Tame The Web » Library Innovators

Jenny Levine “Conversation” Series at ACPL

Michael — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:54:46 +0000

So nice to see this video conversation featuring Jenny Levine as another entry in ACPL’s ongoing “Conversation” series. Take a look for some insightful commentary about library content and reaching our users.

My video (taped in December 2007) is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzBC8q_hTHY

New NYPL.org

Michael — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:52:07 +0000

Perpetual Beta

Michael — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:45:59 +0000

Don’t miss this new blog from American Libraries & Jason Griffey:

http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/perpetualbeta (Hey – is there a feed for this blog available? Am I missing it?)

Jason writes:

This space will be a place where you will be able to find the very edge of new technologies, as well as tips and tricks about how you can do interesting things with existing technologies. I’m going to try and introduce technologies that libraries and librarians should be paying attention to, and at the same time give you tips and tricks to make better use of the technologies that you may already be playing with.

A few examples of the sorts of things that I’ll be covering in this space: How to get any piece of text you want onto your eReader, How to automate delivery of information to your staff and patrons, setting up your own Media Server for your library, and much, much more.

In addition to these sorts of “Lifehacker for Libraries” posts, I’ll also be posting interesting things that I find around the Library and Technology infosphere, and I’ll be producing some video podcasts as well. Expect the first of these very soon, as I am even as I type this on my way to the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. I’ll be reporting over the next several weeks about my discoveries there, and will include audio and video interviews, demos, and anything else I can think of that might be interesting.

Of course, this brief post sent me over the moon:

Spoke with an unnamed source last night that gave me the following: Tablet is based around a 9.67 inch LCD, not an OLED. Definitely launching early in year, possibly even immediately after January 27th announcement.

Exciting for libraries: deals coming with LOTS of content providers, print content mainly magazines, not newspapers. Start thinking about a “magazine” with embedded video, inline social features, and more.

This will be very interesting to see how a media-rich tablet-embedded magazine will find a place in library service. Remember this?: http://tametheweb.com/2009/12/08/view-it-any-way-youd-like/

Don’t Miss the Tech Set from LITA & Neal Schuman

Michael — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:14:07 +0000

The Librarian in Black writes:

I’m pleased to announce that my first book, Technology Training in Libraries, is set to be released in March of this year!

This book has been a labor of love for the last year. In it, I walk you through setting up a technology training program in your library, including basic technology training (both online and face-to-face) and general tech training principles and tips. I also address creating and training to a set of “technology skills” expectations for staff members. The bulk of the book walks you through the steps for setting up specific types of technology training: lunchtime brown-bags, 23-things style programs, technology petting zoos, peer training, and train-the-trainer programs. On the practical side, I cover how to come up with a dollar value for estimating the return on investment for training programs, how to market training, creating a culture of learning, dealing with difficult learning, and measuring success with individuals and the library as a whole. Finally, I offer a huge list of recommended resources at the end of the book. At 125 pages, it is a concise how-to manual for successfully setting up specific technology training initiatives in a library.

The book is the 6th in a 10-book series called The Tech Set, a joint LITA & Neal-Schuman project edited by Ellyssa Kroski. The entire series is meant to be a series of practical how-to guides on specific technology services in libraries. Other topics include next-gen catalogs, microblogging, mobile technology, gaming, unconferences, and more. The set boasts some great names: Cliff Landis, Connie Crosby, Jason Griffey, Robin Hastings, Steve Lawson, Sean Robinson, Lauren Pressley, Kelly Czarnecki, and Marshall Breeding.

For more information, you can see my book’s pre-pub website (which offers a peek inside the book) and for a complete list of the Tech Set titles, see the site for the entire Tech Set series.

