Tame The Web

Janie Hermann writes:

We are a pilot site at PPL for having Red Box services to supplement the library collection. This gives our library customers 24 hour access to the newest DVDs, means that we do not have to buy as many copies of new releases (thus saving money), and we can a cut of the money from having the Red Box on site that we can use for collection development. Win, win, win — at least we hope so. Pilot projects are exciting.

Article about the pilot program — we have been waiting six months for the arrival.
http://www.towntopics.com/dec2408/other2.php

From the article:

In exchange for providing a location and power, the library will receive three cents on every dollar spent on a Redbox DVD. At Tuesday’s meeting, Media Librarian Barbara Silberstein described how Redbox’s presence would relieve the library of having to buy multiple copies of fleetingly popular new films, enabling them to purchase more foreign language films, “indie” productions, and TV series.

I am over the moon at the possibilities this partnership may yield for libraries. AV departments – take note!

Patty Fonesca writes:

Take a look at what Ohio’s public libraries are doing to garner support since we are facing up to 50% funding cuts:

Save Ohio Libraries on Facebook already has over 1,800 members

One library did this to draw attention to the issue: http://www.toledolibrary.org/

One library has a countdown clock: http://new-carlisle.lib.oh.us/

Ohio Library Council is recommending the use of social networking sites: http://www.olc.org/SaveOhioLibraries.asp

Here at the Champaign County Library, we are using Facebook, our website, emails to patrons, etc.  Also, a patron is setting up a desk here at the library to assist others in learning about what they can do to help support the library.  We are providing contact information for our legislators, talking points, etc.  The most effective tool will be if we can use all these methods to get grassroots, heartfelt support from the people who count on us every day.

The propposed cuts announced just last week will be decided by July 1st, so we must use every means possible to preserve funding.

Char Booth, author of the ultra-hot  Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, recently published by ACRL, was just interviewed by Dan Freeman at ALA TechSource and Ellie Collier at In the Library with a Lead Pipe.

Both pieces yield insights into her background and thinking. Char Booth will be a university librarian to watch in the next few years!

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/06/chatting-with-char-booth.html

She discusses recent research and her template for environmental scanning with Dan:

The Foster and Gibbons Studying Students report from the University of Rochester was inspirational in that it illustrated the value of detailing the results of local research project in order to provide insight and motivation for similar studies in other contexts. At Rochester, they employed a series of interesting ethnographic methods to discover the authentic undergraduate research culture – Studying Students has deservedly received wide attention since its publication in 2007, but for anyone who hasn’t yet taken a look I highly recommend reading this study, which is also available in full as a free download on the ACRL Digital Publications site (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/digital/). Their results are fascinating and highly useful, yet practically speaking some of their research methodologies might be difficult to replicate to such an extent in other libraries. Most institutions do not employ a team of trained researchers who can successfully lead a study of this depth and magnitude. Extensive ethnography can be highly effort-intensive, and in the current budgetary climate scalability in research is key. Therefore, I wanted to show the depth of insight that can also be gained using other research designs such as web-based survey methodology. This is why I included the template student library/technology questionnaire, which is Creative Commons licensed and meant to be customized – no permission necessary, just take it and use it as you will. Creating a strong survey instrument takes a lot of work, so I hope people download the template, hack it up, make it fit their needs and local survey software, and conduct their own campus-wide library environmental scans.

http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/a-conversation-with-char-booth/

At Lead Pipe, a podcast is available as well as a transcript. The interview is full and rich and at one point Char discusses presenting:

A couple of the presentations I’ve done have been invited but most of them are the kind of thing where you submit your proposal and they accept you or reject you. And I’ve got plenty of rejections. It’s about, does your idea fit the program and do they have space for you and all that stuff. And I’m weird, I like to present. I really, really like it. I hated it when I started. I was as nervous as anybody else, but I’ve just grown to love being in front of people in a way that is challenging to me and hopefully engaging and interesting for them in terms of the content that I’m talking about. It’s a great challenge and that’s really what it’s all about. So most of them I applied for, a couple of them I’ve been invited to. It’s amazing to watch a good presentation and I try really hard to give a good presentation. And it’s an excellent way to kind of develop my skills in presentation technology and different ways to try to express ideas. I’m really interested in visual design too, so when I make a presentation I like it to be pretty beautiful, I try. So it pushes you forward. And again, it’s a great way to connect with people and hear really good questions and think about the things that you’re doing in ways that you wouldn’t have ever thought about because you get this feedback from other institutions. You talk for 20 minutes about something that happened at your place and then 10 people come up asking questions through their institutional lens.

I’m glad to have met up with Char on occasion and knocked out that she contributed “The Library Student Bill of Rights” here at TTW. Don’t miss these two interviews. Also, I just can’t get enough of the excellent quality, peer-reviewed journalism coming from ITLWALP. Have you added the blog to your feeds?

When Kyle invited comments on how newly minted (and seasoned!) librarians were job hunting, I had to share my story and technique.

After graduating in December from my masters program, I had high hopes: well before graduating, I had been lucky enough to have a few phone and in-person interviews. While the experiences were each unique and useful, they didn’t end in a job. As anyone who has been through a search — particularly in a weak economy — can tell you, the emotional weight of the hunt is overwhelming. Each rejection can further breed anger, sadness, and frustration.
Instead of allowing myself to fall victim to job hunt hopelessness or rely on the same handful of library job related databases that everyone else used, I decided to give myself a different goal outside of “getting a job.” That goal? Developing one of the most comprehensive and multifaceted library job websites, complete with not only the major databases, but also the employment web pages for individual libraries and cities. One of the things I’d come to realize through my hunt was that these large databases certainly captured a fair number of jobs out there, but they didn’t capture them all and often, there was significant overlap among them. My thought was that by going library-by-library, I’d find more jobs. More importantly, I’d find more jobs that fewer people apply to because of the actual work involved in locating them.

