Goshen Public Library & Historical Society | 203 Main St Goshen, NY 10924 | Phone: 845.294.6606 | Fax: 845.294.7158 | RCLS Member
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Pleasing our audience
By plnkh | April 14, 2006
I recently attended the bi-annual Public Library Association conference and came back from Boston brimming with ideas (and frustrations). No matter how you look at it our building is too small for the community. The best we can do (and we do our best) is to stress the most heavily used services and address your most frequent demands. Compared to other small public libraries we do a good job. But there is so much more we could, and should be doing for this community that we can’t because we have no space to expand into. To stress one service, fulfilling one need, we have to de-emphasize or eliminate another.
With that in mind we have conducted an in-house survey to determine how we’re doing and what you want that you are not getting. We chose the week of our budget vote for the survey, because voting draws in people who are neither library users nor supporters. Since you all pay taxes and our job is to serve the whole community (babies to seniors), we want to see if we’re overlooking something important to you that we could provide. The survey will continue through Saturday and I’ll publish the results here when they are tallied.
We encourage you to share your thoughts on this Blog. A community dialogue about your library would benefit all of us. If you need help blogging, you can contact Jaemi at the library at 294-6606, x18, or via IM (see sidebar).
And check back soon to see where we are heading.
Topics: General |
January 29th, 2007 at 2:56:01 pm
Can’t you access the person’s account in your new system by their name and address? Your goal is to provide open access to resources, but this is a major limitation. With no line at the the book checkout* and with a photo i.d. license stating the person’s name and address, what prevents your staff from accessing the person’s library account and being able to assist the person by checking out the book(s) they’ve selected?
In this day and age it seems a bit backward not to be able to do so.
* I can understand that this might take a bit more time and would be too cumbersome if there were others waiting to check out books.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:56:45 pm
A few years back we began offering key cards for the convenience of patrons who didn’t always have their wallet or purse, and hence their library card. The barcode number on your library card is uniquely yours. Items checked to your library card, when all numbers are scanned, are error free.
We share a borrower database with the 48 libraries in the Ramapo Catskill Library System.There are many instances of borrowers with the same name. When we look up your record using a photo ID we introduce the likelihood of human error and books being charged to the wrong borrower - one who may not even use this library.We have to proceed very carefully so as not to create a problem for one of our partner libraries. System-wide rules encourage the use of barcode numbers. (e.g. If you call in to renew an item, we ask for your barcode number to find your account.)