From “Burn and Turn” to “Concierge” – Rethinking Access Services after the Pandemic
The presenters will discuss a customer service “identity shift” experienced by an Urban Commuter College Library Access Services unit following a reduction in circulation demand after the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, this unit, whose responsibilities include oversight of the library’s “front desk” and Interlibrary Loan service, primarily identified itself as a distributor of materials – a “burn and turn” service as they say in the restaurant industry – get ‘em in, get ‘em out, and give ‘em what they want. Consequently, staff focused much of their time handing out laptops and physical textbooks to students. During and following the pandemic, the front desk experienced a reduction in demand for these services due to cuts to print textbook budgets, continued growth of online instruction, a new focus by faculty on digital reserve readings, and the introduction of a college-wide laptop lending program housed outside the library. Needing a new identity, the Library front desk has reinvented itself to function more as a “concierge” service, one in which the workforce sees itself as dynamically anticipating and responding to the evolving needs of students and faculty rather than simply providing access to materials. / Two examples of the “concierge” approach will be highlighted. / First, we will describe how decreased “burn and turn” work allowed us to refocus and expand one of our pre-pandemic services, managing access to our Library’s Group Study Rooms. Access Services staff were retasked to collect statistics on how students were using the physical spaces of the library. This data has given front desk staff new insight into student needs and has allowed them to offer concierge-like, individualized recommendations for study spaces. It has also given Librarians a clearer idea of where students are congregating, allowing us to tailor-make new spaces, including transforming a former Periodicals quiet zone into a space for students to take online classes and looking for ways to create new individualized study rooms. Additionally, it’s led us to loosen restrictions on minimum group size limits to encourage additional usage, all of which has and will continue to enable staff to match students and student groups to the right spaces. / Second, we’ve been able to extend the concierge model to Interlibrary Loan. After the pandemic, remote teaching faculty were requesting scans of book chapters and Journal articles that were available in the stacks, requests that did not fall under the scope of existing e-Reserve or Interlibrary Loan responsibilities and policies. These requests originally came in through either our Reserve Manager or our Interlibrary Loan specialist. Utilizing staff time “gained” because of the reduced “burn and turn” role, a pilot program has been launched to begin a tailored, “concierge” scanning service for Faculty and Staff members who need digital copies of items they would normally have had to visit campus to obtain. / By reinventing ourselves as a “concierge” service, we’ve established a new relevancy and purpose post-pandemic. Attendees will come away with an innovative model by which to think through new opportunities for themselves.