Does dealing with angry customers eat up staff time, increase stress at public service desks, and undermine morale? This work introduces the many causes and faces of anger as well as practical techniques for dealing with angry patrons. It covers handling frustration and confrontative behaviour.

Library staff members looking for effective ways to prevent and handle anger-driven confrontations with their patrons will find Rubin's revised text an exceptionally useful, applicable, and enlightening guide.

Provide the best possible service to your library patrons. With a healthy respect for those who seek assistance at the reference desk, a group of library and information service specialists examine the public whom they serve. The Reference Library User focuses on the possible interactions between the reference librarian and the library user. The authoritative contributors discuss many problems in the relationship between the public and the library, and all offer suggestions that will at least help librarians to better serve the public on a daily basis. A major emphasis of The Reference Library User is on the various populations using the library and their particular needs. For example, one chapter examines the information needs of deinstitutionalized patrons and presents methods of providing service and a rationale for community outreach. The state program in Rhode Island is outlined, describing efforts to reach community residents through public libraries and the state operated Bookmobile. Other chapters provide strategies for providing reference services to older adults, the learning disabled, the blind, and the physically handicapped. This informative new volume also deals with general concerns facing librarians today, including determining the audience for both public and academic libraries, educating the user, encouraging nonusers to become library users, and calming irate patrons. Reference librarians will be particularly interested in the problems and solutions discussed in this new volume, as will library managers and administrators who will always benefit from a fresh perspective on public service for the library user.

A problem patron is not one with difficult requests or obscure interests, but one who displays behavior that is deemed destructive, criminal, bothersome, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate. Librarians look at the nature of the problem in academic and public libraries, the impact of such technologies as the Internet and cell phones, and solutions from other professions as well as from the experience of librarians.

This insightful book shows you how to deal with an issue as old as the library profession: interacting with problem patrons. It looks at this fact of life that affects almost every facet of library work and provides practical solutions--some developed within the field and some borrowed from other professions--that will improve reference services for those you serve and make the work of your library staff less stressful, more productive, and increasingly meaningful. Helping the Difficult Library Patron: New Approaches to Examining and Resolving a Long-Standing and Ongoing Problem examines: the nature of the problem from historical and demographic perspectives ways of dealing with the problem in academic and public libraries competency-based training techniques that will empower your frontline staff the impact of new technologies such as cellular phones and the Internet and ways of dealing with the new breeds of difficult patrons that come with them solutions from our colleagues what we can learn from the perspectives of others--psychotherapists, businesspeople, and corporate managers--you even get a Zen Buddhist viewpoint! effective ways to utilize community resources such as campus and local police and much, much more! Nowhere in the library literature have so many practitioners and educators combined their efforts to examine and provide solutions to this ageless problem. Library administrators, staff, and educators will find Helping the Difficult Library Patron a matchless resource!

A quick, easy-to-read synthesis of theory, guidelines, and evidence-based research, this book offers timely, practical guidance for library and information professionals who must navigate ethical crises in information privacy and stay on top of emerging privacy trends. Emerging technologies create new concerns about information privacy within library and information organizations, and many information professionals lack guidance on how to navigate the ethical crises that emerge when information privacy and library policy clash. What should we do when a patron leaves something behind? How do we justify filtering internet access while respecting accessibility and privacy? How do we balance new technologies that provide anonymity with the library's need to prevent the illegal use of their facilities? Library Patrons' Privacy presents clear, conversational, evidence-based guidance on how to navigate these ethical questions in information privacy. Ideas from professional organizations, government entities, scholarly publications, and personal experiences are synthesized into an approachable guide for librarians at all stages of their career. This guide, designed by three experienced LIS scholars and professionals, is a quick and enjoyable read that students and professionals of all levels of technical knowledge and skill will find useful and applicable to their libraries.