Shelf Space
Booksellers and Librarians talk about what's in their reading room and what's on the horizon.
 Friday, June 27, 2008
If You Want to Learn, You've Got to Say the Magic Words
We've all been asked some form of the question, "why did you become a librarian," and with my 30th high school reunion looming I expect I'll be asked at least once by an old classmate. I have different answers depending upon whom I'm speaking to, but I think the best answer is simply because I'm curious about stuff. I just find it fun to look things up, help people and in the process learn something new.

Most of the stuff that I've learned about computers and technology was more by accident than by intent. I was simply curious enough to go poking around trying to figure things out. Lifelong learning is often used to describe this process, but it's a phrase that has never resonated with me. To me it sounds way too formal and planned for anything I've ever actually learned on my own. My process of learning is more like what Dorothea Salo calls the six magic words, than anything as stuffed shirt sounding as Lifelong Learning.

What are the magic words?

Ready? Okay the magic words are, "hmmm I wonder how that works."

When I first heard about the Learning 2.0 program, based upon the idea of learning about 2.0 tools through guided exploration (which I’m sure is trainerspeak for the magic words), I became an evangelist for the Learning 2.0 program.

A year has gone by since that day and now my library is in the midst of a Learning 2.0 program, for which I'm proud to be an administrator. When our program started I was naïve enough to be surprised at the negative feelings that some staff would have about it. I had been so involved in developing proposals; finding funding for incentives; determining tools for measuring progress; that I forgot that not everyone wants to learn this stuff. The magic words for these people are like the bell in the picture book The Polar Express; they have lost their power to enchant.

For these staff our 2.0 program is something that is added onto their workday, which makes their regular job harder. Most of these people are busy, and they feel that if they take time to play with these tools they’re letting their coworkers down because the regular work may not get done. As Kathryn Greenhill points out these people aren’t dumb grumps they’re merely expressing some very legitimate concerns. They’d like to know how these tools relate to their jobs, which ones are the most important, and they want a traditional training structure.

A Learning 2.0 program, I would argue, is as much about building a culture of dare I say it, lifelong learning amongst staff, as it is about any of the tools and applications we play with. Since technology is changing quickly and 2.0 applications are developing rapidly and then morphing into something new, the question of which tool is more important than another becomes rather moot. Knowing about these tools can improve the ability of staff to provide excellent customer service. One librarian in our system quickly located close captioned television shows on the internet, for a hearing impaired customer, because she had learned about Hulu the week before. These “aha!” moments are important to share with everyone in the program, because they enhance the power of the magic words.

It’s been a pleasure speaking to you this month, but now I’m going to go play with this thing called 280 Slides which seems like it could be helpful for my next presentation. 280 Slides, hmmm I wonder how that works?

Posted by: Jim McCluskey

Librarianship | Libraries | Library 2.0 | Technology

posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 9:39:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [1]
 Friday, June 20, 2008
Compliments, Complaints, and Conversations
Have you Googled your library recently? If you haven’t, what you find may surprise you. That man you saw earlier today picking up his holds may be thinking about writing a review that mentions how much he likes dropping by the library to grab his books and go. The fact is our patrons, both the satisfied and dissatisfied, are talking about us in their blogs on review sites like Yelp. These sites enable our customers to reach larger audiences than ever before, and to share what they like and dislike about the service provided. This is something libraries should be thinking about and preparing for.

Once you’re aware of these review sites the library has some questions to answer. Should the library join these sites and add reviews or other content? Should the library respond to negative reviews, correct inaccurate information, and so on? Who’ll be responsible for periodically checking these sites and what guidelines should they be working with.

I’d encourage libraries to consider adding content to review sites, especially in cases where the library hasn’t yet been reviewed. These first reviews represent an opportunity to share services the library offers such as Wi-Fi, and virtual reference service. Be up front about identifying yourself as the library and keep it brief. Be factual and focus on services, let your customers be the ones to offer praise.

Libraries should consider carefully how or if they’ll respond to reviews. My advice would be to let the community police itself and to have faith that the good service you provide will balance out the occasional poor review. Yelp offers some good advice for business owners that also applies to libraries.

Some highlights:
“Don’t review your own business anonymously or get your friends to do the same.
Don’t overestimate the impact of a single negative review. It happens to even the best businesses. That said if you see a trend of negative reviews, you may want to take this feedback and determine if there is a way to improve your business.
Do add photos to your business page and make sure the business information is correct.
Do review your own business, clearly stating that you are the business owner. Full disclosure is important here, and will be critical in earning the respect of the Yelp community.”

Review sites like these are expanding rapidly, building off people’s inherent desire to create and share information. Libraries that embrace these web 2.0 tools have an opportunity to open a dialog with their customers which may lead to beneficial relationships for both.

A customer, who wrote a positive review about the library, may be the person you think of when you’re looking for a person to offer a patron perspective on the library’s blog. And even a negative review offers the chance to get feedback about ways we might improve our services, practices, or policies. Our customers are talking about us. It’s time for libraries to join the conversation.

Posted by: Jim McCluskey

Internet | Libraries | Reviewing | Technology

posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 9:28:46 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [1]
 Friday, June 13, 2008
Cell Phones Have a Place in Our Libraries
I spend a lot of time on Flickr and every so often I come across something that just really bothers me. No, I’m not talking about someone’s tasteless photograph; I’m referring to mean library signs. Many of the worst ones target cell phone users. Of course, if your sign can be addressed to teen use of cell phones, well then you’ve hit the daily double of nasty. One library I came across the other day even threatens you with a hundred dollar fine if you’re caught talking on a cell phone in the library. Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that bad cell phone policies and unfriendly signs send a message to these customers that we don’t want you in our libraries. These practices are also out of step with the services libraries are already offering or moving towards in the near future.

Your phone is getting smarter.

Remarkably given the state of the economy, cell phone sales are booming, especially smart phones like the iPhone, and the Blackberry pearl. Formerly the domain of techies and executives, these smart phones are now coming into the mainstream, and that represents a great opportunity for libraries. In the past several years more and more libraries have begun offering downloadable content such as audio books, music, video and eBooks all of which are compatible with many smart phones.
One of the big hurdles for widespread acceptance of this downloadable content has been the issue of incompatibility with the iPod. Now that OverDrive has announced it will later this summer be releasing DRM free audio books that will work with iPods—look for more details at ALA—can the announcement that these same materials will also be compatible with the iPhone as well, be far off? Downloads still have some issues, notably the learning curve for first time users, but soon libraries will finally offer them to the vast majority of customers who have been up to now, shut out from these materials.

Kindle the new iPod?

I want to be a fan of eBooks, but I just can’t warm up to them. But like a lot of things I buy for the library whether I personally enjoy them or not is irrelevant, I buy them because our customers expect the library to have them. And the Kindle has the potential to do for eBooks what the iPod did for digital music. Should that happen, library customers are going to expect that the library offer the latest bestseller in eBook format as well. Two of the largest selling points of the Kindle seem to be convenience and an improved experience for the reader. You can already read an eBook on your smart phone and many are, as the success of Harlequin’s eBook program has shown, so the audience for eBooks is there, it’s the experience that has to improve and perhaps only slightly.

Forget about email, texting is where it’s at.

My library is considering moving to another ILS vendor. And as part of our conversation we’ve been asking about the possibility of offering texting of holds notices to patrons. So far none of them have promised anything other than it’s in the purgatory known as development. But all of them admit that they’re hearing this request from other library systems as well.

I love the idea of text message notifications because it reflects the fact that texting is the preferred method of communicating over email, and voice calls for many tech savvy users. Why Library Elf can handle texting me my holds and overdue notices so eloquently, but ILS vendors cannot is perhaps only explicable by the commitment of their resources to adding tags and reviews which seem to be the current innovations they’re all trying to offer in one form or another.
What I find very, very strange is that we’re still talking about cell phones in such negative terms when the technological trends are all moving these devices towards a much greater integration with current and emerging library services.  Yes, cell phone conversations can be annoying, and yes, libraries need to try and offer some spaces for quiet study. But cell phones can be used in a quiet manner, texting and soft phone conversations are no more disruptive to the library than any other patron conversation.

Libraries should separate the patron behavior that is disruptive away from these devices which are now ubiquitous. To allocate resources to collections like eBooks, downloadable music, video and audio books and to move towards developing services like texting hold notifications while at the same time treating cell phone users as pariahs is ridiculous in the short term and dangerous in the long term.

