I personally believe that any new initiative require change. For example, the question Binu David has put forth to this forum is the first sign of a change to take place. Where does that change take place first? In his/her head, right? How does that change take place? It emerges from the feeling that Users would get better value if they come to the Library and read. But, it is still in the head of Binu and certainly not shared by his customers or users. Why? Simple, they don't buy into what Binu think is good for them? So, I personally believe that we must start asking fundamental and simple questions to our users – that's how anyway, we solicit user feedback.

But, in this scenario, we must engage our users personally on a face-to-face discussion. Now, this discussion has to be very structured and mentally convincing to the person you are going to explain your concept of value addition to users through Library. That means, you as a Librarian should be a in a position to convince him/her on all matters relating to his believe on why he/she should come to the Library. Remember, this is a mental exercise you have to do.

Because, as of now the person believe that the Library can provide very little for himself or herself? He/she feels that it is the same old, boring place. So, immediate answer to the question is : Get into the heads of the your users, think from their view point on why should they come to the Library? Why did or didn't you go to the Library, when you were a student? I'm sure you had better things to do, than going there;- unless you got what you were looking for? Whether it was to find your romantic counter part or the novel you were looking for – whatever that may be.

The point is, we have to build romantic Libraries, Libraries that can attract, retain and make people continuously starve for lib services. By the way, where do you go for romance? Mostly to a Garden, unless you are in Bangalore, and looking for a Coffee day outlet. In either case, it has commonalities and differences. Meaning: Library has to  be esthetically pleasing to the people to come and romance with books. Second, we must encourage over-a-cup of coffee conversations inside the Library in well crafted environment (meaning not disturbance to other users). We must embed ourselves into these conversations and get a feel of why people should come to Library? I can tell you, if you can encourage informal  conversations, nothing can stop the bonding that take place among people to avoid coming to the same place at the same time. This is from my experience of attending BarCamps in Bangalore. So encourage conversation, provide conducive, non-threatening and free flowing discussions.

Though, the next point is very controversial. I would like to hit upon this as well. The education imparted in most colleges in Kerala barring a few national level institutions are not up to the standard of making people to think and provide their assessment of a view or question. Therefore, students have no clarity of concepts, they just have swallowed the theory only find a place where they can vomit – nothing beyond.

So, engage professors, to come to the Library and use the audio-visual facilities to trigger curricular or non-curricular but inspiring discussions on anything the user community want to discuss or understand. Generally, students are open to have discussions on topic they hardly understand but by-hearted. What I'm saying is that, we must provide value that the students are seeking (you must read this with my earlier posting on value/individual productivity).

Though there are many things that we could do change the mindset, one important, one can quickly take up is to find the most influential students among the students community and have a conversation with them on the value (again, you must have convincing answers to them) of Library to them. If you get through this, you have got a large mass coming to the Library under the influence of this people. It depends on your ability to plant seeds of convincing thoughts into the brain of the influence people, who will influence others. Again, conversation is the key.

So, key points: 1. Plant seeds of thoughts with influential people 2. Encourage conversations (design and deploy) 3. Build aesthetics soothing to the people 4. Continuously question your own judgment on why users don't come to the Library. You must avoid pre-mature judgment on why users don't come. 5. Get into the depth of your assumptions, at least ¾ level deeper (example, Let's say, you think that users not coming to the Library because they are no longer interested in reading. Don't stop there, ask yourself, why they are not interested, you might get some answers, I know everything, what I need to know, again don't stop there, ask yourself why does he thinks that he knows everything, library can't provide any additional value? So, you have to keep going, at least 5 or 6 level deeper. Whatever you discover will get you the right answers and can be published in a International journal.

Inviting your critical comments and further questions!