From Judit Kiraly
\” I have \”inherited\” in December the presidency of the English-American Library of Nice. The problem is that what I know about libraries is rather limited to my own experience of various establishments where I did my doctoral research.
It is a small, 20 000 volume English library in the south of France. I intend to do my best, but we are all voluntary and I am the one who does most of the organising/running of it with the help of some very nice but totally unqualified voluntary librarians. The place is reasionably organised and indexed, but when it comes to improving it – I definitely need professional advice.
From Judit Kiraly
\” I have \”inherited\” in December the presidency of the English-American Library of Nice. The problem is that what I know about libraries is rather limited to my own experience of various establishments where I did my doctoral research.
It is a small, 20 000 volume English library in the south of France. I intend to do my best, but we are all voluntary and I am the one who does most of the organising/running of it with the help of some very nice but totally unqualified voluntary librarians. The place is reasionably organised and indexed, but when it comes to improving it – I definitely need professional advice.Maybe qualified librarians can give me some basic and sound info. I am experiencing problems in several fields.
– this is a general interest leisure library. How to select books that are not just well advertised \’lemons\’. I susbscribed to the Oprah Amazon club, read the Times and the Herald\’s book section and get some catalogs, but since our finances are strained, I have to be sure that when we buy, we buy good.
– how do you find out what your readers want? Is a reader\’s survey box a good idea?
– is there any magazine that is oriented towards librarians?
– where to advertise the library. A big part of our readers are holidaymakers who come to the Riviera for a week or for a month. We have short temporary memberships tailored to their needs. I do all I can locally ( newspapers, hotels, radio) but what could I do to entice more people to come to us.
– what other services do you recommend that we offer? quality videos?
– is there anything I should be careful about? any pitfalls?
I really appreciate all the help I can get.
Thank you again,\”
Judit Kiraly [email protected]
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