Let's Go to the Mall

When the Glendale Branch of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library (IMCPL) outgrew its home in a pastoral setting in a community park, serendipity and some creative thinking helped library managers find an unusual yet beneficial location for the busy branch. The library moved to the Glendale Mall in 2000, growing from 11,500 to 29,000 square feet. In it's new home, it found a place where the whole community gathered, including many who hadn't been library patrons in the past.

The mall helped pay for the construction of the new branch and even gave the library a rent reduction for the first three years. How charitable, you may be thinking, but this is strictly business. Mall managers approached the library because they thought having a branch in the mall would attract potential customers for its retail stores.

"They saw the library as a destination stop," says Stephen Bridge, assistant manager of the Glendale Branch. "People go to a library on purpose. They figured all those people who were going to the library in the park would go to the library in the mall instead." The branch, deep inside the mall, is a real traffic booster. Patrons have to pass many stores to get there, and the window-shopping often leads to dollars-and-cents transactions. Patrons don't seem to be hindered by the walk: library traffic doubled and circulation has increased by 35-40 percent since the move.

Branches in shopping malls help build community by attracting new patrons to the library. They help libraries offer exciting new venues with a retail-like approach and raise awareness of the work libraries are doing. In some cases, though not at Glendale, the library is more cost-effective owing to the smaller space used to serve patrons. These branches also provide the community with a public retreat from the hustle and bustle of the retail world. "As far as we're concerned, as long as the mall is here, the library is going to be here," Bridge says of Glendale. "It suits our needs very well."

The move has been almost entirely positive for the Glendale Branch, he says, including the most difficult change—switching from regular library hours to mall hours, even staying open late during the holiday season when malls are open longer. "For the guy trying to work out the schedule, some weeks it seems like a curse," Bridge admits, quickly adding that the branch provides expanded hours and extended library services to patrons who usually frequent other branches.

The move to the mall was a natural for IMCPL because this library system has already benefited from its creative thinking. The library also houses a branch in the Indianapolis Children's Museums. "Libraries are trying to fill new spaces and trying to work with the community in different ways," Bridge says. Indianapolis also integrates the catalogs of many local museums and schools into the public libraries' catalogs, so patrons can go online to find books all over town, not just at branches. Such community-building experience has been mirrored by other libraries.

"It's been a really positive experience for all of us," says Lynn Terpstra, marketing director for Crossroads Bellevue, a few miles east of Seattle, which includes a branch of the King County Library System (KCLS), a mini–city hall, and a police station. "It's just been hugely successful here."

The Crossroads branch, which has been open since 2001, has brought free high-speed wireless Internet access and events for children, teens, and families to the shopping center. It's also brought more people.

A customer-focused approach is exactly what KCLS wanted from its new "Library Connection" branches at Crossroads and, most recently, Southcenter, which opened in 2004. (King County has a third mall library, the Lake Forest Park Library, which has been in a shopping mall since 1965, but it is a more traditional, full-service facility.) Both Library Connection branches resemble upscale bookstores rather than traditional libraries. Only new and popular selections are given space. Books are displayed with their covers facing out and are not shelved according to catalog number. Media such as DVDs, videos, and audiobooks are given plenty of prominent shelf space. Seating is modern and varied, depending on the department. As in the children's section of a large bookstore, kids sit on the floor and read.

Librarians have had to adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers, says Su Vathanaprida, assistant managing librarian of the Crossroads branch and its partner library at Lake Hills, also in Bellevue. They have to think a bit more like shopkeepers in how they structure displays, dedicating a good ten percent of the floor to holds because it's so convenient for patrons to stop by while doing other business at the mall.

Her counterpart at the Southcenter and Valley View branches, managing librarian Karen Hardiman, says lack of space has forced the libraries to be creative. This, she believes, has been a good thing for everyone. "If this is a new space, it also has to be a new way of thinking about library service," Hardiman says.

Staffing is also nontraditional. At the Library Connection branches there are no librarians onsite full time. Both branches are staffed by clerks and managed by librarians who drop in to help out a few days a week and are available via telephone and email. The mall facilities also do not have reference collections.