Thus, libraryjoblinks was born. Rather than build a website or database from the ground up, I used delicious because of the ability to tag things in many different ways. My personal search methodology was not necessarily logical nor the same day by day when job searching. While developing libraryjoblinks, it was my goal to have a tagging system that was understandable to others (location, type of library, etc.), but also one dynamic enough to allow browsing in a number of different ways (region, whether the jobs were posted on library district sites or city websites, etc.). But most importantly, I wanted the entire collection of links accessible to librarians, recent grads, or those preparing to graduate. The information is out there, but it’s so dispersed that sometimes the job search can get you down before you even really search. I wanted to have one place where I could look at hundreds of sites without having to hunt them all down first, and I wanted to share this with others.

I’ve had people tell me I am crazy for doing all this work for free then letting anyone access it (i.e., I’m letting my “competition” for jobs pull from my own resources). In my mind, though, librarians and information professionals are in the same field for this reason: to share our resources in as many useful ways as possible. Why should it be different for job information?

It’s my hope to keep growing the site. It takes a little work, and I’m doing it on my own, so at this point, much of it reflects what I was looking at or had quick and easy access to. But it’s still my goal to develop it more fully so that it can be a go-to spot for job hunters. So please, job hunters, soon to be job hunters, and people who may job hunt in a few years, use it! Share it, and share with me anything you run across that I should add.

Kelly Jensen is a reference librarian at a suburban Illinois library system and book blogger at stackedbooks.blogspot.com. She is also responsible for getting the member community for first-career librarians and info pros going on ALA connect, and  would love to see others get involved in the group.

| http://www.catagator.org/ | Book blogging: http://stackedbooks.blogspot.com/

When I read recently that I had been one of 200 potential candidates for an academic library position I came to the sad realization that, yes, this economy was going to affect my job search tremendously.  As a recent graduate from Dominican University’s LIS program, I’ve been on the hunt for a few months and my techniques for searching have changed quite dramatically.  I used to sample a few sites a couple times a week and browse through the listings in ACRL publications, but recently I’ve refined my attack to be much more effective.  I’d like to share what I’ve learned.

You may ask, “why unveil your modus operandi to potential job-seeking competitors?”  Well, we’re all hurting when it comes to job searching.  My father was recently unemployed for nearly a year.  I watched him stress out over personal, financial, and professional concerns as he looked and looked for something new.  Luckily, he was hired by a non-profit company, and, I hope, has let some of those concerns wash away.  I hope that some of these techniques may help you avoid the stress that has affected my father and many like him and help you find that position you so dearly seek like I do.

Please add your techniques or sites in the comments.

Twitter

You may have dismissed Twitter as another social networking fad or annoyance or haven’t looked at Twitter as a job searching tool, but I ask you to reconsider.  There are a few solid Twitterers out there that list new library jobs as tweets:

• ALA’s JobList
• LibGig
• Get Library Jobs

Facebook

I’m not all that active on Facebook but I did notice that ALA’s JobList was active on this social networking site.  Please leave a comment if you know of any other library job sources on Facebook

• ALA’s JobList

Forums

Rachel Singer Gordon has brought us another wonderful library-related project with her LISjobs.com forum.  You can find postings, discussion, and even a good share of encouragement if needed.  Again, if you know of any other library-related job forums please share them in the comments.  And thanks again, Rachel, for your services.

• LISjobs.com

RSS

Using Google Reader combined with an application called EventBox, I’ve been following RSS feeds quite closely.  Of all the “new” tools out there to help find new jobs, RSS is probably the most useful.  Major sites like Educause, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and many others provide feeds for certain types of positions, categories, or even search phrases.  I’ve found that some human resources pages of organizations include RSS feeds, but not nearly enough as I’d like.

• The Chronicle of Higher Education | Library, Information Sciences
• LibGig Jobs
• Educause
• Monster (search “librar*”)

Tabbed Browsing and Favorites

When all the new tools of the web fail you, go ahead and rest on the tried and true techniques like adding sites as favorites.  For those sites that don’t offer RSS feeds or organizations that I want to make sure I know when jobs have opened up, I favorite their human resources page.  I then put all those favorites in a folder and a couple times a week open those favorites in tabs in Safari (or your browser of choice) and skim the postings.

—
TTW Contributor: Kyle Jones
http://thecorkboard.org
@thecorkboard

Librarian, Interupted writes:

I think the first place I came across the idea was at Jenny Levine’s blog – see The Shifted Librarian: The Exeter Public Library Does Netflix .   

Here I am two years later still wondering how Netflix is working in libraries.  Is it still working?  Have the executives at Netflix shut everyone down?  Did all the ‘naughty’ libraries get a copy of “There Will Be Blood” as recommended in that NEWSWEEK article?  I really wanted to know. 

So, I decided to just go ahead and ask. 

I chose to check in on the Cook Memorial Library way up in Tamworth, NH from that article in Library Journal.  Library director Jay Rancourt had this to say about Netflix’s successful and continued use in her library:

Yes, we are still using Netflix. We are circulating two at a time now. Very popular service. Even more so in this lousy economy. There are (red) cards on the circ desk to be filled out by the patrons with their request. We queue the patron requests up on the Netflix website, and loan only one unit per person at a time. Then the patrons must queue up again.  It’s a two-day rental to keep the queue moving. I think it’s well worth the $13.99 per month it costs…

I did the math and I’d say she’s getting a great deal.  Economically, it’s like buying one new DVD a month, but having access to around 30.  Smart, smart, smart.  Why not take advantage of an easy and inexpensive way to provide users with what they want?  Way to go Jay!

It looks like no one has seen any kind of ‘reminder’ from Netflix the corporate entity banning libraries from using this service.  I’m sure they realize how many new subscribers they will gain from the pool of people who have access to their service through libraries.  Impatience is commonplace in America, eventually everyone wants their own subscription.  Netflix should consider paying libraries to offer the service!

If librarians are ultimately responsible for marketing librarians and library services, then the schools that prepare future librarians must offer the necessary training. Right? Well, not really. Carol Tenopir of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, School of Information Sciences, stated that library schools tend to emphasize the skills and knowledge that a librarian needs to do the job. “Schools do not focus on how to market to a constituency.”(1)

Download the Virginia Beach Version of the Slides here.

The good folks at Virginia Beach Public Libraries asked me back this year to talk about building community with social tools.  This was perfect timing because I had just read Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging and I’ve been working on an article and interview about/with Seth Godin for Digital Bibliotek magazine. His book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us has figured prominently into my thinking and teaching so far this year.

I always appreciate this type of synchronicity. Jenny Levine introduced me to Peter Block’s book – a fascinating look at transforming communities. Based almost entirely on creating community in physical space, his definition speaks to what I see as an important building block of online community: “Communities are human systems given form by conversations that build relatedness.” 

Compare that with Howard Rheingold’s 1993 definition of virtual community: “Social aggregators that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” 

Many important keywords here: human… conversations… relatedness..relationships…

Godin simply states: “Human beings can’t help it: we need to belong.” 

Godin’s Tribes is full of insights and ahas for me – as is the crowd-sourced companion PDF at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/TribesQA2.pdf. Download this one and give it a look after you read Tribes. It offers roadmap style planning points and loads of questions/answers for convening your tribe.

Combine all the above with these points from A List Apart’s post “The Wisdom of Community” that posits the ideas contained in The Wisdom of Crowds are amplified by the social web: “where they can reach their full potential.”

To enable online crowds to be wise, Derek Pozowak notes you need these things:

• Simplicity
• Interface
• Aggregation
• Participation
• Selfishness
• Explicit vs. implicit feedback

So, from all of this inspiration and these authors’ brilliant thinking, allow me to submit for your approval:

Ten Ways to Encourage the Tribe*

Connect around a cause, a community or a concept

Create your online group around a current issue, a user population or what libraries have a lot of: ideas. Focus on materials: reading, viewing, discussion. Focus on community: what’s happening around town? Focus on the current climate: what programs, services and revamped services might you offer in light of the economic downturn? How can the library help?

Ravelry is a smoking hot example of a focused community that works. A librarian shared with the group I was with in California last week that her daughter was publishing video via Ravelry of spinning techniques for people all of over the world.

Consider also Puget Sound Off  at http://www.pugetsoundoff.org/. The Digital Natives blog had this to say:

“The focus is to connect teens in the Puget Sound area that care about the same social issues so that they can create positive change in their communities.”

Take a look at Genre X from Oak Park Public Library at http://www.genre-x.com/ and read what Aaron Schmidt had to say about how they are building community here: http://www.walkingpaper.org/944

What cause, community or concept do you want to connect?

Use Stories

“Marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.”  Godin writes in Tribes. 

Can we say enough about the power of stories in libraries? The stories people share about libraries and how they use them – in person and online – are priceless for understanding the role we can play in people’s lives. I’m knocked out by 14 Days to have Your Say  as a way to get students involved and talking about library service. Public libraries could do this too – internally, with the community, as a strategic planning step.

Presenting the library’s story is another option. Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Annual Report at http://ourstory.columbuslibrary.org/ is a perfect example of sharing the library’s story in a human, playful way (driven by technology, but it’s not ABOUT the technology).

Be Transparent

Transparency leads to trust and buy-in. Secrets, deception, guarded details shared only as “need to know” demands hurts organizations. Give me an honest, open mechanism for sharing information and I’ll listen and react. 

Michael Casey and I have been exploring these topics for over two years at Library Journal and I still see other folks like Godin urging business and organizations to embrace the concept. It’s foundational to building a healthy community.

Leverage the Social Tools

Use the tools to extend the library into realms where people are connecting and talking. 

Godin notes in Tribes that “Internet companies have taken the original idea behind blogs and amplified it into a set of tools that anyone can use to tighten a tribe.” Facebook, Twitter and others allow interaction and information sharing – with replies built in. 

“The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one,” Godin writes in a recent blog post. 

Libraries – all shapes, sizes and types – can do this. We can take promotion online – make it viral. Recent online initiatives such as the New Jersey State Library’s campaign to share users’ video stories about the transformational qualities of libraries are ways to create low-cost, human, authentic marketing campaigns. 

A perfect first step: set aside one meeting – not six months of meetings (or heaven forbid a year or more) – to craft your library’s social media policy and plan. Use this as a starting point:

http://www.hightechdad.com/2009/05/11/crafting-your-companys-social-media-policy/

The Social Media Do’s Explained [31]

1. Be Polite – Talk the way you would if you were doing a job interview. [72]
2. Be Courteous – Be sure to listen & ask questions. [52]
3. Be Helpful – Offering tips, tricks & how-to’s goes a long way. [65]
4. Be Conversational – Don’t just be a PR twit. Chat as you would with a stranger at a bar. Be funny yet interesting. [117]
5. Be Intelligent – Provide some value. Don’t talk down. Offer insight. [71]
6. Be Non-confrontational – Don’t start a flame war, it can & will come back to haunt you. [90]
7. Be Transparent – Disclose that you work for the company, be honest & truthful. [81]

Read more: http://www.hightechdad.com/2009/05/11/crafting-your-companys-social-media-policy/#ixzz0FKNYe1bg&B

Remember the Mission

Have you looked at your library’s mission lately through the lens of social tools and conversational communities online? Checkout Evanston PL’s mission: 

The mission of the Evanston Public Library is to promote the development of independent, self-confident, and literate citizens through the provision of open access to cultural, intellectual, and informational resources.

Creating an online community like any of the Ning’s I’ve written about or similar certainly taps into what this sample mission states, just as enhancing the library catalog does.

Redwood City PL’s mission states: 

The Redwood City Public Library’s mission is to be “the learning center of our community and the place people turn to for the discovery of ideas, the joy of reading and the power of information.”

Discovering ideas and sharing within catalogs such as the community-focused SOPAC is a perfect example of fulfilling a mission like this in the 21st Century.

The Little Things count…a lot

Last December when I bought the new Subaru and tweeted about passing on the $250 Subaru charity donation promotion money to the ASPCA yielding a reply from said organization with minutes is a perfect example of a little connection, a little interaction, meaning a lot.

DKPublishing’s gift to me of a tour guide to Vancouver because of my tweet about their books or recent discussions about Oak park Public Library’s collection are further examples of how a tiny little expression of kindness or bit of feedback can go a long way.

What little things can you do with your users online? What little kindness can you extend?

Listen & Talk (like a human)

The Cluetrain said it best:

“Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.”

If you are going to participate in the conversations going on around your library and within your community, do so in a human way – authentic, real, emotional. Every chance I get, I echo the Cluetrain in my talks, saying: “People can smell PR speak a mile away and they do not respond well to it.”

I spoke recently with librarian who discovered unpleasant reviews of his branch on Yelp. He realized the best move he could make would be to respond to the reviews with thanks and insights about the feedback. I like this thinking.

An interesting example comes from the discussion I lead in Phoenix and Virginia Beach about library databases. In this transparent world, what would happen if the library actively put out there what is spent on electronic resources and encouraged the public to weigh in on what’s purchased. Would there be an uproar? User involvement? I think it would be a very open, honest thing to do: “Hey, library patrons, we spent $125,000 of your tax dollars last year on ________. How should we spend it this year?”  Has anyone out there  done this?

How could you listen and talk with your tribe?

Create a Culture of Caring

Through reading Tribes, the Tribes Q&A and Block’s book, I was struck by the emphasis on making real connections with people via caring and support. This speaks to my personal emphasis on “encouraging the heart” in everything we do. A quote by Darien Library’s Kate Sheehan from Cindi Trainor’s recent TechSource post about  Computers in Libraries 2009  sticks in my brain too:

In the time since I’ve been home from CIL, the moment that has bounced around in my head most often was a quote from fellow TechSource blogger Kate Sheehan. During her part of “Innovation, Services and Practices,” she remarked “The chief export of our libraries is kindness.” It seems so obvious, so nostalgic—and distinctly low-tech—for a librarian to announce that we are, above all, kind to our patrons. Yet many people in our service industry, well, aren’t. I once heard a reference librarian refer to her stone-cold demeanor as “business-like.” An otherwise merry librarian, she probably would have been horrified to know that students thought her “mean.” In this age of snark and snipe, anonymous and named, a little kindness goes a long way, and I’m taking this one to heart.

Amen. In our recent Cheers & Jeers column at LJ, Michael and I mentioned this as well:

Cheers to the folks using emerging tools to enhance conferences and learning opportunities, such as Skyping speaker, UStreaming a trends session, or tagging tweets, posts, pictures, and more with a common moniker.

Jeers, however, to some who criticize in the conference back channel. We’ve been disappointed with snarky chatter and lack of respect for speakers and conference attendees at some events.

Constructive feedback and disagreement fostering debate are wonderful things. But mean-spirited criticism does not have a place at conferences or inside your online community.

How can you encourage your tribe’s collective heart today? What little bit of kindness can you extend?

Trust them

“Faith is critical to all innovation.” Godin notes in Tribes on p. 80.

Faith and trust are building blocks for online social engagement. Until you get past worrying about how you’ll control your tribe and trust them, the results of your online community building might not fare the best. Open comments, ask for feedback, and trust the responses – the genuine ones will rise to the top, good and bad.

Trust your staff to post and interact with the public. And trust the public to do the same. A quick meeting of all of the minds involved will get everyone on the same page – mission, vision, guidelines for participating in the conversation — instead of having a year or two of meetings to hash out how it should all work with social media. See the policy above for inspiration. Hey libraries – post your social media policies so other libraries can adapt and use them. 

What can you do right now to trust your community? What changes can you make?

Value EVERY Member

Every member of the tribe you want to create should be valued: for participating, for lurking, for shaking things up, for calming things down and for simply contributing. NO ONE should be denied access if they are a part of the group. This goes for public tribes and for your staff tribe. 

Public tribes might include your young adults, your 20-30-somethings, etc. It might also include those folks you haven’t extended any services or outreach to as of yet. It certainly should include the groups you’ve marginalized for whatever reason.

Planning this talk, I checked in with John Blyberg from Darien Library. I’ve long used the “Front Desk” blog example in my talks as an example of involving and engaging all levels of staff. Via the new Darien Library site, all staff who want to can post to the fully-integrated Drupal-driven site, including folks from circulation:

“All staff are encouraged to post, no matter their position,” Blyberg told me. “We don’t moderate—posts just go up, but our User Experience team will work with staff on spelling and layout issues, etc if necessary.  We never criticize them on content, because that would discourage them, though we would intervene if something was inappropriate.  We have told our staff that their posts should not betray a political bias because the of the library’s non-profit status as well as our desire to be seen as an apolitical community resource.  I would say that 90% of our full time staff posts and maybe 50% of our part time staff.”

I urged the good folks at VBPL (and members of the city government who also attended my talks and workshops) to consider Godin’s Tribes carefully and to look for ways to blend his vision with what libraries do. It strikes me that gathering folks around ideas and letting them communicate is very much in line with what our mission should be.

I was glad to finish out the Cheers & Jeers column with this:

Cheers to marketing guru Seth Godin and his book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us (Portfolio)—a touchstone for us this year. We agree with Godin that the market will reward organizations and individuals who choose to lead while those stuck within archaic rules and outdated practice—or guided by fear—will not flourish.

Which will you be?

* at Your Library

Gary Hamel notes: “The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web, rather than as is currently the case, a mid-20th-century Weberian bureaucracy.” He offers a set of ideas that tomorrow’s employees will look for in progressive institutions:

•  All ideas compete on an equal footing.
  
• Contribution counts for more than credentials.
  
• Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
  
• Leaders serve rather than preside.
  
• Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
  
• Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
  
• Groups are self-defining and -organizing.

How does your library stack up?

Christine Rooney-Browne,  a PhD student based at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, wrote back in March about her experience at  The Mitchell Library in Glasgow “soaking up the atmosphere from the latest Aye Write Book Festival:”

I had thought it might be a good idea to tweet about the events I attended but when I tried to access Twitter on The Mitchell Library’s public access computers I was informed that Twitter was considered to be an ‘unacceptable website’. Surely not, I thought, so I tried again, on a different computer.  Same message again.   Made me wonder about what else would be blocked.  Attempted to login toFacebook and although the ‘unacceptable website’ message did not pop  up, a strange login screen did and when I attempted to type in my user name and password I realised that nothing was appearing on the screen. Seemed to be locked out of that one as well.  Tried MySpace, same thing! Okay, they’re blocking social networking websites I thought….but then something happened that made no sense whatsoever.  I was able to login to Bebo no problem.   I also tried to access Flickrand YouTube but they were inaccessible too.  Stranger still was what I found out later.   Glasgow City Council had been using Twitter to help promote the Aye Write festival, and there were buttons on the Aye Write website encouraging users to visit their profile on both Facebook and MySpace…  

Read the comments – it gets very interesting – including an exchange with the head of Marketing and Public Relations at Glasgow City Council. Christine wonders why Twitter is blocked when the GCC is using it for promotion:

We’re having a look at that just now.

You’re throwing up another interesting question for Local Government: Do you get back to the customer with what information you have, thus ensuring that you give a quick, although not full, response? Or do you wait ’till you have all the facts before getting back, thus ensuring a full, but slower, response?

You’ll see I tend towards the former.

One other thing: we have a customer contact system which logs enquiries, complaints etc, and the responses and response times. I don’t know whether we’ve ever logged the message trail following a blog posting in this system, so this could be a, small but significant, first.

Best - C

This really speaks to the next barrier libraries are running up against with social networking: governing bodies above the library. These are the folks we need to be talking to – library folk are doing pretty darn well these days. I’m intrigued to hear what’s happened since this post. Are the sites unblocked?

Don’t miss John Blyberg’s LITACamp keynote. It really got me thinking!

He asks some important questions – is our profession sustainable? – and posits that 21st Century Librarianship will be akin to the work of information architects. I think I need to check in with John about these thoughts. Great stuff!

http://ourstory.columbuslibrary.org/

I am thoroughly enjoying the online annual report from the Columbus Metropolitan Library. In just a few minutes, I became acquainted with staff members from all over the library (and board members!) sharing via video. Take a look. How could you replicate a site like this to tell your story? Little libraries could do this with a web camera or Flip Video and a Wordpress blog. Bigger, better-equipped libraries could go gangbusters with snazzy design, etc. But what really matters is the human element: people telling the story of the library.

Run don’t walk to check out this very important, very insightful report from Char Booth. I’ve been luck enough to share a few meals with Char and her take on the academic library student technology experience is well-grounded, innovative and, frankly, brilliant.

http://infomational.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/done-and-done/

I’m lousy with anticipation, so I am extremely relieved to write that a giant piece of my workload/ brain energy has been officially lifted as of today. ACRL just released Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, a book-length research report I’ve been working on for quite some time.

The report is a detailed case study of the student environmental scanning project I spearheaded at OU in 2008 with the help of many colleagues (see my Acknowledgements for the long list of names). In addition to reporting our findings, I discuss the importance of gaining research-based insight into local user cultures in order to inform service development and mitigate the temptation to make potentially off-the-mark generational assumptions about who students are and how they use technology and libraries, complete with a chapter on the practical trials and travails of homegrown research. You can think of it as a quantitative corollary to the University of Rochester Studying Students project – quite different methods of investigation, similar depth of insight. It’s one part presentation of survey results, one part analysis of the academic library emerging technology and assessment cultures that have developed over the last few years, and one part bon voyage/ homage (bon vomage?) to my former employer. The OU Libraries manage to do incredibly innovative and effective work not only on a shoestring, but with an ever-important a sense of humor. It shows in many, many ways, and for this they deserve to be recognized and emulated.

Informing Innovation is available in several forms. Free downloads: the full documentin PDF, another version packaged by separate chapters, and an updated and revised template library/technology survey instrument based on the one used in the original Ohio University study. For an introduction to and explanation of the scanning project itself, there is also a streaming dynamic webcast of my and Chris Guder’s 2009 ACRL presentation (no virtual conference login necessary) that summarizes survey findings and explores its practical applications at OU, voice and slides-style. You can also buy a hard copy of the report in book form from the ALA Store.

Don’t miss Dominican GSLIS Alum Leah White’s article in LJ:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6652439.html

So what do the survey results tell us? “A good rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t stop a face-to-face conversation between patrons, then you have no justification for stopping a technology-mediated conversation,” observed one library worker. “If you would stop a face-to-face conversation (e.g., in a Quiet Zone), then naturally cell phones would fall under the same policy.”

Library users voiced strikingly similar opinions. Users agreed that cell phone conversations should be kept to a minimum and should be conducted respectfully. Most respondents said they understood the need to monitor cell phone use in libraries but opposed banning their use outright. “Certainly, if I can use my phone to access the catalog, why ban its use altogether?” one library user noted. “It’s more of a conduct or ‘disruptive behavior’ issue than anything.”

Stephen Abram notes:

I think that this list from the Blue Skunk Blog is worth reading:

“Personal Network Member Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

1. I have the right not to be social 24/7 – either online or in person.
2. I have the right to time for reflection and responsibility for doing so.
3. I have the right to use only the tools that suit my learning style.
4. I have the right to stop using a tool when it is no longer useful.
5. I have the right to not be on the cutting edge all the time or feel I need to always know all there is to know.
6. I have the right to choose those with whom I learn in my personal learning network and responsibility to learn from those with whom I don’t always agree.
7. I have the right and responsibility to disagree and the responsibility to do it professionally.
8. I have the responsibility to become familiar with a tool before sharing it with others.
9, I have the responsibility to share my knowledge with others in my network.
10. I have the right and responsibility to not let online activities keep me from my friends, my family, my workplace, or my community.”

I’d add a list of responsibilties too:

1. I have a responsibility to keep up.
2. I have a responsibilty to learn new things.
3. I am responsible for my own learning, I am not a child of my employer.
4. I am responsible to learn when I need to and not to wit until it’s an emergency.
5. I have a responsibility to understand that technology evolves and evolves with my feedback.

I appreciate the original lists and  Stephen’s additions. I’d add these:

1. I have a responsibility to respect all members of my network.
2. I have the responsibility to never stop learning.
3. I have the responsibility to understand and consider  everyone’s POV.
4. I have the responsibility to interact, disagree and debate without making it personal.
5. I have the responsibility to present myself to my learning network – online and in the physical world – in a genuine, professional manner. 

What would you add?

I am currently developing screencasts for an exciting new project mpowwill roll out in the near future.

While looking at a stupidly designed, but very useful database, I thought “Why would any patron watch a tutorial on how to navigate this mess?  They want an answer to a question, not a walk through of a resource.” This idea was quickly followed by “I am going to design screencasts that answer common, representative questions.”  For example, using LegalForms by Thomas Gale (not the database I referred to as stupidly designed) I can show how to find a customizable job application in one screencast and an easily adaptable home renovation construction contract in another.  These screencasts will demonstrate different means of finding valuable resources, but not be about using LegalForms… overtly.

Carrying the idea of what I call patron-point-of-view (PPOV) screencasts a step further, why not narrate from the patron’s viewpoint?  I rewrote the introduction from “Hi, I’m Mick Jacobsen an Adult Services blah, blah, blah,” to “Hi, I’m Mick, the owner of Mick’s Pizza and I want to get the word out about my great…”. 

Lets go even further, why not use the question as the title?  Which video do you think would be viewed more: Learn How to Search LegalForms or Find a Customizable Contract for Your Business? I think the latter. 

While multiple screencasts of each database will be necessary, I believe they will provide a better means of showing the real value of library resources.  An added benefit is PPOV screencasts will be short. The PPOV screencasts answer questions. They don’t plod through each and every nuance of a resource.  Seriously, what patron will sit down to watch a 10 minute demonstration of a database?  I try to keep mine at a max of 3 minutes and even that is pushing it.  

The shift from a sage on the stage librarian teaching databases to the PPOV has changed everything in regards to my idea of screencasting.  Try it, I think you will find it liberating.

Here is a recent screencast:

How to Find New Businesses from Skokie Public Library on Vimeo.

Click on these links for some good library orientated resources on getting started with screencasting. 

Creation, Management, and Assessment of Library Screencasts: The Regis Libraries Animated Tutorials Project by Paul Betty

Paul Pival speaking doing a podcast for the SirsiDynix Institute 

Ellyssa Kronski writing for the School Library Journal

Mick Jacobsen is Adult Services Librarian at the Skokie Public Library.

50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

Today, bloggers from all over the world are responding to the 95 points of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which is ten years old: “Cluetrainplus10 is a project to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the manifesto. On Tuesday April 28, 95 bloggers around the world will each write a blog post on one of the 95 theses.”

I chose #50, above, as one I might comment on because it speaks to the model I’ve been working on in my talks “The Hyperlinked Library” and because it makes me question how we staff and manage our libraries. In fact, it also speaks to LIS education.

Way back in 2006 (years ago in Internet time), I wrote about the Cluetrain often. I was usually commenting on using The Cluetrain Manifesto in my teaching at Dominican and in presentations. I’m still using my “Cluetrain slides” in long versions of “The Hyperlinked Library.”  Looking at the worn volume next to me, it strikes me as funny and brilliant that ten years ago Levine, Locke, Searles and Weinberger locked on to a perfect vision of the future – of where we were headed because of the Internet. The impact on business rings so true these days. And words like transparency, conversation, community, communication and the like were here long before a line up of bloggers at CIL. Flipping through the pages, with multi-colored highlights and scribbled notes to self (oh Lord, can my students even read what I write on their papers?), it strikes me how much this book has influenced my path and lead me to folks like Rheingold, Godin and further works by Weinberger.

The emphasis in the Cluetrain on being human sticks with me as well. “The human voice sounds human.” Stories and storytelling are extensions of this. Sharing is part as well. These things create connections and brings people closer.  Godin says in Tribes that people WANT to belong. People want to connect. I want to hear the story of the lady sitting next to me having tea at Hermit’s Rest at Grand Canyon who strikes up conversation. Turns out her son, who joins us, is director of the Sedona Public Library. The world is tiny, sometimes flat and is full of human stories and human connections.

Thesis #50 has been with me for sometime too. A post I revisited for this anniversary is one of mine at ALA TechSource called “The Hyperlinked Organization: Radical Transparency, Crummy Meetings & Micromanagement” where I urged librarians to do this:

Flatten that Chart Folks

One of my favorite quotes from this chapter is “The company org chart… is a map of whom to avoid.” I worked in the public library a long time and soon realized who you went to in order to get things done and who could take care of something that needed to be fixed. Sometimes, we adapt and seek out those people, and then when they transfer or leave the organization, everyone realizes all the knowledge went out the door with them. 

The best libraries will flatten their organizational charts, break down the layers of “permission” and “channels” to get things done, and look for ways to streamline processes, procedures, and the dreaded policies. These libraries will also have a plan for succession management and knowledge transfer—and not just use these terms as buzzwords to hide behind.

I’m anxious to see more libraries flatten the chart and move toward a more team-based structure. In the model, people might work out of a certain area – reference, technology – but might move to teams or groups, or even locations, as projects demand. The pyramid shape of the org chart would be different – probably still pointy because someone has to ultimately be in charge – but do we really need layers and layers of managers, coordinators, and director positions between our front liners and the decision makers. In this model – very much related to what Michael Casey and I have done in “The Transparent Library” – admin types are hands-on involved not just issuing edicts from an office somewhere in the library. 

Communication flows up and down, via all the methods you’ve seen discussed here and in our literature, including good old face to face. Conversations flows in and out of the library space, involving all staff, users, non-users and everyone else. Meetings WORK, they don’t just exist to give the higher ups something to do. Admit it to yourself only: have you ever let the meeting drone on because it’s almost 5pm?

And – experts and specialists thrive and work hand in hand with librarians. They learn from each other via knowledge exchange and planning. Alan Gray of the Darien library wrote a TTW guest post, including this insight into the library’s structure: “We need great people to make our library a success — we just don’t have any preconditions about who they are, or what degree they do or do not have, just what they stand for, and what they can do.”

What scares me is my JOB is to teach people to be librarians – to get the degree so they can go off and work in libraries. Job security is good right? Libraries without librarians is a scary proposition for many of us!  The model – and I think Darien is a good example of it in the field – has space for all not just librarians. We’ll need coders, marketing gurus, customer service stars and business managers, not just a bunch of folks who went to library school. 

Does this de-value the degree? I think not. Librarians will carry the core values and ethics of the profession. They will convey the mission of what we’ve done in libraries forever to all: staff, user, supporters, governing bodies. But they will also understand that nothing stays the same and innovation should be part of this library’s mission. What’s been called “my mantra” I guess is truly that: Learn to Learn, Adapt to Change, Scan the Horizon, Be Curious, & Bring your Heart with You.

So I guess part of the charge is also back on me – to teach the best I can, to point out the changes in our world since the Cluetrain was published, and to work with my colleagues in LIS edu to change curriculum to create more nimble, flexible learning environments for the librarians who will guide projects and manage collections in this model library.

But the charge is also on you, dear readers. What can you do today to start flattening and changing the chart? What can you do via your long range plan to realign services and people to better serve the interests and needs of your communities?

If you haven’t read The Cluetrain Manifesto – take a look. Or re-read it in 2009 with a new lens. Use it for staff book discussion or your strategic plan. LIS Students, please read it before you graduate. I’m counting on you.

Further Reading:

The Cluetrain is Leaving the Station: A TTW Guest Post by Kay Jacobson

Into a New World of Librarianship

TTW posts tagged Cluetrain 

TechSource Post

Screenshots from “The Hyperlinked Library”  

The Hyperlinked Library by Michael Stephens is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/5-The-Mobile-Difference–Typology.aspx

Stephen Abram points to a thought-provoking article at Report 103:

http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/04/libraries_and_a.html

“A Dozen Ingredients for a Culture of Innovation”

http://www.jpb.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20090407

I pulled out some highlights from some of the sections that speak to me. Please read the whole piece, take it to your staff meetings and ponder how you might incorporate these ingredients in your institution.

1. Top Management Buy-In

If top management do not embrace innovation, they can hardly expect their employees to do so either. 

2. Trust

3. Priority of Innovation (Often Confused with Time)

If you want a culture of innovation in your firm, creativity and innovation have to take priority over excessive reporting, PowerPoint slide making, long meetings, reading irrelevant e-mails and other tasks that take priority in non-innovative firms.

4. Freedom to Take Action

In a culture of innovation, employees should constantly be experimenting with new ideas and reporting on results whether negative or positive.

5. Freedom to Make Mistakes

6. Rewarding Rather than Stifling Creative Thinking

7. Collaboration Tools

8. Places and Opportunities to Talk

9. Places and Opportunities to Work in Isolation

10. Access to Information

11. Transparency

The more employees know and understand about the operations of their firm, the better they are able to help the firm innovate. Moreover, transparency leads to trust. And we have already learned about how important that is to a culture of innovation!

12. Humour

While I was in Phoenix, I worked with the State Library facillitating a discussion about the cost and use of leased databases. Jen Maney from Pima County Public Library was there and asked me to follow up with an interview at SLJ:

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6647835.html

Here’s part of the back & forth:

JM: In our discussion, things like content, scope, credibility, and ease and extent of access came up as some of the reasons that databases are valuable for libraries. What do you see as the strengths of subscription databases?

MS: The deep content springs to mind first and the fact that there is information in leased databases not available on the free Web. All of the things you listed above are important—especially for research uses by K–12 students, undergrads, master’s students, and doctoral students, too.

