Carleen and Mike

I was given a customer service award today during our staff meeting. I got flowers and a certificate and even a coupon for “an hour off” whenever I want. It was very sweet and our director even read an email out loud that she had received from a lady I helped with some research through our online reference chat service. This is a good example of how this kind of technology is affecting libraries and how it helps people who work at libraries provide even better service to their customers. Although she singles me out in the email, what she is unaware of is that the historical documents I photocopied and sent to her were gathered and found by not only me but the always helpful and knowledgeable genealogy librarians who work in our Local and Family History Department. Working at a library is extremely rewarding and is most often more fun than it is work.

“Dear Ms. Singleton,

I’ve made my comments through the online vehicle, but wanted to ensure that I communicated to you personally to let you know how very pleased I am with the service provided by Carleen Huxley to me, a far way Florida resident doing research on Oklahoma’s oil heritage. I have worked with many, many, libraries and sources on a great variety of projects and have not been accustomed to such detailed and responsive service. Absolutely superior in every respect. Clearly the Bartlesville Library makes customer service a top priority. The very comprehensive search and retrieval done on my behalf far exceeded even my most optimistic expectations and provided me the first person, authoritative documentation of new and valuable information as well as excellent corroboration for facts I had gleaned from other sources. Carleen Huxley deserves special praise for her tenacity in gathering these extraordinary documents and the library deserves special praise for having the foresight and commitment to maintaining comprehensive vertical files. With my request on the 17th and the excellent material identified, pulled, organized, labeled and mailed the very next day, nobody could ask for better service. The postal system frustrated us with its snail’s pace transit time from 18 February to 9 March, but this notwithstanding, I would like to thank the Bartlesville Library and especially Carleen Huxley for their excellent service to a distant customer.”

Posted on March 17th, 2004 under Libraries • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback