Daily Thoughts 8/11/2009 ( Keeping Customers )

Front door of Brooklyn Public Library at sunset June 3 2008. From Wikimedia.

Daily Thoughts 8/11/2009

Today has been another quiet steady day. I started weeding the 800s which is the literature section and made sure the older books were removed from the new arrivals section. I took some time to read some more of Keeping Customers.

I am considering buying all of Charlaine Harris's mass market horror paperbacks. They are on both the Locus Magazine bestseller list and the Publishers Weekly bestseller list.

I spent some time looking through our purchase alerts for items with a lot of hold requests. I picked out some large print items that have multiple holds and a few fiction titles.

I read some more of Keeping Customers on the train. I find this book fascinating because of the way language is used. There is a language that is almost nonsensical which surrounds business management and consulting. Staple yourself to the customer, go to the war room, and look at the workflow charts to help determine the way to achieve TQC (Total Quality Control). It has this rhythm to it which at the same time shows command as well as shows wild confusion. I can understand how this kind of language encourages excess and highly risky decisions. At the same time it is both the language of highly successful companies like General Electric and at the other extreme Enron.

For me, some of it is like reading Alice In Wonderland. A lot of the business management books make absolutely no sense, especially from the perspective from someone in the nonprofit sector working to help other people. There is an incredible drive to profit. At the same time it has this really motivating, energizing quality about being goal driven. There are some books on nonprofit management, but not that many. For example, Peter Drucker has a few books like Managing The Nonprofit Organization on nonprofits, but is mostly focused on corporations. So what happens is people who work in nonprofits often generalize reading from the for profit sector to the nonprofit and government sector.

How do you generalize ideas from books like Keeping Customers into a nonprofit or government setting. You can take some ideas, but most things are simply not applicable. It is useful insofar as helping people find material to read who are in a business setting. How do I even judge or rate the ideas in this book? I am not sure I can or should. I could review it, but there are parts of it that I don't understand. It is very interesting reading. Some of the parts that are most interesting are the parts that are least applicable. I find it intellectually stimulating.

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie came in for me to read. I think this is the book I will read next. Our library is a Carnegie building. He donated the money to build many libraries throughout the United States. He also was a steel magnate. I am hoping it will give me some insights into why he gave money to have so many libraries built.

Daily Thoughts 8/10/2009

"Where next?" Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902) . I liked the image.

Daily Thoughts 8/10/2009

Today has been another steady day. I finished weeding the 700s on the main floor and am going to start weeding the 800s. 800s is literature and poetry. It is used a lot in our library. It is probably the closest part of our collection to an academic collection. There are a lot of university press titles in this part of the collection. We buy a lot of books on writing, poetry, and literary criticism.

We are slowly clearing out the storage area for technical services. There are a lot of gift books that need to be processed as well as books which either need to be rebound or replaced. I like sorting through gift books. I find it relaxing.

I've been also keeping up the current events display. I added a few books on stem cells to the display today. I also pulled out some books from the "new arrivals" section to put in the main collection.

I read a little bit more of Keeping Customers on the train here. The authors are writing about how sales is increasingly being combined with technology. This means items that are being sold are being customized for the user. This leads to more consultative selling and longer relationships between the seller and the buyer because of increasingly longer service and maintenance contracts.

I also picked up two more books to read; Halo The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund and The Management Myth Why Experts Keep Getting It Wrong by Matthew Stewart.

I tried to read a bit of Halo Fall of Reach but could not get into it. The opening exactly matched what it was like playing an arcade game when I was a teenager. Because I don't play Halo, I must not get the book very well. It seems like the kind of book where you finish playing the game and when you are the subway, you can't play the game so you read the book instead because you are so totally sucked into the game you might have a hard time thinking of anything else. For me, it did not click. I am sure that it would click for Halo players though. It reminds me a bit of the kind of book which a hardcore Star Trek or Buck Rogers fan would read after watching five hours of television reruns.

Daily Thoughts 8/8/2009

Joshua Thomas and the first? book wagon or bookmobile. It was reported that the horses names were Dandy and Black Beauty, and that they were stabled at Corderman's Livery Stable in Hagerstown. Washington County Free Library 1905. Picture from Wikimedia

Daily Thoughts 8/8/2009

Today has been slow and quiet. I went and dropped off my library book. It was a pleasant walk up the hill and back.

I'll probably watch The Castle Cagliostro also known as Lupin III which is an anime film. I like to watch films while I do my exercises. I got a chance to watch a little bit of it. I really enjoyed it. This is the kind of movie a teenage boy would really like. It is based on the manga, Monkey Punch and is directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Hayao Miyazaki directed Princess Mononoke which was excellent. This is one of the better anime films I have seen. This is the second time I am watching it.

I was at the mall this afternoon. In the Barnes and Noble window, they had a book with a near perfect title, Madoff With The Money by Jerry Oppenheimer. The cover and the title really fit well. I think it will be something to suggest that we buy. The book is coming out on August 17, 2009.

I have been reading Dean Koontz's Frankenstein A Novel City Of Night Book Two. I read the first book, Prodigal Son a while ago. I will probably read the third book in the series, Dead and Alive as well. The three part series is out in paperback. In this series, the monster who has taken the name of Deucalion is the hero, and Doctor Frankenstein is the villain. It makes for a very nice twist. The setting is New Orleans. Dean Koontz started out writing as a science fiction writer. It feels a little like one of his early novels, except the writing is much better.

I also started reading Keeping Customers published by Harvard Business Review. The writing in this book is very dense, it will take some time to read. There is companion book that goes with this book, Seeking Customers. This is an older book from 1993. The earliest copyright date is 1968. It has proven the test of time. This book about putting customers as the central reason for your business.