Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model

Jeannette Woodward

Jan 2005 · American Library Association

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How can libraries make a difference in their communities when customers choose to hang out in the spacious, well-stocked new bookstore instead? With the goal of helping libraries market their services using low-cost or no-cost techniques, Woodward shares practical lessons for any library's revitalization inspired by the success of mega bookstores.

Bookstores have succeeded by focusing on the customer, and libraries need to take a page from this playbook. While keeping one eye on their mission—to broaden library use and increase relevance while serving community needs—libraries can improve customer service, looks, and functionality in ways that enhance its community mission. Use Creating the Customer-Driven Library to:

• Offer accessible, customer-friendly signs, catalogs, and interior spaces
• Identify the unique needs of your library's community—then meet those needs
• Create a step-by-step, customized promotion plan that communicates with your market
• Find cost-effective ways to connect-—from user-friendly web sites to promo brochures
• Show customers what the library has to offer and entice them to give it a try

Libraries remain vitally important to the organizations and communities they serve. Using these outreach and marketing strategies, Woodward shows libraries how to "Become better than a bookstore," even without a hefty budget.

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Jeannette Woodward is a principal of Wind River Library and Nonprofit Consulting. After a career in academic library administration, she began a second career in public libraries, serving as director of the Fremont County Library System in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Woodward is the author of several books, including What Every Librarian Should Know about Electronic Privacy, Nonprofit Essentials: Managing Technology, Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model, and Countdown to a New Library: Managing the Building Project. She holds a master's degree in library and information science from Rutgers University, with doctoral study at the University of Texas at Austin.