The Online Library User Manifesto

By Jenny Levine |

John Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library recently posted an ILS Customer’s Bill of Rights, a very thoughtful reflection that you should definitely click through to. As I was reading it, however, I was also reminded of another bill of rights I recently came across, The Social Customer Manifesto. It’s actually a blog devoted to the social-software movement, but I found the tenets of the Manifesto quite intriguing (you can find them listed in the righthand sidebar on the site).

Obviously, this is very much geared toward the business world, but it’s interesting to think about this list from the perspective of our patrons. They’re not all applicable, but maybe an equivalent list for libraries would look something like this:

Libraries tend to know how to cover these bases in the physical world, but what else would you add for our online users? I love that librarians are finally exploring ways for libraries to use these new social tools to give patrons these kinds of options.