Community's perception of libraries

I read another interesting blog post from the 21^st Century Library Blog called, ‘The Perception of Your Library’ by Dr. Steve Matthews.

He was generally concerned of the lack of importance of the community’s perception of libraries despite the fact that librarians tend to survey their patrons about their services and programs. To best demonstrate this, Steve pulled our two different scenarios on library surveys. A worst case scenario reveal that the majority of the residents say they don’t know the location of their libraries, don’t use the library and had better libraries in other places. In contrast, a best case scenario shows that a huge proportion of residents say they know the location of their library, they regularly use them and they haven’t had better libraries in other places.

Steve is heading in the right direction for a greater importance on the perceptions of libraries in their communities, in which I believe librarians need to reflect upon. It is by developing our own positive thoughts of our libraries amongst our societies, which enables librarians to confidently and faithfully make positive contributions towards their 21^st century communities, if provided adequate support and funding. Hence, libraries become friendly and safe places for patrons to visit and most importantly, they are going to frequently visit our wonderful libraries to utilise our wonderful services and programs.

Bibliography reference

Matthews, S (2012), ‘The Perception of Your Library.’, 21^st Century Library Blog, blog post, 27^th August 2012, viewed 13^th September 2012, available at: http://21stcenturylibrary.com/2012/08/27/the-perception-of-your-library/.