Academic libraries in the 21st century must learn to adapt to ever-changing technology and user requirements. Service is the key term - if users are unhappy with service, they will go elsewhere.

1. The Role Of User Services in 21st Century Academic Libraries Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA Anthony J. Adam May 2010

2. What Is User Services? User – anyone who has contact with the library and its personnel, either onsite or remotely Services – the frontline of the library experienced by the user and supported by technical services and the library administration

3. What Makes Up User Services? Reference Services Circulation Services Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Reserves Stack Maintenance Collection Development Periodicals Distance Services

4. Our “Competition” Search Engines (Bing, Google) Question Answering Services (Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, UnAsked, BlurtIt) Homework Help Websites (HomeworkHelp.com, HomeworkSpot.com) Wikis (Wikipedia, Wikiversity, WikiBooks)

5. The Role of User Services The Role of User Services is to provide high quality assistance at all service points, via all forms of dissemination, in order that the user is satisfied.

6. To insure that our users get the best possible service, we must both embrace “the competition” and improve upon it whenever possible.

7. How Do We Do That? Demonstrate to our users that the Internet is not necessarily the final stopping point or the best source for their needs. Provide service of such high quality that users will come to us first, because they trust us to give them the help that they need

8. Experimentation + Participation = Success

9. The Service Ideal Library units are interconnected – if service is bad at one point, users may believe that all units will offer bad service

11. Service = User Satisfaction The level of service correlates to the level of user satisfaction. Users will respond positively to great service, and vice versa.

12. How Do We Assess Ideal Service? Establish “success targets” – What is an ‘acceptable’ level of user satisfaction? Track over time using: Focus Groups In-house Created User Surveys Secret Shoppers Satisfaction Surveys (NSSE, FSSE, LibQual)

13. Information Literacy

14. Distance Services

15. Document Delivery

16. Reference Services

17. Circulation Services

18. Can Technology Help? A Virtual Library Help Desk can include Video Reference via Skype, IM, etc. Burst Messaging via Twitter, etc. Keeping In Touch via Facebook, etc. But don’t assume users will embrace the technology!

19. What Does the Future Hold In Store? All libraries will rely on cooperative collection development and document delivery Most reference resources will only be available electronically Users will demand immediate, 24/7 response to their needs More users will request services and materials via remote access Librarians will be information evaluators rather than just processors

20. In Sum…. Service takes precedence over everything – we can have a huge materials collection, but if we turn off our customers because of bad service, they will go elsewhere Users see the library as a single entity – if one unit gives bad service, all units are affected Change is the only constant and is inevitable – keep what is good and toss what is bad

21. The Choice is Ours Satisfied Users Unsatisfied Users

22. Questions?