Speaking in Tongues
Meredith Farkas has a good blog post about speaking “Librarian-ese” on our websites. But it’s really about more than just our websites.
My library has recently started a signage committee, and they’ve been really thinking about how we should label areas of the library. Should we call it the “reference desk,” the “help desk,” the “information desk,” or something else entirely? I think about this a lot when I’m talking to patrons, too. Should I use the term “Interlibrary Loan” or should I say something else? What about other terms we use? “Electronic reference”? “Circulation”? “Young adults”? I think the less professional jargon we use, the better we are at customer service.
