Serving Online Customers: Lessons for Libraries from the Business World [Paperback]

When designing services for online customers, libraries can learn much from looking both within and outside the profession. A few years back, for example, the ready-to-implement ideas of David Lee Kings Designing Digital Experiences helped librarians guide discussions at their institutions around the idea of focusing on the user experience. This book takes a more academic tone with its historical look at problems traditionally plaguing library services and provides case examples of how similar problems have been handled in the business sector.Barclay looks clearly at libraries and what they are doing in the digital sphere and what their potential could be by taking a more business-like stance in online service. His analyses are well supported by comprehensive references at the end of each chapter. . . .There is much to learn from Serving online customers, and I am sure lessons will be learned that the author did not anticipate. If you are involved in online service delivery in libraries, then you will find considerable value in this small package.In his book, Barclay describes why libraries no longer hold the monopoly as sources of information for users in the digital age. Instead, many of them find themselves in direct competition with business. Barclay explains how libraries are, and are not, similar to business and suggests that in order to survive, libraries need to rethink how they provide online services. He suggests that libraries should not think of themselves as being in direct competition with business, but instead should see themselves as a part of a larger 'business ecosystem.' Barclay posits that to survive in the online environment, libraries need to learn how to evolve and co-exist with business. To that end, he suggests that a wealth of e-commerce-related research information is available in areas that librarians may find helpful in adapting library practices to better serve online users. In the beginning of his book, Barclay provides a listing of jlĂ