Elyssa asked me to take a look at the set and consider an endorsement. I read multiple chapters from each work – and Sean Robinson’s excellent tome on video making for libraries in its entirety and was very pleased. Pleased enough to endorse the set. I was especially taken with Jason Griffey’s work on mobile library services and mobile technology and Sarah’s take on a subject near and dear to my heart tech training. Here’s what I submitted to Neal Schuman:

For those curious about next gen library catalogs or wondering if the library should be on Twitter, the Tech Set offers ten volumes of current thinking and best practice for a wide range of library-related tech trends. Editor Elyssa Kroski has assembled a who’s who of notable experts on these timely topics – including outstanding entries such as Jason Griffey on mobile technologies, Cliff Landis on utilizing social networking and Sarah Houghton-Jan on effective technology training. The titles are well-researched, clearly explained by a cadre of library technologists, offering tips and tricks for diving into blogging, gaming, video production, and more. This set will be a useful addition to any librarian’s toolkit for planning for emerging technologies.

These up-to-date volumes will surely find a welcome spot in my teaching and will probably serve as textbooks for many technology-related LIS courses. Congrats to all involved!

Thanks Darien Library!

Michael — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:55:19 +0000

Darien Library Spaces, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

On the 20th of November I got to spend the day with the good folks at Darien Library in Darien, CT. I spent time with Louise Berry, Allan Gray and John Blyberg touring the incredible new building, meeting with staff over lunch and afternoon tea, and taking in all the wonderful things they’ve done with their service model.

I just wanted to give a public shout out to everyone at Darien who welcomed me and shared their experiences. I can’t wait to visit again!

My flickr set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/sets/72157622752235111/

Kyle Jones, Knowledge and Learning Services Librarian at Darien Library

Michael — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:58:21 +0000

Congrats to TTW Contributor Kyle Jones!

http://thecorkboard.org/blog/time-for-change-im-off-to-darien-library

Kyle writes:

I’m very excited to announce that starting in January of 2010 I will be joining the award winning staff at Darien Library in Darien, CT as a Knowledge and Learning Services Librarian. To say that it is honor to be afforded this opportunity at this time in my career is a bit of an understatement. I look forward to getting to know the community of Darien.

I just spent a full day with the folks at Darien Library, touring the new building, chatting with staff and learning all I could about their model of service. I am very pleased and proud that Kyle, who served as my grad assistant for 2 years at Dominican, is joining the team at Darien! I hope he will blog his experiences at this innovative library.

LIS768 Context Book Report Videos

Michael — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:39:50 +0000

This semester I added the option for my students in LIS768 to make a video or other media presentation instead of writing a blog post for the context book assignment. A few folks tried it out. Here are the results:

Setting the Table: Danny Meyer

http://classes.tametheweb.com/mcphillips/2009/10/29/context-book-setting-the-table/

Born Digital: John Palfrey & Urs Gasser

http://classes.tametheweb.com/schu/2009/10/28/context-book-assignment-born-digital/

http://classes.tametheweb.com/meganmulherin/2009/10/30/context-book-report-born-digital-6/

Blink: Malcolm Gladwell

http://classes.tametheweb.com/kasia/2009/10/31/context-book-blink/

A Whole New Mind: Daniel Pink

http://classes.tametheweb.com/dansblog/2009/10/29/context-book-report/

On Kindness, Libraries & the Big Picture – A TTW Guest Post by Kate Sheehan

Michael — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:59:53 +0000

Corporations have The No A**hole Rule, but the motivation and measurement in a for-profit is always the bottom line. The a**hole in the office makes a lot of money, but holds everyone else back with toxic behavior. Fire him, and everyone else steps up their game and increases earnings. Profit provides a reason to hire, fire and take action. Libraries, like most non-profits, deal more in intangibles and don’t look to the balance sheet for guidance.

Michael Stephens has used the phrase “kindness audit” most publicly, and several other people have proposed the idea to me recently as well. I love the oxymoronic feel of it – the mental image of IRS agents with felt hearts pinned to their lapels, clutching clipboards and red pens.

