Sometimes what stands in people’s way is fear of judgment. Maybe they don’t know how things are organized and don’t want to ask; maybe they’re not sure how to phrase the question because they can’t think of what we know or what we have that could answer it.
The point is, there are likely people out there that have this kind of experience and it presents a barrier to them using the library in ways that could help them. A simple thing we can do is to try not to express negative judgments in our interactions with patrons. (I suppose this is the same as being friendly.) I think we do a great job at this and this is a big part of why we have so many regular patrons and why I hear so much positive feedback about patron’s experiences at JPL.
The other day a lady at the reference desk approached and said, “I’m looking for a book but I don’t even know the whole title.” I had to coax the question out of her–try to convince her that there was no price to pay for a half-baked question. “I might be able to find it.” She thought for sure she didn’t have enough information to even ask the question and felt embarrassed. Finally she said, “It’s ‘Breath Becomes’ something.” I thought, “C’mon, lady.” She was ecstatic that I knew what book she meant.