Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal April 2003 Volume 1 (2)

Reader development

How reader-centred are you?

Matthew Perren explains how to make choosing easy for your readers.

You'll be pleased to hear that I'm feeling a little less lonely now than I was last time. The teddy on my desk is slightly less tear-stained that he was and the number of pictures of my elderly dog and cat are down to reasonable numbers again.

My last column got a great response so I obviously got something right. I don't think it was the lovely photo so I have to assume it was what I wrote. So thanks to the people who got in touch.

Given that I'm not alone out here I thought I'd talk a little about readers this time. Specifically I'm going to talk about being reader-centred - one of the guiding principles of Reader Development. It's a piece of jargon that's been coined to describe a way of working. Like all jargon its inventors think its meaning is clear. Like all jargon it's not so I'll try to explain it.

Put simply, a reader-centred approach to library work puts the interests of the reader at the heart of all the book-related work the library staff do. Easy! That's what you all do now isn't it? Is it?

I'll come clean at this point and say that it's taken me a year to finally get my head around this idea so don't feel bad if your head is spinning. First I'd like to refer to some of the ideas I wrote about in my last column.

I talked about face out display and where to put it. The best way to broaden the range of peoples' reading is simply to give them some choices. "But they already have choices", I hear you cry, "Look at all the books we've got!"

Well, that's fair enough: you have got lots of books. Your stock selection teams work hard to pick stock that will issue but some of it still doesn't, which is heartbreaking if it is a book you've read and loved.

Imagine you are one of your readers. You've come in for a browse (research shows that 70% of users are browsing). What would you rather look at: rows of spine on stock or a face out display? Go into a bookshop and look at how many people are looking on the shelves in comparison to those looking at the tables and dumpbins. In my experience it's two to one looking at tables.

Readers respond to this type of display. A reader-centred library will give it to them. Now where do you put it?

In shops they talk about their hot-spots and they spend a lot of time working out where these are. Once they've found them they use them for displaying things that they want us to notice. So how do they find them? Well I mentioned one method last time: walk into your library as if you've never been there before and see where your eye falls first. Another way is to observe your customers as they come in. Where do they look? Where do they stop? Which direction do they turn once inside the door? After a few days of careful observation you'll have a good idea of where your primary hot-spots are. That's where you should locate any promotions or face-out displays.

The idea, again, is to give them what they want. To make choosing as easy for them as you can. Generally people don't like looking for things and they are often shy of asking. If you can offer them what they're looking for without them having to ask, then you're onto a winning formula

In my last column, I also talked about tried and tested promotional ideas. All of them are great and all of them work but I have a confession: they're not strictly reader-centred. A truly reader-centred promotion starts from a different place.

All of my ideas are arrived at by thinking about how to put books together in an interesting and meaningful way. A reader-centred promotion starts by thinking about who it will be aimed at and then looks at the books that will make it up. So, a Science Fiction promotion and a promotion aimed at young male library users will have distinct differences - although maybe some of the same books. The SF promo will encourage the SF buff to read more SF. The promotion for young men will have some SF in it but it will also have other stuff, chosen by you, to appeal to young men. Looking at this and seeing some of his favourite books the SF buff will be encouraged to look at the other things displayed alongside and may well be encouraged to read more widely.

We want to help people to read more widely and to break out of their habitual reading territory. Taking a reader-centred approach will help to do that.

Finally - reader comments. Last time I offered some which I and colleagues had written. These are great but wouldn't it be better to have them written by your own readers?

Think about book reviews in the papers. The ones I like best are the ones where people choose their Summer Reading or Christmas Choices. Why is this? Well, the standard book reviews are written from a critical point of view and they are formal and often quite negative. The other sorts are refreshing because the reviewers talk about the books that they've enjoyed - like a reader. Try using your own recommendations (or mine, I'll happily send them to you) as a taster and to encourage your readers to write their own.

So there you are: reader-centred work explained. Please contact me if you want more information or if you're interested in getting my book recommendations emailed to you. I'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch! Contact Matthew on 01698 458 888; 07799 662 931 (mobile); slic1@slainte.org.uk

Information Scotland Vol. 1 (2) April 2003

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