Kindness may seem soft and fuzzy and a silly thing to be talking about with respect to the workplace. But that’s the point of The No A**hole Rule. A jerk who does his job well still hurts the whole company. We’re in the kindness business – public service. It’s not a switch we can just flip. If our organizational culture is unkind, how well are we really serving our patrons?

So, yes, a kindness audit asks us to do a little self reflection, to think about how we interact with people. It’s more personal, but it could make for a better workplace and improved service to our users. But what’s in a kindness audit? How to quantify the unquantifiable? What’s on that clipboard?

Here’s where I’d start, but I’m looking for input:

Listen. Even to the people who drive you crazy

Open door policies are great, but not only do they have to be meaningful, we have to meet each other where we are. Just like our patrons, our coworkers don’t always communicate in exactly the way we’d like them to. Hearing those who operate differently is hard, but worth it.

Double X recently posted a short article with a scenario that’s supposed to indicate how angry the reader is. If you have a meeting scheduled on a Wednesday and you are told that the meeting has been moved up two days, is the meeting now on Monday or Friday? I’m not sure I buy the anger aspect of this exercise (wait, does that make me sound angry?) but what struck me about the piece, the comments and the responses of everyone I’ve posed the question to is the initial inability to see how anyone could think the meeting is on the other day. Monday people can’t imagine anyone would think the meeting is now on Friday and Friday people are just as gobsmacked by the Monday people.

What’s the lesson? First of all, just say what day you’re moving meetings to when you do it. Secondly, everyone approaches life (and the workplace) in their own way and those differing perspectives have value and meaning. It’s awfully tempting to dismiss the people who would have missed your moved meeting, but teaming up with people whose minds work differently can be powerfully effective.

Focus on the positive

Management experts suggest this one frequently, but it applies to patron interactions, projects with coworkers and really, just about everything. We’re all bad at things, we all have our own foibles and faults. That’s not the whole of anyone’s being, though. Personally, I’m very fortunate to work with someone who is brilliant at extracting the silver lining from the cloudiest of situations. I turn to her when I’m struggling to see the bright side.

Create safe spaces

This probably sounds silly, but as anyone who has spent time working with the public can attest, one of the biggest differences between an office job and a public facing job is the different levels of professionalism. Librarians have a public face that they need a break from when they get into the back office. The occasional flip comment or frustrated exclamation are inevitable and forgivable.

Keep looking at the big picture

This one goes for everyone. Front lines staff can get absorbed in the daily grind and forget about the view from the top. Big picture people can forget that the crisis they just caught wind of might not be such a big deal just because they know about it. Ultimately, we’re running libraries. It’s not rocket surgery and our mistakes and problems are aggravating, but generally speaking, no kittens will die.

Respect boundaries

When people come in looking for help learning to use the mouse, we don’t try to teach them to use Facebook. This goes hand in hand with focusing on the positive. We don’t need everyone to be good at everything and while it’s good for people to push their boundaries and learn new things, they should be able to do it on their own terms. We come to work as whole people and very few of us are able to divest our personalities when we walk through the door.

I don’t think this is a complete list, by any stretch of the imagination. I’m looking for input. What would you audit, if you were working for the kindness IRS? Comment here or at Loose Cannon Librarian or send me an email (kate at loosecannonlibrarian dot net). I want to create something useful for our libraries; a tool we can use to push our organizations and ourselves. This should be a group effort, so send me your ideas!

Kate Sheehan writes at Loose Cannon Librarian and ALA TechSource | Cross posted here: http://loosecannonlibrarian.net/?p=214

Emerging Leaders Group Creates ALA Connect Screencasts!

Michael — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:04:27 +0000

I am totally knocked out by the excellent work ALA Emerging Leaders Team I did on creating screencasts to highlight all the wonderful features of ALAConnect. As Web Advisory Committee chair, I became the group mentor but my schedule and duties didn’t allow much mentoring – but I knew they were in good hands with ALA ITTS staff who offered support and guidance throughout the project. So please allow me to send them a public “WOOOHOO” on a job well done!

