Stanford Librarians and the Marguerite Moment

Hybrid Marguerite bus. Photo credit: Deyra N. Rodriguez

As part of our Library Concierge Project, we are promoting the notion of the Marguerite Moment. The Marguerite Moment is our version of an Elevator Pitch, but branded for Stanford — Marguerite is the name of Stanford’s free campus shuttle (the history of the name is actually pretty interesting).

We plan to practice a version of the Marguerite Moment at each of our Concierge sessions by encouraging folks to sit near someone they don’t know well, and having them do the following 1-minute exercise:

Imagine you are on the Marguerite shuttle and you sit down next to someone you recognize from the library, but have never talked to before. Introduce yourself to them, and tell them what you do for SULAIR.

Another version of the Marguerite Moment we are practicing is topic specific. For any given topic we cover in our Concierge training, we hope to equip staff to handle the following kinds of Marguerite Moments:

Imagine you are on the Marguerite shuttle and the person sitting next to you says:

“Hey, you work at the libraries, right? Don’t’ they run CourseWork? What’s that about?”

“Hey, you work at the libraries — Do they do anything with data?”

“Hey, you’re a librarian — What’s up with the Google Book thing?”

“Hey, you work at the libraries — Is the Engineering Library really bookless?”

As part of each training session, we will give folks a chance to practice a Marguerite Moment on the training topic, and we will give examples of good Marguerite Moment responses for each topic or issue we discuss.

So, the next time you see someone from the Stanford Libraries on the Marguerite shuttle, ask them something about the libraries — they will be ready and eager to talk to you.

Note: This post was edited on March 9 2012, to replace the photo of an old Marguerite bus with a photo of one of the current hybrid Marguerite buses, thanks to the Stanford P&TS for supplying the updated photo.