Working for a consortium makes for a different day than working in a library. I am mostly past the obvious differences (though I still catch myself looking for approaching patrons sometimes) and have started to appreciate some of the unexpected benefits of consortial work. Profiling meetings, for example.

Libraries that are joining up need to be profiled – that is, they have to answer a mind-numbingly detailed list of questions about their materials, patron types, and circulation rules. It’s the intersection of technology and policy. The conversation frequently includes phrases like “…well, we’d like to… but our system doesn’t let us.” The conversation often revolves around what the desired outcome is and how we’ll have to configure things on the ILS to create that outcome.

Profiling is also a very revealing process – the whys behind and philosophical underpinnings of a policy can shine through. I had a wonderful moment with one of our development partners recently and I feel compelled to share it.

While we were talking about a particular set of circulation parameters, the librarians started talking about a few patrons (infrequent visitors who are partial to hot bestsellers) whose usual behavior would fall outside of the parameters they were setting. It quickly became apparent that they were not looking to set policy to curtail these patrons, but making sure they could still accommodate patrons whose lives don’t operate around standard library loan periods.

How great is that? They wanted to make sure they could still help their patrons, the ones who (arguably) need the most help, to use the library, regardless of how long that meant a stack of new books spent out of the library (and out of circulation). They wanted their library to become better with use, not increase their circ stats.

It’s a little thing, but I found it heartening that there are small (but mighty) libraries who, rather than crafting policy to punish a few badly behaved library users, work to ensure that their technology will allow them to create a wonderful library experience for everyone, regardless of how often they make it to the actual library.