Take a look at the screencasts. You’ll find a promo video, a video highlighting how to integrate Connect with the social tools you currently use, ways to monitor other groups, and much, much more.

This one is a fave:

To all involved – great work! TAKE A BOW.

To folks who haven’t checked out Connect yet, please use these screencasts as a way to get started. You won’t be sorry.

The Visitors

Michael — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:17:46 +0000

Multitouch Microsoft Surface: Cultural Heritage Browser from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

I have a new post at ALATechSource about the Shanachie presentation at ALA. Check out the video above to see one of the projects they highlighted in action.

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/07/the-visitors.html

Late one February evening in 2007, I found myself sitting in my Oak Park, Illinois living room with two visitors, sharing wine and talking about libraries. It was late, I had to teach the next day, but I couldn’t say goodnight. I met the he two fellows with me –Jaap van de Geer and Erik Boekesteijn of the DOK Library Concept Center in Delft, Holland–in London the year before. And now they were visiting Chicago area libraries videotaping gaming initiatives and gaming librarians. The wine was good–it may have been Australian–and I’m a little cloudy about how the evening played out but the one thing stayed with me. Erik said the role of the 21st Century librarian is three-fold:

Keep Stories
Share Stories
Make Stories

I held that close to my heart and watched these visitors make their dream of collecting stories a reality by way of the Shanachie Tour in October 2007 and beyond.

Fast forward to ALA Annual and the LITA President’s Program. Erik, Jaap and the third Shanachie Geert van den Boogaard were back in the states to talk about innovations at their library.

TTW Guest Post: KidLit ReOrg 2008 at Darien Public Library

Kyle — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:09:13 +0000

by: Gretchen Hams-Caserotti
Head of Children’s Services
Darien Library

———

When I joined Darien Library Head of Children’s Services we were building a new library. An opportunity to reorganize a library doesn’t come very often. The Adult collection was already being rearranged and Louise Berry, our Library Director, encouraged me to explore some ideas I had about how Children’s Libraries are arranged. I took a leap of faith and committed to the idea of reorganizing the collection with a user-centered approach by considering Function instead of Format. Our KidLit ReOrg was a huge project!

In Children’s Services, we define the population we serve as children from birth to about age 12. Actually, we serve two completely different groups, children who are Readers and children who are Pre-Readers (including those learning to read). When planning the move into our new library, I considered the behavior patterns of people who fall into these two categories when they use the library and discovered two entirely different sets of approaches and needs. We realized that with traditional collection arrangements, the Pre-Readers aren’t actually served well despite being half of our population!

We began to explore how we could improve our service to this group of very enthusiastic library users. Not just service to just the children who are in their First Five years, but service for the busy adults in their lives, too.

Pre-Readers – a First Five Years (F5) collection

This population is still dependent on the grown-ups in their lives to give meaning to those little squiggly black symbols on the printed page. Their caregivers have unique demands on their time and their approach to using the library is often different than that of parents with Readers. Small children are hard work to take care of. The Picture Book Area, where caregivers choose books for their children, is the area most difficult to use because it is a remarkably large collection arranged by author’s last name. Since children ask for books primarily by subject, arranging them by author requires adults to spend extra time and effort finding materials, Most parents don’t bother foraging through. They take their chances with random selections or go straight to a Librarian for help.
The most common things parents tell us are their children’s age and interests (e.g. my son is 3 years old and he REALLY loves trains). The Librarians look through literally thousands of picture books to try to find the best match. I began using Free Mind open-source software to visualize the more commonly requested subjects and it was there that I discovered the broad categories that we have used to organize the collection. I laid out a new arrangement that makes our collection more useable for adults. Color-coding the sections enables the Pre-Reading children to be independent users as well. We pulled out all materials from the Non-Fiction collection that are written for smaller children or adults and moved them to the F5 Collection.

