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Saturday 9 May 2015

ARLG: Communicating with our users.

Yesterday marked my first CILIP event as I attended the course "Communicating with our Users" as a delegate. The speakers were Angela Cutts and Emma-Jane Batchelor (Faculty of Education), Cambridge, Jane Helgesen (UEA), and Libby Tilley filling in for a poorly Georgina Cronin (from the English Faculty Library and the Cambridge Judge Business School libraries respectively), while the delegates represented a range of libraries from places like Norwich, Cambridge, Nottingham, Hertfordshire and Hull.

As a thoughtful and caring group of librarians, the delegates had little trouble answering the prompt, "Why communicate?" Reasons cited included understanding our users, building relationships, breaking down barriers and being able to better tailor our services. Of course there are ways in which communication benefits us in terms of marketing library services, busting myths about who we are and what we do and even simply informing people that we exist. But communication is very much a two-way street with benefits for everyone if it is done effectively.

Done poorly, communication is effort down the drain. Photo by Lucy Welch.

A quick exercise listing ways in which libraries can engage in real-time vs. any-time communication revealed the vast number of ways we try to communicate with users, but equally (if not more) significant are the ways in which we unconsciously communicate. We were asked to put ourselves in our users' shoes and imagine what is communicated to our users unconsciously when they step inside our libraries. Those libraries with grand atriums devoid of books and comforts might look imposing, institutional, or more like a hotel than a library. My library is much smaller but on walking in there are no clear directional signs and staff are practically hidden behind a ridiculously tall desk that my shorter colleagues struggle to even see over the top of. I have always felt that this physical barrier forms part of a larger psychological barrier between us and our students that keeps us from communicating.

The issue of formality vs. informality was discussed quite a bit and forms another unconscious method of communication. Whether you address users in emails with "Hi, ______" or "Dear _______", whether you wear jeans and trainers to work or have a business-like dress code or wear sparkly lanyards, whether your Tweets sound funny and human or like they were generated by a computer, these things can set the tone for communication and are very dependent on the user base at your library. Emma and Angela work with many professional teachers and as such they feel more formal communication is needed, whereas Libby is on first name, "Hi, ______" terms with her predominantly undergraduate student base. And while Emma and Angela have developed the implict dress code of "dress like a teacher", Andy Priestner and his staff at the CJBS library "embrace the informal" and dress in the same sort of jeans, trainers and other comfortable clothes that their users wear. It may seem of little significance but clothing, tone and other subtle ways in which we portray ourselves communicate huge amounts. It's not only what we say but how we say it that either breaks down or puts up barriers.

The only time I wear jeans to work is on Saturdays.

This gave me a lot of food for thought. In my four years in my current job I have only ever worn jeans to work on Saturdays (as in the photo above). I'm not overly formal, given that the orange converse, my Doc Martens with a hole in the toe and my brogues, which are in an advanced state of decay, have all made regular appearances at work. But I had always wanted to be recognizable as a professional, both because I look close enough in age to the students to often be mistaken for a student rather than a professional librarian and because I felt that if I dressed formally it would help communicate to students that librarians had more to offer than just stamping books. Also, it would not feel entirely right to supervise visiting readers at the Wren Desk wearing shorts and a t-shirt while many of them wear shirts and ties for the occasion. However, I will have to give serious thought to the discussions we had yesterday and the article I posted above. As Andy said, "Clothes don’t make you professional." Would it help break down the barriers between staff and students if I wore jeans to work during the week? Do the trousers, shirts and blazers instill a sense of confidence in students that I am a responsible adult who is capable of helping them? I don't know. As all of the speakers said, communication should be tailored to the user group based on understanding and in those terms I'm only just getting to know who our users are.

The main thing is to be strategic about communication. We brainstormed words that apply to communication for each letter of the SMART objectives acronym and it turns out that librarians are rather good at coming up with synonyms:
Putting thought into all of these aspects and tailoring them to your users will maximize the impact of communication meaning that your time is being well spent. Angela and Emma went on to look at specific examples of how they used multiple channels to communicate on a single aspect of the service. Their fun, engaging efforts were carefully timed, tailored to their users and were very eye-catching, but they always had a purpose behind them. Their "Will you be my borrower?" display for Valentine's Day, for example, generated crowd-sourced book recommendations. While they had fun making art-and-crafty DIY displays, the thought behind their outreach was methodical and I was impressed and inspired by how interconnected their displays, social media output and in-house events were. There was always a reason or a catch behind all the fun. It was always communicating something about the library's services but doing the double duty of helping users see the library staff as approachable and human.

I won't go into the excellent and exemplary case study presented by Jane Helgesen about communication with users during a project to redesign a space in the library. Suffice it to say that it provided me with many ideas about how we might approach a major redesign of the library if it ever comes to that. The main point I want to bring up from her talk was the importance of staff buy-in for effective communication. Faced with the difficult task of getting students excited about the library re-development (rather than irritated by the disruption to their studies), Jane ensured that everyone on the library's staff were well informed so they could give consistent, on-message information to students. Staff needed to be "clear and confident about what was going on," and their enthusiasm for the project could then spread to the library users. This was achieved through regular meetings, emails, and a shared folder that was regularly updated to keep staff in the loop and feeling empowered. It was a great example of how good communication is a holistic way of approaching libraries, not just a marketing tool to be exploited.

Communication is about understanding, give and take and being serious about not taking yourself too seriously.

You can get some different perspectives on what was discussed from the excellent live Tweeters by reading through #arlgcomms on Twitter. It was a great day, topped off with a tour of the Dawson Books warehouse, where Lucy and I, bedecked in hi-viz vests, came over all geeky about conveyor belts, industrial scale book shelves and a very satisfying machine that folds cardboard boxes. Thanks to the ARLG and the organizers of this event for a really nice day!

Lucy and I take a hi-viz selfie in the Dawson Books warehouse.