APPLYING SHOPPING ANTHROPOLOGY TO LIBRARIES
While I was reading Paco Underhill's book, Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping, I was struck by how shoppers' behavior resembles library users' behavior. Underhill studies shoppers. He tracks them, counts them, videotapes them; he watches how they figure their way around, and how they read or don't read signs. But he also studies how retailers either make shopping a trying and unsatisfying experience, or make it easy, efficient, and even fun.
The price retailers pay for not understanding how to make shopping a comfortable, even pleasurable experience is lost sales. The price libraries pay is in lost good will, which is our most important asset. Because the difference between libraries and retailers is that people pay for our facilities and services whether or not they ever use them -- all citizens pay for the public library, all students pay for the college library...
What do we not understand about shoppers/library users? For one thing, that when they walk in our door, they need to look around, orient themselves. They are not ready, Underhill says, to be engaged with services, baskets, brochures, and anything displayed in this "decompression zone," the first 10 feet or so, will be ignored. If that is also the exit, however, and people will be waiting in line near it, they will appreciate something to read or look at while they wait, so any signs in this zone might more profitably be pointed toward the circulation area, and lettered in large enough type to be read from that distance. Elevators, internet terminal waiting areas, and any other places where people wait are also good areas for posting brochures, reading lists, instructions, announcements of upcoming events.
Many of us don't cater enough to the physical limitations of the human body. People come in with coats, briefcases, purses, bookbags, even babes in arms. They need places to put stuff down. If there is a counter or table or chair near their quarry, they will use that space for this purpose whether you intend them to or not. Which means it might be a good idea to build in counter space for that specific purpose. Our users also have a serious shortage of hands. Once they start collecting books or magazines, there will come a point when they stop simply because the process of gathering materials has become too unwieldy. Underhill suggests scattering shopping baskets throughout the premises -- perhaps beside the elevator on each floor.
What do physical libraries have that virtual libraries do not? The appeal to the tactile and sensual. He recommends making it easy for people to not only see our wares but touch them, leaf through them. This is a strong argument for at least a fair amount of display shelving, where books, videos, magazines, children's books and CDs face forward in an uncrowded arrangement that invites people to pick them up and look at them.
Another thing he talks about is the creative use of complementary adjacencies -- displays of ladies' suits near the silk blouses that might be worn with them, for instance. Our adjacencies are by classification, and often by format, which means that in stressing one subject relationship, some possible other relationships may be ignored. If people go to the women's studies area, HQ 1100-HQ1400, they will miss the books about women composers in ML, women artists in N, American women writers in PS; they will also miss children's books and reference books and video series on women's achievements, the audiobook of Gloria Steinem's autobiography, Women's Sports magazine, and the web page we might have constructed that links in key sites on women's studies. This is the kind of adjacency we can create with our exhibits, thereby also letting people know about services they may not even have realized we offered. Since we don't do all that well in catering to men's interests, perhaps we could create some sense of welcomeness for them with similar adjacencies, displaying a mixed assortment of books and videos on sports, computers and other gadgets, auto maintenance, home repair, hobbies and the like.
But according to Underhill, the most important single factor in an enjoyable and successful shopping experience is human contact. He says "The more shopper-employee contacts that take place, the greater the average sale. Talking with an employee has a way of drawing a customer in closer." That's an argument for not sitting at the desk waiting for people to need us, but initiating contact, at the least with a smile, or a "Are you finding what you want?"
He has equally interesting things to say about the great mystery of effective signage, about the way the building, services and arrangement affect each other, and about web design that matches the needs and expectations users bring to our home pages.
It's easy for us to be complacent about our success; our regulars love us, and our circulation statistics and reference statistics look good. We are lucky in being able to draw upon widespread public good will, even from people who do not use our services. But an awful lot of our service population is not among our regulars. In an era that increasingly demands that every public agency justify its worth, and that every part of a larger commercial organization justify its cost-effectiveness, it would pay us to work at making our services more visible and more valuable. That's why I recommend studying and learning from Mr. Underhill's book.
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COOL QUOTES
But contrary to the belief of some, the danger does not lie in the disappearance of the public temples of the book long ago endowed by Andrew Carnegie and other beloved capitalists. Rather, the threat now comes from capitalism itself, which in the digital age values private property above almost any other kind and has set itself on a course of relentless political maneuvering to shrink the boundaries of the public domain.
Julian Dibbell
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Try substituting the word "librarians" in this quote:
It is dangerously narriwminded for a storeowner to believe that competition comes only from others in his or her category. In truth, retailers compete with every other demand on consumer time and money.
Paco Underhill. Why We Buy
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Note:
I've updated my How To Find Out of Print Books page, at http://marylaine.com/bookbyte/getbooks.html. If you find it useful, you are welcome to copy and distribute it as long as you keep my name and URL attached.
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You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 2000.