Instead of a Picture Books section of the library, we now have the following micro-collections called “glades”:

Celebrations – a year round sampling of holiday books including other celebrations like Birthdays, Mother’s & Father’s Day etc.
Concepts – books about the alphabet, counting, time opposites, colors, shapes etc.
Favorites – popular characters, series and award winners.
Folk/Fairy Tales – mostly pulled out from Non-Fiction, the introduction to classics like The Little Red Hen, Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella.
Growing Up – books about the child’s experience; emotions (e.g. anger, sharing) getting a haircut, losing a tooth, going to school, getting a “Big Boy Bed”
Nature – books about animals, seasons, weather
Rhymes and Songs – here Mother Goose can be found along with picture books told in verse or of songs themselves (Hush Little Baby, The Wheels on the Bus, etc.)
Stories – this section is for books that didn’t fit into any other category, but is promoted as a fun place to explore your imagination.
Transportation – books with Things That Go in them; trucks, trains, boats, bikes, cars, busses, etc.

In order to reorganize the collection according to this structure we literally pulled off the shelf and reviewed each of our 15,000 picture books so we could determine a classification. Then each book got a new color label and new call number to identify easily the item’s location in the library (e.g. F5 Concepts Hoban).

Our new library opened to the public on January 10th, 2009, and the positive feedback from our members has been overwhelming. Michael has already kindly shared the blog post that was written by a local mom blogger about our new Children’s Library. We have more new users than we’ve ever had before & our circulation has been up 25-30% from last year each month we have been open. Some of our members share their enthusiasm about the reorganization with us and others don’t. They just come in use their new library. I am thrilled because we don’t want everyone to talk about the reorganization, we just want them to use it. Intuitively. Freely. It’s theirs, after all.

Children’s Services is, I think, the most dynamic and interesting area in public libraries at the moment. We are facing not just the issue of integrating technology into our services and way of thinking, but we must be mindful that those early Digital Natives are now becoming parents! How can we stay important and relevant in their lives when the world they have known has always been plugged in and connected? The conversation has to get serious and what we do has to extend much further than just providing storytimes. In partnership with Linda Braun (LINK), Darien Library will be hosting a KidLib Camp, an unconference for children’s librarians to discuss and explore Redefining Children’s services in the 21^st Century on August 13^th, 2009.

Takin’ It to the Streets

Michael — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:31:49 +0000

Don’t miss this post by Aaron Schmidt:

http://www.walkingpaper.org/2108

On Wednesday afternoons during the Summer outside of the MLK Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC you will find a table full of friendly librarians talking to the passersby. The librarians also bring out an assortment of library materials to illustrate what’s available in the library. It is a great program and I’d like to see it go even further.

Take a look at the images Aaron shares, highlighting some recent tweet conversations that are perfect examples of the possibilities of engaging with users via Twitter.

New LTR: Collaboration 2.0 by Robin Hastings

Michael — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:40:06 +0000

I’m reading through Robin Hastings’ new Library Technology Report called “Collaboration 2.0.” This is one LTR not to miss! And don’t miss Dan Freeman’s interview with Robin at TechSource:

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/06/robin-hastings-discusses-collaborative-work.html

Dan Freeman: So your topic for this issue is Collaboration 2.0. Can you define this concept for us?

Robin Hastings: Collaboration 2.0 is the use of free, easy-to-use web 2.0 tools (think Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, etc.) to make teams who may not be in the same city, state or country work together seamlessly. Since the philosophy behind the 2.0 tools is one of user-created content, almost all of the 2.0 tools have ways to create and share content with other people – that makes collaboration on library projects, presentations, training programs or anything else that creative librarians can come up with really easy. Everything I profiled in the report, by the way, is freely available and easy enough to use that millions of people have already been using these tools without being forced to by their jobs!

Ten Ways to Encourage the Tribe*

Michael — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:42:49 +0000

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]

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

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

The Ecology of Information: A Future in a Library Without Walls

Michael — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:28:17 +0000

The Ecology of Information: A Future in a Library Without Walls

View more presentations from John Blyberg.

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!