It reminds me of a family I grew up with: the eldest child was brilliant and talented and well behaved. The second child was smart and capable, if somewhat frustrating and unpredictable at times. But while parents and teachers were looking at the older child, the younger went and became a doctor much to the surprise of just about everyone. Some people take more time to come into their own.

User services has always been a part of libraries, whether it has been defined as a set of services or not. In the past two decades as many libraries experienced a decline in their reference interactions and a change in the information-seeking patterns of their patrons, user services became a larger focus. Innovation in user services goes back further than the twenty years of the Internet. Community information files were a trend in the 1970s; today, libraries provide information on the Affordable Care Act and are places for IRS tax volunteers to meet with the elderly. My local library loaned art and posters in the 1980s; now there are libraries loaning tools and cake pans. Libraries were early providers of computers for personal use, and this continues to be an important role for libraries, particularly as we try to bridge the digital divide.

The library is a growing organism, one that develops along with our communities and our patrons. Changes in our local economies and changes in information-seeking behaviors beget new user services. User services are important to our community and are often called out when defending libraries against closure—particularly access to computers, job-finding assistance, and other community-focused services. We are at a time of great opportunity and great need for user services in our libraries and in our communities, and RUSA is right alongside librarians, sharing best practices, providing training, and fostering discussion. Below is an overview of some of the major areas of user services and a sampling of RUSA’s activities in these areas. I cannot cover everything, and there is always room in RUSA for new ideas, so if something is missing I invite you to explore whether it exists in RUSA, and if it does not, to help create it.

Programming is a sprawling area and one that is particular to each library. Programming is where libraries really tailor themselves to the needs of their community, or subsets of their community. Financial literacy is a growing area for programming. Arts events, community debates and town halls, workshops on job-hunting—this could be an endless list. Programming is usually done for groups but can have components that are one-on-one, such as with job-seeking assistance that might arrange for consultations about résumé review. Programming is a great way to reach out to patrons and to partner with other groups in the community who have shared goals with the library. Perhaps a presentation on child development and bedtime reading cosponsored with a local hospital? Or a workshop on researching summer internships and employers cohosted with the campus career center? This area is so ripe with possibility—that I wish it were my job! Yet programming can be tricky, and not every program is a guaranteed success. Some libraries shy away from what could be a very good opportunity to connect with patrons and community groups because of the planning and creativity required. As reference patterns change, programming is becoming a burgeoning area of user services and can be a great way to connect people to the materials your library has on a particular subject.

Collections are at the heart of libraries, whether they are physical or electronic, owned or licensed. Survey after survey tells us that collections are what our users think of and value most about libraries. Collections are a core service for libraries. Collections also form a foundation for programming, instruction, and reading-related services. Readers’ advisory services connect our readers with the next book. Author talks and book groups are programming that connect people to each other and to books. The early twenty-first century can be a challenging time to be building a library collection, and RUSA programs and discussions, such as the CODES Conversations, can help to navigate issues of print vs. electronic, e-book platforms and purchasing, genre reading, and effective readers’ advisory techniques.

It is a heartening trend in libraries to look at everything with a user-focus, from space, to technology, to collections. RUSA is about the user, the librarian, and the information as a uniting trilogy in user services. User services typically has the librarian in direct contact with the patron (programming, readers’ advisory, instruction), but sometimes the librarian is a step removed, providing the service but not seen by the user (collection development, ILL). RUSA has many members who are “accidental technologists” or have responsibilities that are both frontline (working with users) and back-office (working with technology or collections). These are great pairings that keep our jobs interesting and enable us to use what we experience working with patrons to inform and improve our services. The MARS-Emerging Technologies Section has been serving librarians who are at the intersections of user services and technology for more than thirty years. As technology becomes more ubiquitous in our work lives, technology is also addressed across RUSA, as well as within the particular emerging focus of MARS-ETS. User Experience (UX) is a relatively new area in libraries as librarians realize the great extent to which our online presence is a library branch and that the paths users take to information can be positive or frustrating. An upcoming webinar to help librarians improve online user services is How to Conduct Usability Studies: A Librarian Primer (www.ala.org/rusa/how-conduct-usability-studies-librarian-primer) on April 9, 2014.

User services is a broad area in our libraries that provides diverse benefits to our communities. As access to information, patron behaviors, and libraries have changed, user services has become more prominent. It is time for libraries to consider user services not as a little sibling to reference, but as a set of activities as fully deserving of attention, assessment, administration, staffing, and training as the mainstay of reference service. As evidenced by the US in RUSA, our professional organization has a long-standing commitment to supporting librarians and staff that innovate with and improve user services by providing training, guidelines, and networking with others interested in user services. I have not been able to name here all of the aspects of user services in libraries, or even all of the RUSA activities around user services. I hope that this overview has convinced you, if you weren’t before, of the vitality and importance of user services and made you aware that RUSA is about more than reference.