Suzie, who used to work at the Dallas Public Library, is wondering why librarians are being asked to refer to their patrons as customers. Does the word customer make consulting a library and borrowing books feel too much like a transaction? Eric Patridge, in his 1955 book The Concise Usage and Abusage, explains that you can have a patron of the arts, but not of a greengrocer or a bookmaker. What do you think people who use a library should be called? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Patron vs. Customer”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Susie from Dallas.
Hiya, Susie. How are you doing?
Hi, I’m okay. How are you?
All right.
What can we help you with?
Okay, well, I wanted to ask about the word patron.
In the library, the librarians for a long time would call the people coming in the library patrons.
But there’s a trend lately for the librarians to call the people customers.
And this bothers me.
I like the word patron.
I feel like it has a lot of respect in that word.
And I wondered, what’s the difference between the word patron and customer?
Customer to me means somebody who’s going to give money,
And patron is somebody that comes for a long period of time.
And also, what’s going on with why would librarians want to change that?
Well, first of all, let’s say, hey, librarian, you’re our people.
Wait, are you a librarian or you just frequent the library?
I am a librarian.
Oh, you are.
Okay, you were talking about libraries like an insider.
Okay, so are you getting an edict from on high that you have to call your patrons customers?
No one had actually ever said to us we had to, but it was kind of like a newspeak thing where all of a sudden all the administrators started using the word customer.
All of the printed material would come out, you know, with the word customer.
Oh, really?
Interesting.
What I’m hearing here is echoes of a conversation that has been happening in industries all across the world where people are starting to realize that even if it’s a public service, even if it’s something funded by tax revenues or the government, or even if it’s funded by donations, you still have to treat your patrons, your customers, as if you were an ordinary business where they pay you a fee and you provide them a service.
And both of you are trying to do the best that you can to hold up your end of the bargain.
And so to me, it sounds like an echo of this kind of idea of running these institutions
A little more like a business in order to increase efficiency.
Now, you mentioned Newspeak.
Maybe a little bit of it is just a, how shall we put this,
A reframing of old practices so that they sound fresh and new.
I don’t really know.
Certainly, the library is one of the few places in the world where I get consistently good service.
So I don’t know that they need to call it customers.
Yeah, I’m with Susie on this.
I’m not sure I like the term customer because it feels so much like a transaction.
I mean, I’m not going there and paying to borrow books.
And I think that patron has a sort of antiquated, sort of aspirational sense of all of us in the community patronizing the library.
That is, being patrons, giving patronage to the library, all contributing to it.
That’s really interesting. You know, you’ll probably both be relieved to hear that Eric Partridge, the great British lexicographer, more or less agreed with you.
In 1955, in his book, Concise Usage and Abusage, he talked about this, and he said that you can have a patron of the arts, but not of a green grocer or a bookmaker.
Exactly.
Right? He says, tradesmen have customers, professional men have clients, though doctors have patients.
I remember reading about a librarian who has that on her job interview list of questions that when she was interviewing people for a position, the last question was patron or customer? Explain.
I love it.
You know, the essay question. Discuss.
So to kind of round this up, it sounds like, Susie, that you’re in the camp of you like library patron, right?
Thank you.
Martha, you like library patron?
Well, I mean, there is the sort of whiff of patriarchy in there, you know, the old etymology there, which might be bothering some people.
But I sort of like clients.
Right.
As a better word.
Client.
Yeah.
More like a professional service.
Yes, yes, yes.
Not so much like, you know, selling onions or something.
And me, I don’t care what they call me as long as the libraries stay open.
And that’s a problem.
So, Susie, we’re going to throw this out.
We’ll see what kind of opinions we get back, and we’ll talk about them again on a future show, all right?
Okay, great.
Thank you so much for calling, and best of luck at the library.
Okay, thank you.
Bye-bye.
What do you think about customer versus patron?
Can you be a customer of the library, or are you just a patron?
Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email us any question at all about language to words@waywordradio.org.
Both seem inappropriate to me. I like calling them “readers” first, or perhaps “visitors.” “Customers” or “patrons” promotes a money-changing atmosphere, even if patron is not defined as such. Sometimes that doesn’t matter. It’s the association people have with the word that should be considered, not some focus on proper grammar when assigning the identifier. If the idea is to welcome the masses, then offer a less stuffy appeal.
I limit my 2 cents worth of comments to public libraries. Because public libraries are tax supported and for the benefit of all community residents, I prefer the term patron. We support our libraries; we own our libraries; we direct our libraries. Our use of library services helps direct how they will be run. Of course as patrons and supporters we should expect excellent “customer service” but I think of it as more. “customer” seems to focus on the transaction more than the relationship. How do most businesses respond when “the boss” enters the business? Perhaps the library managers are just looking for ways to remind their staff that the people who enter to use the library are not interruptions but the purpose of their work. I think most do a terrific job and I like the term patron – it is special for libraries and people who support the arts or other causes.
This falls in with the practice of retail businesses now referring to their customers as “guests” (which brings to mind Ben Franklin’s dictum about guests and fish). Perhaps the change from “patron”, a term noted as referring to a benefactor — patron of the arts, patron of the symphony, patron of the opera (perhaps American libraries greatest patron was Andrew Carnegie whose donations were, in many cases, matching grants) — that change comes with so many public library systems now being managed by those holding Master of Business Administration degrees rather than Master of Library and/or Information Science degrees. This comes with libraries adopting the “big box retail bookstore” model, thus the diminution of a patron’s interaction to a mere business transaction with little human value placed on it.