I try my best to gauge the patron's interests and time. If they are looking for children's books I have to rely a bit on research whereas other librarians have a more intuitive feel. In other cases I sometimes am fortunate to have an intuitive grasp or I get lucky as in the following case. Yesterday's experience was tailor-made for me. A gentleman came in wearing a Punisher T-Shirt . He was wandering around a bit. I said "Hi! Can I help you find anything outside of Punisher : War Zone or Thomas Jane's The Punisher movie? (Punisher fans hate the former and like the latter most cases.)
He initially was looking for books on anxiety and indicated he was helping open up two new businesses and was feeling it weighing heavy. He was apologizing a bit for needing help. I reassured him that that was my reason for asking and would show him a few different areas. He ended up wanting some more general books on stress though so we snagged a few in the Healthy Living bay. During this time he was a bit embarrassed so I engaged in some small talk about his take on Thomas Jane as Frank Castle (The Punisher's alter ego) and Ray Stevenson's take in War Zone. This seemed to distract him from feeling awkward as we snagged about four books that branched the 158s, 600s, and one humor book as well. We looked for the books using VuFind. I told him it was sort of fun to shop using this and place bulk holds in the cart so he didn't blow money late at night but instead got cool things coming from the library within days.
He left happy and we both reached agreement that Thomas Jane deserved a better and second chance in a grittier reboot and the other Punisher movie,War Zone, pretty much stunk.
Ultimately it comes down to the patron's time, personality, your area of expertise and comfort and going from there in terms of finding what they want, upselling, and leaving them happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment