Seth Godin has been writing and speaking about marketing, the new landscape of the Web paired with emerging social media and the increasing power of consumer “word of mouth.” His books include The Big Red Fez: How to [...]]]> Note from Michael: This article & interview was originally published last year in Digitale Biblioteek.

Seth Godin has been writing and speaking about marketing, the new landscape of the Web paired with emerging social media and the increasing power of consumer “word of mouth.” His books include The Big Red Fez: How to make Any Web Site Better, Permission Marketing, The Purple Cow, Small is the New Big, The Dip and most recently Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

I’ve been drawn to his ideas and insights for a long time, while working in public libraries to teaching library school. Librarians, library school students, information architects and anyone working to create online community around digital collections and digital library service will find useful strategies and paradigm shifting insights into what works and what doesn’t in a connected society.

Ideas have to Remarkable

In The Purple Cow, Godin argues that ideas have to be memorable and engaging to grow. Businesses have to stand out from the rest. This thinking is easily applied to libraries and the services they offer: what makes a library unique? What does the library have that no one else does?

One answer might be the strength of digital collections and the brains behind them. Localized or otherwise unique digital collections where the curious might explore and leave comments/interact certainly could make a library stand apart. Library staff professionals are also a unique feature of libraries – knowledge, insight and curiosity are traits of some of the best library workers. Sharing oneself online – via Facebook profiles, answering questions on Twitter, or the like is one way to promote and give presence to our jobs and profession.

What else is unique and remarkable about your library?

Be Authentic

In Godin’s work, I also find sage advice for how we present ourselves as information professionals in the networked world. In a time when snark is so easy, Godin urges readers throughout his works and blogging to be authentic – stressing quality over quantity. “There’s no limit now. No limit to how many clicks, readers, followers and friends you can acquire,” he wrote recently at his blog. “Instead of getting better, you focus obsessively on getting bigger.”

We’re representing our profession – and ourselves in everything we do: participating in social networks, building library presence online and in the physical world at events and meetings. Godin notes what happens to some in the quest to have more: “You’re at a conference, talking to someone who matters to you. Over their shoulder, you see a new, bigger, better networking possibility. So you scamper away. It’s about getting bigger.”

Instead, build a trusted network of colleagues and contacts in the digital library world. Share. Cite them when they inspire you. Pay it forward. The wonderful thing is now, these people can reside all over the world. It’s not unusual to have support from The Netherlands, Australia, the United Sates or England with the click clack of a few keys. Be real in these dealings. Be honest. Be yourself.

Leverage the Online World for Promotion

The online tools offer much opportunity and promise. In Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Godin notes 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. “The same way that there’s very little correlation between popular websites and big companies, we’ll see that the most popular commercials get done by little shops that have nothing to lose.”

The same could be said about libraries – all shapes, sizes and types. 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.

Gather Your Tribe

The most recent book takes a big picture view of the possibilities of social media and gathering people together. Godin argues that businesses fail because “they forgot to embrace their tribe”  and offers a roadmap for creating a tribe, which he defines as “a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.”

All it takes for a tribe to form, Godin writes, “is a shared interest and a way to communicate.” Social Web sites break down geographic  barriers. A tribe can be global or simply based in your community. Godin warns, however, that some organizations are stuck: bound by archaic rules or not only avoiding change but fighting against it.

Fear is also a driving factor: what will boss say? Will everyone get in trouble?

In this Facebooked, Twiiter-ized, RSS-fed world, Godin notes, individuals have more leverage than ever before to create change and build inter-connected groups of supporters around a common idea or cause. Godin offers principles and steps to create a movement – publish a manifesto, make it easy for followers to connect, track progress based on transparency, nurture the group along the way and be mindful not to tear others down in the process.

The promise of gathering your tribe – for your library, your community, your online collection presence? Godin notes that everyone in an organization can lead. The market rewards those organizations that change things.

Godin says: “People are waiting for you to connect them.”  How will you lead?

The Interview

Michael Stephens: I read Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us with great interest and with a focus on libraries, the people they serve, and what librarians might learn about shaping future services to involve users online and in physical spaces. What would you want library people to take away from Tribes?

Seth Godin: Libraries are no longer places for obscure books. The web is that. Libraries are places to organize the community.

MS: Your recent works have addressed marketing, message, and media.  You also write about true fans and the “depth of commitment and interconnection that true fans deliver.” As libraries go forward with broadening the library brand – “Books” to most folks – how should we be crafting the message about libraries? How can we reach our true fans?

SG: Your true fans, I think, are the curious. The library is the house for the curious. And I want to meet other curious people.

MS: You write about curiosity. I’ve used your quote in my talks for some time: “To be curious means to explore first.” What’s to be gained from exploring? Have you known librarians to be explorers?

