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##  Small Public Libraries Can Serve Big. ERIC Digest.                           

Small public libraries can deliver service like big libraries,                  without sacrificing hometown warmth and charm. By borrowing                     strategies used by successful small businesses in the private                   sector, defining goals and exploiting ubiquitous low cost                       technologies, small public libraries can serve customer wants as                well as much larger institutions. Responding to just three strategic            questions, any small library can improve customer service, make                 better use of available resources and open up new service                       opportunities, without a bigger building, budget or book                        collection: 
* What business are you in? 
* What do your customers            want? 
* How do you get it for them? WHAT BUSINESS ARE YOU                   IN?One of the most telling questions any organization can ask               is "What is our business?"  The follow up question, equally                     important, is "What is none of our business?" 
"We're in the                   library business, of course," is no more useful strategically than              the caterer who says, "I'm in the food business." It helps not at               all to go  to the dictionary and look up "library"; your library                will not be described there. You have no choice but to answer your              own question, beginning with "this library," not "a library" or "the            library" or (worse) "Libraries." The platonic ideal "library" exists            nowhere outside the student carrels of library science graduate                 schools. 
You should ask, like a journalist, who, what, where, why             and how. 
* Who will this library serve? 
* What do they want? 
*            Where will we get it for them? 
* Why should we, rather than some              other agency, provide this service? 
* How will we provide what the            patron wants? 
The answers to these questions will tell you what               your business is, and provide you with a first draft of your revised            library mission statement. 
Then what is none of your business?                Everything and anything else. Face it; you can't be all libraries to            all people. The good news is if you aren't trying to be everything,             you can be the very thing your small community wants in a public                library. You may have to abandon some of your most heartfelt beliefs            and assumptions about what a library should be, and what people                 should want from a library; but increased customer satisfaction and             increased circulation will soon replace any sense of loss you may               suffer. It's not what you aren't that matters, it's what you                    are. 
Defining what your library is and isn't allows you to focus              your resources on the services most important to most of your                   customers and on developing connections to those specialized                    services your customers may occasionally require. For the physics               undergraduate home for the holidays who asks you for the latest                 information on quantum mechanics, you phone your contact at the                 university library and say, "I'm sending a friend of ours over to               you; we don't do quarks."  Nobody will expect you to be a college               research library, unless you do. To the physics undergraduate home              for the holidays who says, "I'm tired of all these quarks and muons;            give me something light," you say, "Ah, we've got just the book for             you." You have "something light" because that's one of your                     specialties, isn't it? GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANTWhat do you                call a business that doesn't give its customers what they want, when            and where and why-ever they want it? An out of business. If you have            defined your library mission as something other than everything,                what are you left to do? Find out what your customers want, and give            it to them. Be extremely suspicious of words like "need"                        and "should" and "ought" with respect to patron borrowing. It's none            of your business what they should, or ought, or need to read. Your              business is giving them what they want. You have no more business               deciding for your customers what they will read than the most                   militant censor has. Your job is to sense what they want, not censor            what they get. 
Unlike many larger public libraries, small public              libraries often have the advantage of maintaining a close day-to-day            relationship with customers. The librarian hears what they want not             only at the library, but also during chance meetings at the market,             at the Founders' Day picnic, anywhere people stop to talk. That                 helps, but it is not enough. Anecdotal information can be as                    misleading in a small town as anywhere else. 
Do the Math 
Small              libraries must use the same tools of analysis that big libraries and            successful businesses use. Hard numbers are needed to support                   decision-making on acquisitions, programming, display space                     priorities and other library management functions. Your numbers may             be smaller, but they are no less significant. Fortunately, the                  computing tools needed to compile and analyze information about                 circulation, traffic, preferences and costs are readily available               and affordable in off-the-shelf hardware and software. 
For a small            library to serve its customers as well as a bigger library, careful             attention must be paid to actual library-use behavior. What percent             of your lending is fiction, non-fiction, videos, children's books?              How many people visit the library each day? How many items do they              borrow per visit? What days and hours do they visit most often?                 Measure what they do, not what they should or might or ought to                 do. 
Because a small public library has far less ammunition to                 spend hitting its targets, the small library must aim better. The               rifle, not the shotgun, is the collection development analog of                 choice for the smaller library. Good, reliable, up-to-date                      materials-use intelligence is the small library's best defense                  against collection obsolescence and acquisitions waste. 
If you're             spending eighty percent of your acquisitions budget on materials                that account for twenty percent of your circulation, you're doing               your patrons no more good than the Ma and Pa grocery with half its              inventory tied up in canned artichokes. You can lead Rozinante to               the library, but you can't make him read Don Quixote. GET IT FOR              THEM JUST IN TIMEOnce you've decided not to be everything, you              can become the very thing your community really wants from its small            public library. You must: 
* weed ruthlessly 
* scrounge                      shamelessly 
* borrow strategically. 
