Published: June 27, 2009 11:49 pm         

Library looks to move into 21st century

Public Library of Enid and Garfield County is going to become more like a retail business, a place where people will want to go and spend time.

Enid city commissioners recently approved an Okla-homa De-partment of Li-braries grant of $94,500 and added another $40,000 for a remodel and upgrade of the library’s interior. Library Director Michelle Mears called the library makeover a way to move the library into the 21st century.

“It will make it a destination place, as opposed to the post office or bank, where you just go for an errand,” she said.

“We’re hoping to, probably, October or November do the majority of the internal reworkings,” she said. “It may involve the library having to be closed for a short period of time to do some of this, but we’re going to keep that as short as possible.”

She estimated the library could be closed five to 10 days during the work.

Mears said she has studied retail trends and wants to move the Enid library into more of a retail mode, where customers dictate what they want, where they want it, and the library is operated the way customers flow through a business. That example came from studies done by libraries across the United States.

The $134,500 will be used to give the library the look and feel of a bookstore, Mears said. Library officials have learned from retail and have pored over retail studies that observed behavior in retail settings. That observation started with the book “Why We Buy,” by Paco Underhill, she said. Library officials began to get a feel for how people flow through a store and where and how to display items to take advantage of that retail trend.

The first library in the United States to respond to the study was the library in San Jose, Calif., which developed what has become known as the “San Jose Way.”

“As the economy declines library usage increases, while the staff remains steady and library usage rises,” Mears said.

The San Jose Way reinvents library behavior, she said. For example, Mears said, the way books are displayed will be changed. They will be displayed face out, rather than with the spine of the book out.

“Books that face out are 80 percent more likely to circulate than those with the spine out,” she said.

The grant money Enid’s library received will be used on new furniture and brighter colors to make the library appearance brighter, with comfortable furniture and a more intimate experience. Enid’s library is part of a pilot program for Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Ardmore and Tahlequah also are part of the program.

A number of design principles featuring different types of displays, signage, moving computers to the first floor and rearranging the collection are to be considered. Currently, the children’s area is on the east side of the first floor, where the ceiling is high and the noise from the section resonates throughout the library. Mears wants to move the children’s, teen and other youth section to the west side of the building, where the ceilings are lower and can help buffer the noise.

The second floor will remain a quiet, study area where research may be done.

“The primary focus of the grant is for the first floor,” Mears said. “It’s to make people want to come and hang out for a while. We want people to come in and be surprised. We want the library to be a place people want to be, so they will tell others.”

She also wants to attract people who have not been to the library for a while and those who don’t normally use it.

“It’s all aimed at choice, convenience and customer service,” she said.

Mears also will analyze the library collection and reduce it. Eight percent of the collection is checked out at any time, she said, and weeding out books will increase circulation 30 to 35 percent.

“That’s quadrupling the circulation,” she said.

The Enid library is about 10,000 square feet smaller than it should be for a town of Enid’s size, and Mears said she wants to fully utilize every foot of it.

Although she wants to operate the library like a retail store, her product is free. Another service she plans to add in the future is self-service printing.

“The library should be the third place you go: home, work or school and the library. We need some other welcoming place. There aren’t many free community spaces anymore,” she said.