Secret Shopper Experience

The Experience:

I’ve been a part of a secret shopper experience before, that one being more of observation than interaction, but nonetheless I find these assignments interesting and extremely informative. I went to a library where the adult services section has the whole entire floor. There was no specific reader’s advisory desk, however there was a standard desk with a few librarians working it. The very first thing that I noticed was that there were no signs that cluttered the desk, which I’ve had issues at with other libraries and with less clutter, I felt more welcomed to ask questions.

As an almost “librarian” it honestly felt somewhat weird asking someone else for book recommendations. It was also a new experience for me because I almost never read adult books, so if I am looking for recommendations I end up asking teens, not other staff members. With that said, I was kind of glad for this assignment because I had not picked out a horror book to read for my annotations.

When I first approached the desk, I was asked if there was anything they could help me with and I replied with “I am looking for a great horror book to read.” They responded very similar to how I would, “What was the last good horror book that you read?” Fortunately for this exercise, I could respond with the fact that I hadn’t read any horror books. This definitely made the experience change because they seemed to panic just slightly and stumble to try to find exactly what they wanted to ask me next. They turned to a co-worker who apparently reads a lot of horror and science fiction books to see if they would be able to assist me. The librarian walked over introduced themselves and asked exactly what kind of book I was looking for. I explained that I wanted a horror book that was under 350 pages that was somewhat fast paced. The librarian knew a few books off the top of his head, but unfortunately they were checked out. At this point, he told me about a database they had for all library card users called Novelist. He proceeded to show me how to use Novelist, I played “dumb” and went ahead and acted like I didn’t know what was going on. Eventually after typing in some books that he liked, we came to the consensus on The Silence by Tim Lebbon. It was something that was somewhat short and described as fast pace. It seemed somewhat of a cross between a thriller and horror, but I thought for the amount of time spent in this reader’s advisory interview (about 20 minutes) I would take the book and be happy.

Overall Experience:

When thinking about the overall experience, I would have to rate it a 8/10 with 10 being the best experience I could have. I give it this rating, mostly for the hesitance of the first librarian when I said I hadn’t read any books lately or ever and for the interruption that occurred that had nothing to do with the librarian himself. The library I visited has a large homeless population, and in the middle of the interview, someone came up who was intoxicated and became very unruly. The librarian handled the situation as best as they could be expected to, but as a patron having an interruption like that would probably turn me off from possibly asking again. Other than that specific instance, I would definitely go back to them for more suggestions. They didn’t really have any bookmarks or things to take home with me, but with the time the librarian took to show me Novelist, I feel like as a patron, I would be able to find some read alikes and information on my own.

P.S. 

I started reading The Silence by Tim Lebbon and it is very, very good! Making this experience all worth the time!