Interview with Bill Liddelow

Does your library service invest time and training into developing staff knowledge about the collection, new titles, and selling points/appeal characteristics? Do your staff know what's in your collection development statement? Do they know what resources to use to build their knowledge? Do your staff just check-out books, or do they connect people with reading? After reading about Perth's Boffins Technical and Specialist Books in November's Books and Publishing, and their commitment to developing staff product knowledge for best-practice customer service, I approached owner Bill Liddelow to find out more.

Extract from the B & P article (Issue 3, 2013, page 15):
'Drivers of our business are product selection, product knowledge, high merchandising standards, a customer service and sales focus, attention to detail, and willingness to embrace new technology. Our staff meet 10 minutes before opening each weekday to share information and for training. I feel that this daily meeting is invaluable in setting priorities, in getting issues out in the open, in addressing skills and procedural deficiencies, and in binding us together as a team... We also have a 40 minute monthly meeting at which all staff present new product (usually about 30 of our most important books for the month) to each other... Each month we produce an internal newsletter featuring approximately 100 new titles that we want to get behind. We have a monthly product quiz for staff based on the titles in this newsletter...'

Alison: I am most interested in your monthly meetings where all staff present about new books to develop product knowledge and to learn the selling points. How did you develop staff ability to participate in this? 

Bill: When we recruit we look for people who have wide interests and who also like reading, and who are interested in helping people (the sales side). When we get people with this “fit”, they (pick) it up very quickly, following the example of the other staff.

Alison: Are staff given on-the-job time to develop their knowledge, or what processes do they use?

Bill: No, this is not really possible in a dynamic retail environment. They’re involved in the selection of titles they are to present, and they can take the books home.

Alison: Who compiles the monthly product quiz?

Bill: I do.

Alison: How do you believe the presentations at these meetings contribute to the quality of service you provide your customers?

Bill: They improve their knowledge by sharing the contents of the books, and they build their confidence by presenting to their peers. As a result, they can give better advice to customers, and can do so with greater confidence.

#mynextread

A recent #mynextread conversation including
feedback from a recommended author.

Following my earlier post on form-based readers advisory services and the great two day CODES Conversation which raised the use of social media in readers advisory service, I'm pleased to introduce Mary Barnett and Cathy Royal from Chattanooga Public Library as guest bloggers.

Mary and Cathy run #mynextread on Twitter and Facebook. This is their story.

We decided to launch the #mynextread social media promotion after hearing about Michigan’s Capital Area District Library’s BookSleuth idea.

The idea is fairly simply and really fun. We ask our patrons on Facebook and Twitter to tell us the titles of the last three books they’ve read so the #mynextread librarian can recommend the next book they might enjoy based on those previous selections.

We tweet and post the results back to each patron along with some info about the book or author and a link to the material in our catalog. The patron can then simply log on to their online library account with their library card, place the recommended title on hold and have it delivered to their nearest branch.

It’s alot of fun to read the responses to some of the suggested material. Most everyone is intrigued if not outright excited. Overall they seem really pleased to have a brand new book to look forward to, in most cases something they had not considered before the #mynextread librarian’s suggestion.

The “mynextread” librarian is actually Cathy Royal who works fulltime in tech services at the Chattanooga Public Library as the Popular Material Specialist. She is responsible for purchasing most of the material for the collection.

Prior to joining the library staff in 2001, Cathy worked in bookstores for 10 years and has decades of additional professional experience working in books, video rental and other assorted media. She was also a former contestant on Jeopardy!

Cathy says she loves the challenge of trying to find a title that seems to fit with what the reader has already read. She says she often relies on intuition.

“...and although my connections may look tenuous, I have occasionally minded my personal collection for ideas, I always double check to be sure our library owns what I have in mind.”

So far we have tried the promotion during the lunch hours of 11-1 on Fridays and Thursdays. We’re open to playing with time of day and day of week on this to fit the online habits of our audience. We’ve had anywhere from a dozen or more submissions, which keeps Cathy very busy, to just two or three. You have to be flexible when you try new things so you can adjust to how the public is or isn’t participating.

The best part is having an enthusiastic secret well-informed ‘weapon’ like Cathy Royal as the #mynextread librarian. She is an avid reader and book connoisseur and is totally into public engagement.

“I think #mynextread is like a mental obstacle course, or literary speed-Jeopardy, with something more important that money involved. Although I’m anonymous for now, my reputation and that of the Chattanooga Public Library is involved, and I want as many patrons as possible to enjoy this as much as I do.”
....

Mary Barnett, CPL Narrative Specialist / Content Marketing

Cathy Royal, CPL Popular Material Specialist

Librarians at festivals!

Nadia Patch in
Brisbane Writers Festival program 

Shoutout to a great readers advisor - Nadia Patch - who was recently on the program for Brisbane Writers Festival. 

Tell Me What To Read featured Nadia with Suzy Wilson, Felicity Vallence and Katherine Lyall-Watson who 'scoured the shelves for a no-fail selection of cracking reads'. I like this collaboration between library staff, bookstore staff, publishers and creators.

Jo Beazley and I interviewed Nadia, Reading Coordinator at Brisbane City Council Libraries, for our research project - she provided some early inspiration on training, collaboration and online content.

There are many literary festivals around the country - are other librarians involved in festival presentations? I know Vassiliki Veros and Ellen Forsyth (both NSW) have presented at GenreCon. I think it's a clever way to match our goals of raising the visibility of reading and of librarians as reading experts.