To be or not to be – and what to be?
Friday, July 13, 2007 by level1librarian
On Tuesday in Interpersonal Communication class we had a very interesting discussion about what to call the people who visit libraries. Are they customers, patrons, users, or something else? Each term has pros and cons. I have noticed myself using the word user lately, thinking that it was the most neutral term I could come up with. However, some people in class suggested that to them it evokes connotations to drug use.
Being a linguist, I had to check my New Penguin Thesaurus. They don’t list user, but under patron (’a regular patron of this establishment’) we find customer, client, regular, frequenter, habitué, buyer, shopper, purchaser, and subscriber. The only new suggestion under customer is consumer. No help there. The built-in Word thesaurus suggests fan, among others, for patron. I like it, even though it has completely different connotations.
I’ll have to continue mulling it over. Although, as someone noted in class, getting hung up on what to call the people visiting libraries takes our attention from the important issues. I’ll just have to make sure not to get hung up. 
The conversation nevertheless reminded me of a recent post by The Ubiquitous Librarian. He muses on when do people become patrons of the library. (Note that he uses the word patron.)
Well, to remove the drug-user confusion, library users could be called L-users or “lusers,” but talk about bad connotations . . .
To me a library patron is someone who checks out books. Everyone else is a guest or user– as in a user of space or computers or food, etc. This is my own personal feeling, so not rooted in anything of note.
I was talking with some students and called them as “users” (as in, are you guys regular users) and they thought I meant drugs… so yeah, it’s touchy.
I just think the word “patron” has really fallen out– at least in academic libs