SG: A few, but not many. Not that librarians aren’t good at seeking things out… they are. They’re great at it. I am talking about finding things you weren’t look for in the first place. What a skill that is. Teaching it to kids is essential.

MS: You write that “the timid leave a vacuum” in Tribes. I worry that our profession has been too timid for too long. How can we overcome timidity and be more visible?

SG: Once you become a leader, you will cease to be invisible, I promise.

MS: I asked my followers on Twitter if they had any questions for you as well. One person asked: What’s the best way to market change to those who are resistant to it or too comfortable in what they do?

SG: By leading. By doing. Start making waves and watch what happens!

Article Sidebar: Michael’s Ten Ways to Encourage the Tribe

• Connect around a cause, a community or a concept.
• Use Stories
• Be Transparent
• Leverage the Social Tools
• Remember the Mission
• The Little Things count…a lot
• Listen & Talk (like a human)
• Create a Culture of Caring
• Trust them
• Value EVERY Member

See the full post at http://tametheweb.com/2009/05/17/ten-ways-to-encourage-the-tribe/

Citations:

Infinity, They Keep Making More of It: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/infinitythey-keep-making-more-of-it.html

Making Commercials for the Web: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/making-commercials-for-the-web.html

New Jersey Transforming Lives Site: www.tellusyourstory.org.

Links:

Set’s Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com

Seth Godin’s Books: http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/books.asp

Seth Godin at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Godin

Photo of Seth Godin: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4035933108/ (Creative Commons)

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 [...]]]>

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 [...]]]> 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.

On Friday, I asked a question:

Made with snapper.net

I wanted to see what type of response I might get putting it into the form above. Three events in three weeks lead to this post. This kind of synchronicity always makes my trendspotting radar go off.

First, I met some [...]]]>  

http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml

While there are many quick, one-time things you can do to make your content findable, we’ll address those later. First, we have to make sure that there’s a reason to promote your library and its website. If you’re not offering relevant services or interesting [...]]]> Don’t miss this article from Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt:

http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml

While there are many quick, one-time things you can do to make your content findable, we’ll address those later. First, we have to make sure that there’s a reason to promote your library and its website. If you’re not offering relevant services or interesting content on your site, there’s really nothing to promote.

The most important and effective thing you can do to make your content findable and to draw people back is the most difficult: Make a good website. Creating a website is ridiculously easy, and it takes about 5 minutes to start a blog. Filling such sites with interesting content, however, takes skill, effort, and inspiration. Anyone can hit the “publish” button, but to learn about the interests of your community and to systematically present relevant content takes time. This is what you must do.

One way to approach the issue of content is to use the strengths of your library’s staff. Perhaps you have employees who are passionate about romance novels or get wired about fixing computers. This excitement will show through if you have them talk about their interests online. One great thing about public libraries is that almost anything in the world is within their scope of interest. Highlighting the expertise of individuals in your library not only can produce interesting content, but it can also illuminate the humans in your facility. This helps build relationships, one of the most important things librarians can do to promote themselves. Good content makes your website more findable because the better your content is, the more people will talk about it and link to it. These links are the lifeblood of Google’s PageRank. And you want links. Badly.

I’ll be adding this to course readings!

Frank Haulgren commented here and I just had to make it a post:

Western Washington Univ.s “14 Days To Have Your Say” project was directly inspired by the Starbuck’s campaign.  I had read a newspaper article (quaint, no?) about this project one day while having lunch and immediately thought to myself, “We [...]]]>

Frank Haulgren commented here and I just had to make it a post:

Western Washington Univ.s “14 Days To Have Your Say” project was directly inspired by the Starbuck’s campaign.  I had read a newspaper article (quaint, no?) about this project one day while having lunch and immediately thought to myself, “We can do this!  We should do this!”

It was a very, very worth while project!

http://lib206.lib.wwu.edu/14days/frontpage

New WWU Dean of Libraries Chris Cox responds on the site:

I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who have taken the time to offer your ideas and feedback about The Western Libraries. I’ve been eagerly reading these and am looking forward to working with all of you to answer your needs, whether they be quiet in the library, the construction of a cafe, installing a book drop on the south side of campus or investigating the feasability of longer library hours and/or a 24 hour study space. I’m very excited to be coming to a place where the students, faculty and staff care so much about their library.

Gathering feedback for planning from stakeholders in the academic library should be a top priority. Using mechanisms inspired by good ole Starbucks in our 2.0 world is inspired. Well done WWU!

http://libraryalchemy.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/part-i-the-new-nomadism/

And comes to an interesting conclusion:

Cell phone lounge.

This lounge accomplishes two things:

Our [...]]]> Leigh Anne Vrabel discusses articles on urban nomadism at Library Alchemy:

http://libraryalchemy.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/part-i-the-new-nomadism/

And comes to an interesting conclusion:

Cell phone lounge.

