Let me be upfront about this: I think public libraries do a poor job with (some of) the emails they send patrons. I'm talking about emails about borrowing, such as automatic loan renewals or holds becoming available. It's not that the information in the emails is wrong, but it's not (all) the information that patrons need.
Here are two examples.
Automatic renewals
The Las Vegas public library [1] renews loans automatically (which is great!). When that happens, the system sends me an email that starts:
Good news Graeme!
We've turned on automatic renewal for eligible items.
The following item(s) have been automatically renewed, and the new due date(s) are below:
followed by a list of books and their due dates.
What it doesn't tell me is when my other books are due. In fact, it doesn't tell me if I have other books borrowed at all. For all I can tell from the email, I might have a book due today — or yesterday.
I could always log in to my account at the library web site to find out that information [2], but why? Why not just include that information in the email?
A book on hold is available
When a book I have requested becomes available and is put on the hold shelf for me to pick up, the system sends me an email letting me know that I have seven days to pick up the book.
Can you guess the problem? The email doesn't tell me if there are other books on the hold shelf waiting for me. For all I know, I might have a book on the hold shelf that will disappear at the end of the day.
What's going on?
I'd like to say that this is a simple case of the library taking a library-centered view rather than a patron-centered one, but I think it's worse than that. After all, the library has an interest in me picking up all my holds; otherwise, the effort that someone put into putting the book on the shelf is wasted.
I have a background in Computer Science, so perhaps my thinking is more technical than the average patron, but it looks to me like emails are triggered by changes to the database inside the library system. In effect, the email service is serving the database rather than the library or the patron.
How can this be improved?
Well, I've given you a couple of possibilities. An email announcing automatic renewals could let me know when my next book is due. And the email about a hold could tell me about earlier holds.
But this still isn't centered on the patron. One question a patron might like answered is, "When is the next time I need to go to the library?". If a hold has just arrived, the answer might be "Any time within the next seven days", but a loan might be due sooner than that; if so, that could be included in the email as well. To be clear, a single email might include information about both holds and borrowing.
Another question a patron might ask is, "What library book should I read next?". It might help to know whether any books the patron has borrowed have people waiting for them. That information is certainly available — in Las Vegas it's shown in your online account — so it could be included in appropriate emails.
Clearly, there's also some investigation needed into what patrons prefer. Every email from the library doesn't need to include every detail of the patron's account.
Good luck!
I'm not suggesting that any of the above is easy. If there's one thing that's harder than software, it's software that communicates with external systems (like email).
Notes
[1] Properly called the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District.
[2] The renewal email includes a link to go directly to my account, which I guess is helpful.
Another useful Patron viewpoint. Again with the disclaimer that my observations do not reflect library or ILS capabilities or policy:
The CarlX Hold System attempts to "bundle" / combine hold available emails for holds hat arrive on the hold shelf within a specific time window, anything outside that window will require a separate email message. Likewise items having an identical due date (or overdue number of days threshold) ought to reside in the same email notice.
Having notice emails Include a full list of loan items with due dates might prove a useful option. For simplicity and length of an email notice, the default notice email content will likely remain limited to the item(s) having immediately relevant due dates and a link to the recipient patron account. For example, many patron families with juvenile library cardholders share a single email and borrow dozens of books at a time, so emailing comprehensive lists might prove lengthy if not confusing in those situations.
In a related vein, I have seen a couple "opt-in" title suggestion services that will suggest titles based on recent loans to a Patron account. Suggestions will only arrive with a limited set of notices like Courtesy/ "Coming Due" Notices and Autorenewal Notices. Overdue notices will not include recommendations. and again, these suggestions include opt-out links as well along with opt-in selection.
Do you have any observations about text / SMS message notifications from your library ILS? Like the borrowing suggestions, only a subset of library ILS messages appear suitable for SMS delivery and the message content has character length restrictions that lend to very brief communications. "Hold Available" and "Coming Due" messages stand as candidates for SMS / text message delivery.
Thanks again for the post.