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Our future lies in designing meaningful library user experiences
Do you want to be a gatekeeper or a gate opener? Library workers have long held the position of gatekeeper, historically determining what books, media, and other materials to acquire, and then creating the structures that allow our community members to access them. In more recent times we design websites that allow those same users to choose from an array of resources and services, but as gatekeepers we decide the what, where, and how of presentation. How well or poorly we accomplish the gatekeeping task determines end users' success or failure in achieving their learning or research outcomes.
As gatekeepers we can aspire to only a limited professionalrole:makinginformationaccessible. Butintoday's crowded information-provider landscape, that role fails to distinguish the many great assets libraries bringto their communities. Our future may depend on our ability to differentiate whatlibrariesofferandwhatlibrary workers contribute to communities. The library profession should consider an alternate vision for our future: the library worker as gate -opener. In that role we shift from a focus on creating access to resources to creating meaningful relationships with community members- b oth those who use and those who don't use our libraries. One way to differentiate ourselves while building these relationships is by designing great library user experiences.
Last year, I attended a presentation to librarians by author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, a leading authority on nontraditional marketing methods. One thing Godin said stood out in my mind as a critical piece of advice for library workers: "You need to stop being gatekeepers and s tart being gate -openers." He gave examples of profit and nonprofit organizations that created loyal and dedicated followers, groups he described as "tribes" that emerged as these organizations transformed their core purpose from gatekeepingto gate-opening.
Godin explained that people join tribes, whether as leader or follower, because it offers them something in their lives that provides meaning. In other words, they seek and find a unique experience. Likewise, Godin urged the authence of librarians to better understand what their community members need to accomplish, and to then open up the gates in order to deliver the resources they need for their learning, their research, their lifestyle, and their well-being, and to invite them to...