Editorial

The right lines: an irregular column from a thrice-dipped Tory

They are called customers

Who are they, those people who come through the front door of the library? The ones who go to the OPAC and then walk off to the shelves, returning a little while later with a pile of books, or else an unhappy look on the face. The people who ask questions at the reference desk,who read the newspapers, who ask for the latest CD-ROM. Even the ones who work from home or office and who use the library at a distance by looking at the its home page, or the Web subject guides. Are they users, or borrowers, or readers?Are they clients? Perhaps they are patrons. How often are they customers?

I will argue that librarians must accept that the market governs our everyday working lives and that learning to call those people who come into the library "customers" is the first place to start.

The origin of the word "customer"in library service may be clouded, but the primary source of the modern drive towards quality customer service is clear. The landmark book was In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman (1982). These two authors researched the critical factors common to the most successful companies in the USA and found that customer service was one of, if not the, most important factors that were common to all successful companies.

McKee, who favours a customer-driven approach to library management, dismisses the terms "borrowers","readers" and "users" as "redolent of a passive approach to service: a take-it-or-leave-it attitude which provides a range of services for those who bother to find out about them and use them" (McKee 1989, p. 2). The passivity of this attitude, McKee claims, extends to an unwillingness on the part of librarians to discover what services those users might actually want. Users,presumably, just use what is provided. The term "borrower" is plainly misleading, as not everyone in the library will borrow items. "Reader" is another term that portrays people behaving in a functional way, rather than as humans with individual and separate needs. As Barters (1995) put it, "all those terms are either too passive or too-supply-led".

Unless our library is heavily influenced by American practice we are unlikely to use the term "patron". Perhaps the association with being patronising is too close for comfort; or else the idea of a patron being like a sponsor is confusing. Either way, the term has not caught on outside North America.

The use of the term "client" is well established in the professions, especially among the likes of doctors and lawyers who see their clients at a prearranged time, in their own offices, and for a suitably impressive fee. There are probably organisations where the information intermediary/librarian has clients, notably in the corporate sector;and of course there are information brokers who work in this way. McKee does not like the term because of its association with subordination to the expertise and judgement of the professional (who in this case is a librarian), because that means the nature and extent of the service will always be in the control of the supplier (the librarian) (McKee, 1989). Yet there are certain potentially useful associations that come with the use of client as a term, such as its implication that the librarian in the relationship is a professional whose knowledge and judgement is to be regarded as beyond the capacity of the client. Also, the power to charge a fee is not to be ignored.

The simple truth, however, is that only a few librarians have enough time to treat people as clients. The majority of those people who come through the main door will enter because they want to,at a time which suits them, and they do not necessarily want or need to speak with a librarian, so they cannot, using the above definition, be called clients.

So I conclude that those people who come through the front door of the library are customers. Why do librarians flinch from using this word? I suggest it is because they are caught in an out-dated paradigm and refuse to accept modern realities. Talk to a typical retail manager and he/she will tell you of all the competitors their business must confront on a daily basis. Libraries have competitors, too, such as television stations, video stores, bookshops, and even other libraries. We need to secure "custom" and we must do it in the face of stiff competition, so why not accept reality and call people "customers"?

Take a look at an Asian example of customer service. Courts, the electrical and furniture retailers in Singapore,have launched their Consumer Charter aimed at "you, our valued customer", which includes a statement of the aim to offer the "best possible service" (Courts Consumer Charter, 1997). In the charter are 11 pledges, which cover prices,fee accessories, delivery of goods, exchanges, guarantees, product testing and a credit scheme. The pledges most closely related to customer service by retail staff are as follows:

We pledge to: provide specialist advice; give instant service; extend a warm welcome

This looks very much like the way we believe we treat people in our libraries. Courts call these people their valued customers, so why don't libraries?

What of the claim that librarians do not handle commodities? Of course we do. We deal with books and journals,CD-ROMs and Web sites, and we handle them all the time. Information transfer has some magical qualities, but putting the information into the hands of people who need it comes from perspiration, not by osmosis. If we do not handle real things(commodities), then our libraries will not do anything.

Once again I am forced to conclude that it is a failed philosophy of librarianship that lies behind this terminological problem. Too many librarians have been contaminated by a false philosophy that places librarianship on a higher plane than business. Wrong. We work with business all day long ­ we use its products, we contribute to profit margins. If we are to gain the benefits of being key contributors to the knowledge economy, then we must accept that we live and work within the economy. We must learn to love the market.

Philip CalvertAssociate Editor

Courts Consumer Charter(1997), Singapore.

McKee, B. (1989), Planning Library Service, Bingley, London.

Peters, T.J. and Waterman,R.H. (1982), In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-run Companies, Harper and Row, New York, NY.

Asian Libraries, Vol. 8 No. 4, 1999, pp. 97-99. © MCB University Press, 1017-6748