Voting is now closed in my poll on what we call the people who use our libraries. Thank you to everyone who voted and participated in the discussion here and on Twitter. Image credit: University Communications The results can be seen in the chart below. I have to say I’m not surprised that User came out top with 34%, it was always in the top two as the votes came in. From the comments I’d heard on Twitter I think people prefer it because it can be applied to everyone, no matter what type of library they are using or [...]
terminology
Computer scientists and drug dealers have users
Ever since I started working in libraries one thing has troubled me – what do we call the people who use our service? Where I used to work the most common term was Reader, but this for some reason always felt a bit odd and slightly pretentious to me. Working in an academic library I will often refer to them by their status at the University but this causes problems if you want to refer to them as the group as a whole. I don’t like calling them customers as they don’t pay us directly for the service we provide. [...]