Hardiman says she sees the Southcenter library as a "portal" through which new patrons enter the system and then find out about the broad array of resources available. "We registered 920 patrons the first two months we were open," she says, adding that the Valley View branch, which is in a neighborhood, signs up about three or four new people a day. "I don't see this new method supplanting or taking away customers from a traditional library," Hardiman adds.

Eric Knowlton, vice president of marketing and property management for Columbia Building Co., says the Huber Heights Branch of the Dayton Metro Library (DML) library in his suburban Ohio mall is wonderful, with a lot to offer. "It circulates more books than anywhere else in the system and does huge numbers of programs," says Mimi Morris, assistant director for DML's branch and extension services. Open since 1996, the Huber Heights branch circulated 62,266 items in August 2004.

Knowlton says he's hoping to attract a coffee shop to rent the space next to the library to add to the atmosphere, further the concept of the shopping center as a destination, and provide somewhere nice to hang out for a while. No one is sure which partner—the library or the mall—is benefiting most from the increased traffic they seem to bring to one another.

Once the Crossroads library opened, it quickly proved to be the cheapest of the 43 KCLS libraries to run, in terms of cost per circulation, says Denise Siers, KCLS associate director for public services. That's a nice benefit since mall libraries cost more than others to set up, owing to their "retail look." The circulation is outstanding: equivalent to libraries four times the square footage. At Crossroads, 433,495 items circulated in 2003; the system's largest library, at ten times the floor space, circulates only three times the items.

Library sizes vary dramatically, from the 29,000 square foot Glendale library and the 22,000 square foot Huber Heights Branch to the 2300 square foot Crossroads library. Most other mall libraries are closer in size to Crossroads than Glendale. The smaller libraries have a more refined approach to their collections, taking a lesson from their retail friends.

At Crossroads, shelf space is used in a very fluid way, says Vathanaprida. New books are brought in all the time, and old books don't hang around very long. If a book isn't "moving," it's moved to another branch.

When KCLS decided to add a branch to its south service area, it turned again to the management of a shopping center to find out if the library would be welcome, and the Southcenter branch became a reality. Though enthusiastic about the boon the library brings to the mall experience, Kristin Flores, marketing director at Westfield Shoppingtown Southcenter, says after just a few months in operation it's too soon to tell how much of an impact the new branch will have on mall traffic. It has already contributed positively to the atmosphere of the mall.

How do the retailers in the mall feel? Employees love having a place to go to check their email or pick up something to read. And the library's logical competition—bookstores—have built symbiotic relationships with all the branches mentioned in this article, according to librarians, mall management, and bookstore staff.

"Having a bookstore next to a public library is a great thing. It's a coveted spot," says Mike Coghlan, capital projects manager for IMCPL. "People who frequent the public library are also people who buy books [from the B Dalton bookstore down the hall]," he adds.

The Glendale library partners with mall stores to present holiday musical programs and serves as the mall's community meeting space for lectures and support groups, such as an educational program for families dealing with the impact of Alzheimer's. Mostly, though, the branch does what libraries do, and the mall benefits from the free offerings.

At Crossroads, some storeowners show their appreciation, in part, by offering discounts to library employees, according to Vathanaprida.

"We help them. They help us," confirms Richard Stignani, general manager of Books-a-Million at the Eastwood Mall in Birmingham, AL, where the mall library may just be keeping the mall on the map. The branch, a bookstore, and a bank are among the last holdouts at the struggling mall, according to Renee Blalock, associate director in charge of branches for Birmingham Public Library. Because the system has enjoyed the branch's 20 years of success at the mall, it is looking for another partnership in a different commercial setting. Other malls are already paying court.

"[The library] really contribute[s] to creating the overall customer experience that we try to achieve," says Southcenter Mall's Flores. "Our goal is to create a customer experience, not just provide a collection of shops. We like to make our customers as comfortable as possible and give them more reasons to come back more often."

She says the library offers consumers an oasis, a place to take a break or somewhere to send a partner who is getting tired of shopping. "I've heard nothing but positive feedback. Our customers seem to enjoy its being here. They see [the library] as an extra service and amenity," Flores says.