JM: You know this one is coming…. What about the weaknesses?

MS: Here’s where the breakdown occurs. In our discussion that day, I guided the group through some OCLC and PEW reports that painted a very different picture for public libraries offering access. The Perceptions report noted 30 percent of respondents did not know what “electronic information resources” are and that 84 percent of folks start their research with search engines. They do not surf to their library’s Web page and look for a link to “Online Databases” or “Electronic Reference.” It’s a scary thing but true.

This is from the proposal. It frames what we’ll be investigating:

“I believe that this has been one of the most transformational and viral activities to happen globally to libraries in decades.”   Stephen Abram., Stephen’s Lighthouse, February 5, 2008

The genesis of Learning 2.0 began with an article by library futurist Stephen Abram. “Helene Blowers of PLCMC took the article “Things You (or I) Might Want To Do This Year” by SirsiDynix’s Stephen Abram and distilled it down to 23 things that she wanted her staff to understand through hands-on experience,” Hastings noted in a 2007 Library Journal article. Blowers recognized “that librarians need to know how to participate in the new media mix if libraries are to remain relevant,” In Wired magazine’s online companion, Hanly (2007) reported the plan was to include all staff in learning. “Blowers challenged her 550 staffers to become more web savvy. Using free web tools, she designed the program and gave staff members three months to do 23 things.” 

Since 2006, libraries around the world have offered variations of the “23 Things” for their staff based on the all-staff inclusive learning program developed at the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenberg County. At last count, program creator Helene Blowers, now Director of Digital Strategy at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, reported in School Library Journal “the program had easily reached more than 500 libraries in 15 countries in just two short years” (2008b). Recently, Blowers (2009) estimated close to 1000 libraries and organizations have used the program:

Don’t ask me the number of libraries or organizations? With programs having been run by the National Library of Norway, the State Library of Victoria, Maryland public libraries statewide, 23 Things on a Stick for multiple libraries and organizations, I really have no way of knowing the total impact or number of organizations that have adopted the program. But from my delicious links and growing communications folder I can tell you this… the number is definitively over 700 and more then likely hovers somewhere just under 1000 organizations worldwide. 

Created to introduce staff to the emerging “Web 2.0” tools of the day, the programs have evolved as new tools are introduced and various practitioners report on successful implementations of the course. Some have called the program transformational (Abram, 2008) while others have lauded its ability to bring staff together in a common goal: learning emerging technologies. Lewis (2008) noted “the Learning 2.0 program had a great impact on staff, who now know they are capable of learning new technologies.” Gross and Leslie (2008) reported success with the program in an academic library setting but noted “to our knowledge, no formal evaluation of Learning 2.0 has been conducted.  However, the take-up rate among libraries worldwide has been impressive and stands as an endorsement of the program. The accolades from enthusiastic library staff who  have undertaken Learning 2.0, mainly in the USA, can be found on the  biblioblogosphere.”

Replicated across the globe, the program has been touted as a means to not only educate staff about emerging social technologies but as a method of moving libraries forward into a future of 21st century innovation (Lewis, 2008), openness and transparency (Casey & Stephens, 2008). The purpose of this study is to quantify and evaluate the effectiveness of such programs in Australian libraries, focusing on the public library and academic library setting to develop an exemplary model for more libraries to use for staff education.

Abram, S. (2006). 43 Things I might want to do this year. Information Outlook. Retrieved February 26, 2009 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_2_10/ai_n16133338

Abram, S. (2008). The 23 Things – Learning 2.0. Stephen’s Lighthouse. Retrieved February 28, 2009 from http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2008/02/the_23_things_l.html

Blowers, H. (2006). Learning 2.0 Powerpoint presented at Internet Librarian, Monterey, CA.

Blowers, H. (2008a). Learning 2.0: Lessons Learned from “Play” Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/hblowers/learning-20-lessons-learned-from-play

Blowers, H. (2008b). “Ten tips about 23 things.” School Library Journal. Retrieved February 14, 2009 from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6600689.html

Blowers, H. (2009). WJ hosts 23 Things summit. LibraryBytes. Retrieved March 5, 2009 from http://www.librarybytes.com/2009/02/wj-hosts-23-things-summit.html

Casey, M. & Stephens, M. (2008) “Cheers and Jeers.” Library Journal. Retrieved February 26, 2008 from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6539361.html

I was working last week on various writing projects and updating presentations when it struck me I should check in and see if my hometown library Mishawaka Penn Harris Public Library had relaxed the ban on Facebook and MySpace that I wrote about on TTW and that Michael and I covered in the our LJ column. I called the library and spoke with the public relations person. Through the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I had sent the column draft and links to all of the online discussions to the library adminstration last year just as an FYI. It turns out the administrators never received the email. The very same day I received this letter from Victoria Gutschenritter, Assistant Director at the library:

To: Michael Stephens
From: Victoria Gutschenritter
Re: Transparent Library column
Date: 3/20/09

Victoria Gutschenritter
Assistant Director
Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library

I am happy to get this news from Mishawaka and I hope the board quickly decides to get rid of the ban on Facebook. I pay yearly property taxes in the city and I hope my hometown library will see the importance of offering access to one of the most used social sites around. In the past few months, all the folks I knew at good ole Mishawaka High School have found their way to Facebook. It’s a shame many of us who still live in town couldn’t get to our profiles, walls, inboxes and apps at the library. I also use Facebook in my teaching – and shouldn’t resources used for education be available at the public library?

I would also invite the adminstrators, librarians and staff at MPHPL — and citizens of Mishawaka if they ever find this blog — to share their thoughts here or at the original TTW post. I’m very interested in what they have to say!

Comment away!