Bookstore model "how-to" website

As an example of a library system that's gone hog-wild for the bookstore model, the South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative takes the cake. These folks came up with a project called "Trading Spaces: Reinventing the Library Environment." Essentially, the project, presented on their website, is a guide to turning your library into a bookstore. Reading the site's content, you'll find countless references to "customers" (of course), ominous phrases like "merchandizing the collection" and statements that reek of business-oriented new agey pretension: "library staff at all points on the change-oriented and traditional scale can thrive in a library where the collection and services star." There's even a paragraph that makes the library seem to be striving to emulate a bank!

South Jersey offers training to assist in a library's transformation. There's advice on how to make your books face out on the shelves, how to walk around and make things spiffy, how to be a good greeter to folks who walk in the door. (Forget the bookstore--this sounds like Walmart!) Unfortunately, none of their advice seems to concern helping people find a particularly useful book or answer a reference question.

For an ominous moment, I even thought South Jersey had done away with a classification system. Luckily, I found a reference to DDC buried in one of their guides.

Well, maybe it's not all that bad. From the looks of the website, updates have been pretty infrequent, so the South Jersey staff must be pretty busy. There's a lot of postings from last year's PLA, for instance. It must be working out ok, though, 'cause South Jersey even offers a DIY toolkit on how to do what they did to their library to yours. Check it out--if you dare.