| International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle |  |
Who are my users - what do they want?The library of the Laban Centre for Movement and DancePeter Bassett Documents et Temoignages des Arts du Spectacle: Pourquoi et Comment? / Collecting and Recording the Performing Arts: Why and How? Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle / International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts 20e Congrès International / 20th International Congress Antwerp 4-7 September 1994. Acta. Antwerp : 1995, pp. 32-33 The Laban Centre for Movement and Dance is an independent College of Further and Higher Education specialising in the practical and academic study of dance. Although the focus of study is on modern dance, the increasing emphasis on individual study in the various courses and the increasing flexibility of courses have resulted in an extremely wide range of dance subjects being studied. Courses at the Centre are designed to allow the academic study of dance to be combined with the practical study of technique and choreography in a unique way. Options within each course allow flexibility and allow the student to focus on the academic or practical according to their needs and wishes. Such flexibility applies to most of the Diploma, undergraduate postgraduate and higher degree courses. The students come from a considerable number of different countries - usually thirty five and fifty countries are represented. The proportion of students from the UK is falling and will soon be below 50% as students grants from local authorities in the UK disappear. Also the proportion of students speaking English as a first language is falling and this raises huge problems for everyone in a subject possessing such a specialised vocabulary. The students face considerable pressures - language, the practical and academic orientation of the courses mean that they are extremely intensive and that a student is often in the college from 8:30 in the morning to the end of rehearsals at 9 pm at night. Many students have financial problems working all weekend to supplement their fees and earn money to live. These pressures reflect on the demands made on the Library service. I know exactly who 95% of my readers are - the students and teaching and administrative staff of the Centre. I also know exactly what they want. They want INFORMATION; detailed, accurate, up to date and in a format suited to their needs and lifestyle. They want it instantly and they want it to be free. They want information on every kind and aspect of dance and related subjects such as theatre, design, medicine, psychology, lighting, education, aesthetics. They want information that will give them stimulus for creation and they want information that will help them live in a city. They sometimes need something to read in their own language. The Library is never open for sufficient hours. My problem as Librarian is to meet these demands with the relatively limited resources at my disposal. So what policies do I adopt to meet the demand? Firstly the stock must be carefully chosen. I have to make the sort of decision that every librarian must make about every book and periodical. Does it fill a subject gap?; is it by a reputable author?; are the contents accurate?; will it fall apart if students photocopy it too frequently?. Students have a huge resistance to anything that is not easily portable, they are very resistant to using micro formats; they need to find time to use a machine and they have other priorities?. There are other considerations. Has a member of staff put it on a reading list? Are there paperback or hardback editions?. Can I not buy it until it is remaindered?. How few copies need I buy? What else do we have in the same language? The purchase of video too has its own problems. What is available? Which equipment is needed to play it? What is actually on the tape?. On the whole our students want the choreography and will reject a version with too many video effects or unusual angles. For classical ballet in particular they want a version near to the standard or original version. They also expect everything to be available and are very surprised, if, for reasons of copyright or because it has never been published or issued commercially a particular work is not available on video or I cannot make a copy specially for them. Secondly speedy ACCESS is important. We have needed to develop quite detailed computer databases of periodical articles, conference papers and pamphlets. Video is catalogued in extreme detail, each brief clip in documentaries being listed. Such detail helps speed our response to both the extremely detailed requirements of researchers and the sometimes hazily expressed demands of students. It is important that we make full use of technology but we are increasingly finding it difficult to afford new equipment and expensive resources, for example CD-Rom data bases. It is important that we classify and arrange and label material so that students can locate items quickly on the shelves. We devote a considerable amount of time to training them to use the library and its resources, and how to use other libraries effectively. This mixture of carefully selected highly specialist stock; computerised access and training normally answers the students enquiry at the time of asking. At the very least a book is reserved for the reader. If this does not happen then, in most cases, access to resources outside the Library is necessary. The student needs to be put in touch with an alternative source that will produce the required information. Again immediacy and access are vital together with communications. The alternative resource library, institution , government office or an individual person will need a number of reassurances: that the students intentions are serious; that the student knows exactly what it is in their library that will meet his needs and that other sources have been tried. These assurances are necessary because of pressure on staff time and resources within the other institution. Effective referral to outside resources demands considerable expertise on the part of the Library staff; detailed knowledge of what is available; where to go; who to contact. It is time consuming and costly but extremely effective. It does bypass the official cooperative interlending systems in the UK; but my users find these to be too slow as continual cost cutting of resources and staffing eat into their services and produce delays or failure. At the beginning I stated that I knew who 95 per cent of my readers were - the other 5 per cent are equally interesting - representing the "General public" who make use the Library. They fall into four categories: Ex-students of the Laban Centre whose information needs normally result from their further careers or studies. For example the choreographer asked to mount an Elizabethan galliard for an opera production requesting information on technique. Students from other colleges and universities (both in the UK and from abroad). Some are from a different discipline eg architecture. But some, if they are from another dance department seeking to remedy deficiencies in their own libraries, represent a considerable problem. Researchers both from the media or directly interested in dance wishing to use our special collections or make use of photographs. Finally the members of the general public who usually contact us by telephone with a simple enquiry that very frequently can be easily answered within the space of a few minutes. Typical enquiries are for contact addresses, availability of books and videos and are questions that do not seem to be easily answered by other sources of information in the United Kingdon. I think that the Laban Centre Library suceeds in its aim of providing access to information on dance. Success brings increased demand and out ultimate problem is simply how long can we continue to meet increasing demand with out increasingly limited financial resources. 20th Congress URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas94/antw_10.html |
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