Most librarians hate weeding            their collections. Once acquired, books become members of the                   library family; they're as hard to get rid of as the uncle who came             to visit for a weekend and stayed for a year. Unloved, unused,                  unwanted by your customers, there's something about an unread book              that makes it as hard to part with as the pet cat you've grown                  allergic to. Besides evoking your pity, a book unwanted by your                 library customers is prima facie evidence of your failure to                    correctly judge patron wants, even if it was a bestseller in                    bookstores and a most-read title in some other library. And don't               you know that book you weeded last week because no one has borrowed             it for five years will be Oprah's pick next month? 
Here you must              follow the example of the farmer. If you don't weed frequently and              well, the "good" will be choked out by the "bad." Don't let your                library collection lie fallow on the shelves. If it's virtually                 dying on the vine, harvest it and give it to some other library                 where it may be more to the customers' tastes. Again, witness the               farmer: books, like livestock, are not pets. A book, like a                     beefsteak, is a consumable with a shelf life and an expiration                  date: "After X years, discard unread item." It may hurt like the                dickens, and it may make you feel like Scrooge, but if you want to              keep your collection fresh and active, weed often, weed deep. 
If              your budget is small and your needs are big -- beg, borrow, and                 scrounge. Successful small businesses don't pay full price; why                 should you? Use the classic "assuming close" known to all good                  salespeople: "Would you like to donate that today, or will it be                free?" Scour thrift stores and garage sales for books and videos,               music, furniture and supplies. Go to auctions and bid low. Disdain              any video not marked "previously viewed." Fill in your "must have"              classics Dewey numbers with inexpensive editions.  Purchase                     materials through a library consortium, regional library system or              large public library, where volume purchasing commands substantial              discounts. 
Whenever possible buy the collected or multi-book                  combos, instead of the individual titles. Use e-mail to establish a             lively "gift and exchange" arrangement with other libraries. Never              let personal pride get in your way when dealing for your                        library. "If it was just me, that would be an okay price, I guess,              but it's for our little public library, and..." Think of yourself as            the noble scavenger, the hunter-gatherer foraging for your                      culture-hungry library tribe. 
Businesspeople call                             it "just-in-time" inventory; librarians call it "interlibrary loan."            It is, without question, the single most powerful tool the small                library can use to extend local library services. The use of                    interlibrary borrowing not only gives you and your  patrons access              to the enormous combined resources of many libraries, it allows you             to dedicate your resources - money, shelf space, time - to your                 customers' most immediate requirements. If you can borrow it, you               don't have to own it. You can spend your limited resources on the               materials and services that your tightly-focused customer profile               tells you will most benefit your customers. 
You're in the business            of loaning, not owning. Your goal is to get what your customers                 want. How you get it will determine whether you are a broker or                 broke. By concentrating your resources on those materials most in               demand in your library and borrowing everything else, you can                   achieve a strategic marriage of having and holding made in heaven.              By playing the game of books "just in time," you will score big in              customer satisfaction and cost accounting. 
"Do you have...?" "Yes,            we do. I'll get it for you." 
By focusing efforts strategically on             well-defined customer preferences, buying, getting and borrowing                strategically and defining your mission realistically, your small               public library will be big in customer service and satisfaction. You            can't be everything, but by concentrating on what your customers                want most, you can really be something. FURTHER                               READINGBernstein, Philip. "Best Practices of Effective Nonprofit            Organizations: A Practitioner's Guide." New York: Foundation Center,            1997. 
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. "Don Quixote." 1605, 1615.               Reprint (2 vols. in 1), New York: Knopf, 1991. 
Jacob, M. E.                   L. "Strategic Planning: A How-to-do-it Manual for Librarians." New              York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1990. 
McClure, Charles                   R. "Updating Planning and Role Setting for Public Libraries: A                  Manual of Options and Procedures." Public Libraries 32 (4):                     198-99 (1993). 
Traverso, D. K. "Outsmarting Goliath: How to                   Achieve Equal Footing with Companies that Are Bigger, Richer, Older,            and Better Known." Princeton, New Jersey: Bloomberg Press,                      2000. 
Van House, N. A. "Output Measures for Public Libraries: A               Manual of Standardized Procedures." Chicago: American Library                   Association Editions, 1987. 
Weingand, D. E. "Future-driven Library            Marketing." Chicago: American Library Association Editions,                     1998. 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Norm Parry, MLS, is Director of the New              Woodstock Free Library, a rural upstate New York public library                 chartered to serve a population of 900. In the six years under                  Parry's direction, library circulation has increased from 10,000 to             45,000. Parry is also an adjunct instructor of computer concepts at             the Utica School of Commerce and owner of a small                               personnel-consulting business, Cyrano Ink. 
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