This lounge accomplishes two things:

1. Acknowledges that cell phones have permeated the culture and meets patron expectations for new nomadic spaces.
2. Gives the library more control over how those nomadic spaces are governed.

Our current cell phone policy asks users to take their calls in the hallway.  While this is respectful to patrons who desire quiet, it’s kind of like asking your adult relatives to sit at the kids’ table for Thanksgiving dinner.  Why not create a situation that’s win-win, as opposed to “some people win, some people lose?”  It’s also beneficial for staff in that security guards–and reference librarians–will be able to enforce policies more easily when there’s a designated space that’s just as nice as the spaces everybody else gets to use. If somebody’s using a cell phone anywhere other than the lounge, we can point to the lounge and say, “We respected your needs. Please respect ours.”

Fascinating! I would agree with her thinking – why can’t there be spaces for various folks? Just like the quiet reading room at Loyola where technology was not to be used. Good stuff!

http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/ideas-from-customer-service-is-new.html 

Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That! posted a neat list of ideas he compiled from the panel “Customer service as community, community as customer service” at the Customer Service is the New Marketing Conference. Sounds like it was an all star panel: Gina Bianchini, [...]]]> Great post at “The M Word:”

http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/ideas-from-customer-service-is-new.html 

Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That! posted a neat list of ideas he compiled from the panel “Customer service as community, community as customer service” at the Customer Service is the New Marketing Conference. Sounds like it was an all star panel: Gina Bianchini, Ning; Matt Mullenweg, WordPress ; Tara Huntl, Citizen Agency ; Patti Roll, Timbuk2; Brian Oberkirch, Small Good Thing.

It has some good stuff for libraries to consider when we creating our campaigns.

1. When you open up to customer participation, your brand belongs to your customers, not you.
2. Use your product every day. It aligns your interests with your customers’. It lets you fix problems as they happen. It lets you see things as a user, which is always more helpful than seeing it as a marketer.
3. Turn the bullhorn around. Stop talking. Give the community a chance to speak.
4. There is no such thing as a “community strategy”. The community will do what it wants. Go with it.
5. Join conversations early. Negative gets worse if you don’t respond. Positive grows when you do.
6. Why pay for product photos? Encourage your community to share their product photos. They may even blog about the fact that you chose their photos.
7. Sounding “professional” does not require you to sound like an ass. You don’t need formal language or big words. Talk like a human being. Talk to people online like you talk to your friends.
8. The great thing about communities is that you can hear from everyone. The bad thing about communities is that you can hear from everyone.
9. It’s ok to moderate and set rules of civil discourse. You can politely refuse to engage with ranters who don’t want to have a civil conversation.
10. Your community will support you if you enable them. When a critic gets vocal, let your fans reply instead of you.
11. Listen to experts but design for novices.

Of course, I really like #7. Many of these also speak to the self-correcting nature of some of the communities that have sprung up around libraries and other institutions.

Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.

Is your library steeped in a culture of paranoia?

The Church of the Customer blog points out “The Not So Secret Shopper” who visited a Kohl’s Department store and found a mess. Cameraphone in hand, he documented the condition of the retail establisjment and blogged about it.

http://heehawmarketing.typepad.com/hee_haw_marketing/2007/01/hurricane_kohs_.html

The folks at Church of the Customer state:

Here’s the thing: [...]]]> This fascinates me.

The Church of the Customer blog points out “The Not So Secret Shopper” who visited a Kohl’s Department store and found a mess. Cameraphone in hand, he documented the condition of the retail establisjment and blogged about it.

http://heehawmarketing.typepad.com/hee_haw_marketing/2007/01/hurricane_kohs_.html

The folks at Church of the Customer state:

Here’s the thing: 156 million Americans use high-speed cellphone networks that allow them to take pictures like this and post them immediately to a blog where, naturally, they can spread.

Pew estimates that 41 percent of American cellphone owners use their phones as content creation tools. That translates into about 64 million people in the U.S. alone who have the potential to be not-so-secret shoppers.

Take a look at Kohl’s reply. Is this the human voice of the company sharing the concerns of its community? Probably not!

I can’t help but wonder how this could play out in our world. How might we respond if someone snapped a few photos, shot video or the like of something “not quite right” in one of our libraries. (And it has happened.) Has your library marketing/PR department/person developed a plan embracing citizen jounalists, citizen marketers and human communication? I hope so.

Also, this post at COTC details how CBS has embraced YouTube. Again, fascinating.

And, yes, the hype is real.

This is exactly what ALA needs. I have to admit I had never seen the faces of some of these folks whose names I do recognize. Thanks ALA… please keep going! I want more! More faces, more humanity…

Via the Church of the Customer Blog:

If CEOs blogged, they would save considerable time on hundreds of weekly emails that ask roughly the same types of questions. That’s part of Debbie Weil’s thesis in The Corporate Blogging Book. “Why not do it more efficiently?” she writes. “Instead of a one-to-one [...]]]> Director, are you Blogging??

