A fast, practical and enjoyable course in active customer-care skills, specific to libraries. This course will help everyone who works in a customer-facing role develop the skills and confidence to take responsibility for customer engagement - and not just sit behind a welcome desk. Suitable for both public and college libraries.

What do you say when someone asks you if the library has got any good books? A practical course to get you more comfortable with starting book conversations and more confident in making reading suggestions. You don’t have to be a big reader yourself, or have masses of book knowledge, it’s all about learning to listen and using your readers as a creative resource.

Understanding what readers need and how they choose is the basis for a fresh approach to connecting with your customers. These ideas have been tried and tested in hundreds of libraries and they are easy to implement anywhere. Full of free downloads for displays in the library and digital promotions by email or social media, we guarantee this course will give you a new enthusiasm for your job.

Merchandising means displaying products so that they stimulate interest and entice customers to make a purchase. Libraries have nothing to sell other than ‘a good read’ but we can adapt retail techniques to boost performance and to help readers make fresh discoveries. This course teaches how to give those unloved shelves a makeover!

This course will give your library displays some new bite! You will develop skills in targeting audiences and understanding reader motivations to support successful promotions. Working across stock areas and age groups, you will explore how to find readers for older and less well-known books as well as new ones. Recently adapted to include ideas for social media and correctly sized images for Facebook, Instagram and X.

Learn to see through your customers’ eyes! This course develops skills in analysing the library’s most important spaces then taking practical steps to improve the customer experience. Learners will build simple routines to sustain high standards and control the library environment. Suitable for both public and college libraries.

Explore a wide range of ideas to broaden the reach and appeal of your library to your reading community. You will experiment with ways to enrich reading lives, connect readers together and target diverse needs and preferences to reach a wide range of people. Starting from the reader will bring a new energy to your strategy and the practical coursework tasks will enable you to experience this powerful dynamic.

To improve the library experience for your customers, you need objective evidence about how people are using your space and resources. Observing and recording anonymous customer behaviours is a powerful way to gather this. This course will introduce the basic methods with easy exercises to build your experience and the opportunity to design your own observation too. Use these techniques to get beyond a familiar workspace and staff assumptions to what your customers actually see and do. Suitable for both public and college libraries.

The development of this course was sponsored by the crime writer Ann Cleeves who believes passionately in the power of reading for pleasure to help our sense of wellbeing. It will help library staff who wish to take on the role of engaging directly with individual readers and groups who are dealing with the tough things in life. It will give you confidence to talk positively to people about their reading lives, including those who don’t read books and those who haven’t read for a long time.   

Libraries have wonderfully rich collections.  Book marketing changes constantly, trends in genres come and go, new bestsellers start fresh cover fashions.  It is hard to keep up with the range and depth of material that is available to our readers, including our wealth of back stock. How can we help people discover what is hidden in our shelves? This course will help you update your book knowledge and select, curate and present capsule promotional collections that will catch readers’ interest and tempt them to try something new.