Circuses? They’re all about performing animals and clowns that do slapstick and must have a ringmaster with a big black moustache, right?
Libraries? They’re all about books and being quiet and must have a circulation desk and a reference desk, right?
I’m just back from ooohing and aaahing at the latest offering from Circus Oz called Laughing at Gravity (gotta love those puns). Their high energy performance showed how circuses have morphed to fit their audience. The ring master was a high octane woman with glam silver boots, a style which crossed diva with Frank’N’Furter and who belted out songs like “La Vie En Rose” and a piece about trying to be an object of female beauty in the age of global warming.
There were no animals involved, but people doing amazing things with their bodies and circus apparatus. The style was distinctly Australian, but edgy and owed a lot to musical comedy – although much more Caberet than Oklahoma. One of my favourite parts was the strong woman who did a bendback, had three concrete slabs placed on her abdomon and then…and then….kept still while a man with a sldegehammer smashed the slabs to smithereens. They even incorporated new technology – a bloke who swang out on a rope, missed his target and kept swinging until he hit a wall and…stuck!. The velcro fuzz on the front of his tracksuit met the velcro hooks of the wall.
Yesterday, I heard from a library manager who, like Circus Oz, has been transforming his craft to fit his audience. Chris Szekely ,who has just finished as City Librarian of Manukau in New Zealand, gave the closing keynote at the loclib biennial conference. The conference is aimed at Western Australian public librarians, but some of us from other sectors (Hi Sue!) came along for a couple of presentations from US library blogging legend, Jesssamyn West (Hi Jessamyn!).
Chris described how they redefined and repositioned their services when they were faced with a growing population, the need for more libraries but not many more staff allocated. Among other points he described the Botany Library, the Idealibrary (gotta love those puns), which was built in a new retail hub taking a lot of service ideas and design elements from the surrounding shops. There are no service desks, but staff who wander the floor restocking, serving the customers and acknowleding everyone who walks in within 90 seconds of entry. They implemented RFID as a security system – which lets someone checking out their entire limit of 35 items to do so by placing them in a single pile on the self-check machines.
An area aimed at youth (covertly – not with signage!!) takes design from night clubs, with a mezzanine and subdued neon lighting and a disco ball. Magazine displays compete with those in nearby newsagents. Display walls of books, which look like bays in a video shop, can be turned to create a separate space for study or events. A quiet area is enforced not by signage or staff, but by having a totally different ambience to the rest of the building. The Staff were chosen not for librarianship skills, per se, but for their ability to fit the customer service model. Consequently, 90 percent of the staff are men under 25. A very unusual proportion in a traditional library.
Like Circus Oz, we need to embrace new technologies, define the core of what we do and then highly hone those skills – maybe throw in a bit of glitter and disco – and continue to do our best to delight our audiences.