Via the Church of the Customer Blog:

If CEOs blogged, they would save considerable time on hundreds of weekly emails that ask roughly the same types of questions. That’s part of Debbie Weil’s thesis in The Corporate Blogging Book. “Why not do it more efficiently?” she writes. “Instead of a one-to-one message, why not a communication from one to many thousands?” She describes the pro’s and con’s of corporate blogging with plenty o’ pointers on how to do it well and not screw up. I read an early copy of the book and it’s excellent.

So what about Library Directors? I know of a few that are blogging (see below), but I think it would be nice to have a few more — in fact, I’d hope that more directors will be inspired AND the next wave of folks that move into admin positions would welcome the chance to speak directly to their users!
__________________________________________________________________________________________

How cool would it be if the local newspapers syndicated their headlines with an RSS feed so that you could subscribe to them? And blogged “live” from government meetings? And posted dozens of photos (all the ones that didn’t make it in this week’s paper) on a Flickr account, especially if there was breaking news? OK, we’re biased because we want them to do it so that we can feed the headlines, blog posts and photos onto our own Darien Community Matters blog, providing the most balanced, accurate and up-to-date information possible. And I guess that you could say that we’re becoming Web 2.0 missionaries….. because we (that’s me and Assistant Director Melissa Yurechko) invited Josh Fisher, editor of the Darien Times over to discuss it, as the first of a series of meetings with the local news media.

Louise Berry, Director, Darien Library, Director’s Blog

__________________________________________________________________________________________

I wonder why many directors do not blog?

Could it be:

No Time?? Possibly, but wouldn’t being able to communicate library news and important details about the business of the library to the most people with an easy to use mechanism be a useful tool? It would also set an example, that top-down buy-in that is important for technologyyy projectss and organizational shifts. Here’s David King’s take on the Time thing as well — it deserves another link.

Fear? Are you afraid to put yourself out there? Afraid that a typo might slip through. It’s time to let that go.We certainly don’t have to publish our home phone numbers, but some human discourse from the top might be very welcome in many libraries, internally and externally. Folks don’t care about a typo or two these days — and heck, you can always go back and fix it.

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I, as the administrator, and the one whose job is on the line, am willing to take a risk here. Why are others so risk averse? It costs us very little. Other libraries are doing it without problem, we are not first, and I’ll be blasted if we will be last!

Michael Golrick, City Librarian, Bridgeport, CT at his blog Thoughts from a Library Administrator

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“I have nothing to say.” Oh, yes you do! Tell your story, your day to day adventures, your thoughts on the library and its collection. Blog your plans and strategies. This isn’t top secret work (well, yeah, some stuff is private), but blogging creates a level of transperancy that could benefit many libraries.

That’s what the marketing/PR Department is for. Well, I’d hope that PR was blogging too, in a human voice, not the language of marketing that people can recognize these days so easily, BUT the voice of library administration carries a lot of weight too. Here’s what the Cluetrain says oh so well: “But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”
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I spend an awful lot of time soliciting and then responding to feedback and suggestions from our users. Lately, the written suggestions in the box asking for “newer” and “better” DVDs have outnumbered the requests for specific books or authors by nearly 12 to 1. My response to the requests for newer, better DVDs has always been that we buy what Blockbuster doesn’t — the hard-to-find TV shows — the series, the old shows & films, the BBCAmerica & PBS films — and not the drivel (Oops. I’m showing my bias. Sorry) that appears in the theaters. However, when people request a specific title, whether book, music, movie, or magazine, we’ll usually buy it.

I’ve just finished a lengthy analysis of our collection, including what we buy, how much it’s used, and what our users ask for. The not-surprising conclusion I’ve come to is that DVD and Books on CD are used far more than our print collection. For example, one copy of a bestselling book by John Grisham got 59 circs during the period I was reviewing, while The Sopranos DVD recorded 354 circs. A Book on CD version of the same Grisham novel logged in 153 circs. Clearly, the format of choice is not print. In examining our reference questions logged in that period of time, requests for specific movies or Books on CD outnumbered specific requests for print materials by 5 to 1.

Patricia Uttaro, New and views from the Director of the Ogden Farmers’ Library…

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Finally, and I am sure this is not the case in most places, what’s a blog? Directors, if you haven’t spent some time with the new tools and these new conversations, now is the time. Ask someone on staff to show you some blogs. Then ponder how you and your library might use the medium to further your mission, reach out to users, and give human voice to the library.

(This post has been cooking a long time. Don’t miss Jenny Levine’s post and the Blogging Directors Wiki page.)