Thursday, August 30, 2007
What does "service" mean to you?
Joan suggested that as this is the beginning of a new academic year, we should take some time to reflect on what "service" means to us. As we were developing our list of core values, many of the groups indicated that service was one of our most important and distinguishable core values. So, in practical applications, what does service mean?
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To a great extent, Sr. Sharon taught me about LIBRARY service. But I think I must have initially learned about service in general from nuns who instructed me at Gate of Heaven School. What I have always viewed as a setting of strict discipline must have set the stage for service to come naturally to me. Now, when I am asked the same questions about library resources dozens of times, I try to answer patrons with the same comittment, dedication, and PERSEVERANCE that the Mercy Sisters demanded of me. To serve properly I have to put my own preferences and pride aside very often. Because I enjoy my job and believe that what I do serves a real purpose, I perceive excellent service as a very necessary good.
Service means a lot of different things to different people. I view service in our library as being available to help students conduct research and providing the best possible resources. At Misericordia, I value the charisms setforth by the Sisters of Mercy, service, justice, hospitality and mercy. These values should be the core of our service to the campus community. I have seen these values first hand in our library's staff and our commitment to our patrons.
I like what Jean said about incorporating the values taught by the Sisters of Mercy and Sister Sharon in particular.
Service to me is the smile on your face to greet a student as they walk through the door. It is taking that extra step to make all of our patrons feel special by giving them the individualized attention that they need. It is making sure that we understand what it is that the patron is looking for. (It's OK to clarify the question that the patron is asking.) Service means checking back with a patron to be sure that he or she has found the correct and/or complete information. Overall, to me service at the Bevevino Library means going the extra mile and providing our patrons with a positive library experience. We want our students, faculty, and staff to spread the word about our friendly, helpful service.
Service to others is meeting their need for assistance in each aspect of our library work. Being a user friendly library requires us to give of ourselves. I feel the meaning of service leadership is putting our hands and minds into the guidance we offer each day here.
Joanie
Service means providing a level of commitment and action that makes the user satisfied to the extent that they will gladly use your services again. Ideally, successful service becomes essential to their pursuit and something that they specifically go to the library to obtain.
For reference, it means not just reacting to an approach, either verbally or nonverbally, by a customer. It involves anticipating both expressed needs and "felt needs" as displayed by the customer's speech and actions.
Successful service makes what we do essential and the reason why customers come back to the library. If we are the reason they come back, then they are not burdened by the library and seek out our assistance.
A corollary of this theory of service is the ability and need to prepare students, faculty, staff and others how to find information and solve information seeking behavior. The axiom, "Give me to fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." sums up our mission well. We are not clerical. We provide essential value added services that customers will use for the rest of their lives whether in their own information searches or with their children, relatives and/or friends.
Exemplary service is what enables us, as a library, to survive and thrive. We would be marginalized and disgarded by students if we did not offer excellent service. Our efforts to assist, help and broker information seeking behavior helps to solve the search for information even when materials are unavailable. For me, service is why we exist in this vocation and excellent service makes me want and need to stay in this profession.
To me, service means delivering information to people in the context of their study, research and other process. The reason to use word "deliver" instead of "search / retrieveal" is that library is not just information storing center, it should be an active information delivering center in which user can locate specific information when she/he is in a particular need.journal or article alert service is a good example of delivering information to user.Therefore, in detail, library service means that organizing and presenting information to user based on learning user's needs. In other words, service not only means that we stay here to help people when they come to ask for help in locating information but also means outreaching to people for their particular needs by making them know what's new resources / technologies available/useful for their information needs.
I think everyone covered the meaning of service in the library. I would like to add that to me sometimes service is making the student feel ok about asking a question they themselves think is stupid. It is quit the reward for me to see them relax and smile when I answer them. Sometimes even the smallest of things are very important.
Several years ago, I was a manager of a data entry office and a customer service office. Previous to that, I held a job as a customer service representative. What service meant to me was not only "serving" newspaper customers but the whole picture that gets you to that place. Service is not related only to your customers but to co-workers and non-customers. Service is a work ethic. It is being well-informed and providing the best assistance possible and if not able to help, to point them in the right direction.
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