Posted by: Jim McCluskey

eBooks | Libraries | Library 2.0 | Technology

posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 9:25:06 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]
 Friday, June 06, 2008
Let's talk ... why we blog.

I love my job.  As a Collection Development librarian I get to buy DVDs, music and downloads for my library system.  This means that I get to follow technology trends-which soothes my inner geek-and also share my passion for intellectual freedom.  Forget the, I  "heart" the First Amendment bumper sticker; I want the first amendment tattoo-Congress shall make no law….  

But for all that passion and love of my job, there's a tradeoff, isolation.  No matter how much I'd like to, I'll never be able to visit branch libraries as frequently as I'd like to discuss collections.   And while I don't consider my library unusual, the collections in our libraries have undergone some significant changes recently.  Since 2004, the year I joined Collection Development, we've added streaming music and video, done away with nearly all analog media, begun offering downloadable audio and video, as well as begun floating our collection amongst our libraries.  

In light of all this change, the Collection Development department began blogging last year as a supplement to our other communication methods.  For most staff, our communication with them was more of a broadcast of information either through email, or our Tech News newsletter which while effective in its way tended to be somewhat formal.   Our blog with its more conversational tone, we hoped would start a dialog between us and staff, and also since we've added librarians and switched around a few selection areas, help branch staff put a face to a name.  

Overall, our blog has been fairly successful at both of those goals, modest though they are.  Since we began, the blog has been visited over 8,000 times and visitors have left 170 comments on our 206 posts.  And while we'd like to see a lot more comments, we're happy with the efficiency that blogging affords us in our communication with staff.  Since blogs are by their nature, archival and searchable staff can locate postings easily-a benefit anyone who's ever lost an email that included a link you needed to retrieve quickly, can appreciate.

The Nuts and Bolts

Before we began we discussed a number of technical and strategic items.  Which software should we use for our blog?  Should the blog be internal and password protected or open to the public?  Who would be posting and what level of administrative rights would they have?  What sort of content would we focus on and how often should we post?  

We decided to use Wordpress as our platform over Blogger because we wanted to quantify the success of our blog and Wordpress offers a free statistical package that is surprisingly robust.  By using Wordpress, we can track which posts are the most popular, see how people are finding us, as well as a number of other useful reports all of which can be run either by day, week, month, or all time.  Since both Blogger and Wordpress are free this choice was easy.

We chose to make our blog open to the public, rather than internal and password protected.  We began our blog with no real marketing push other than an introductory email, and some announcements at a meeting of supervisors.  We had no idea how well the blog would be received and wanted to make it as easy as we could for staff to find us initially.  

Internally we decided that anyone within the Collection Development department would be able to post to the blog, though only a few of us would have full administrative privileges.  By allowing support  staff to post to the blog we could  build off some of the work they were already doing, such as posting lists of newly purchased items  that had been going into a public folder in Outlook email.  These email postings are popular with some staff and we wanted our blog to offer the same information in an alternative stream rather than replace email.  Since the public folders in Outlook are emptied every two weeks automatically, the blog also allowed us to offer an archive of these lists.  Because support staff could publish the list with only a few clicks and a cut & paste the duplication of effort for these lists was minimal.

The content of the blog tends toward the short and sweet.  We want content to change often giving staff a reason to visit frequently.  Though we'll occasionally post longer articles, many of which appear in our Tech News newsletter also,  we tend to blog more in snippets of brief text with links for greater detail.  The most frequent topics are not surprisingly publishing news and technology.  Since our blog is public some purely administrative content goes through our more traditional communication channels.    Finally, since our aim was to create a dialog with staff we opted to allow comments with minimal moderation.   The first time a visitor leaves a comment , it must be approved by myself or another administrator.  Once a comment by a visitor has been approved though, all subsequent comments publish to the blog immediately.  

Though libraries and situations differ, many communication challenges are the same from library to library. Blogs with their archival nature, ease of searching, and conversational tone can provide a channel for fast , efficient, information sharing and communication between staff in libraries large and small.


Posted by: Jim McCluskey

Blogosphere | Libraries

posted on Friday, June 06, 2008 3:03:27 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]

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