The dominant fiction borrower in UK public libraries is a woman over 60 who reads family sagas. This is both a statistical fact and a strong perception among library staff.
A second group with high visibility, smaller in numbers but strong in impact, is the requesters who come in on Monday morning with the Sunday paper hardback reviews. Both men and women, they request non-fiction as much as fiction.
These readers are well catered for in terms of library stock and services. When staff talk about borrowers they often have these groups in mind. These are the borrowers who are known to staff, the ones who stop for a chat or make a demand on the service. It is important that these readers continue to receive a good service but it is equally important that they are not seen as the library's only or most significant audience.
Reader development offers new experiences to the dominant borrowers and, more crucially, it gives ways of thinking about providing a service to the people who are less visible, the ones who don't talk to staff and maybe don't want to.