Library Revolution

Via Library Bytes (among others) I came across this article on the “economy of free.”

The long and short of it is that businesses are figuring out that in a technology-driven world, “Just because products are free doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere, isn’t making huge gobs of money.” And they’re starting to capitalize on this notion. Read the article - it outlines an emerging business model that turns the rules of traditional buyer/seller models upside-down.

What does this all mean for libraries, who have long depended on their unique position as a provider of “free” services?

As I’ve said before, free might not be enough of a selling point for libraries any more. Our services are “free” to our users? So what? So are a lot of other services and products. “Free” is just not that special any more… especially when what we are “selling” is access to information.

So what do we have that is special?  Or what can we do in the future to fit the changing needs of our communities? When price is out of the equation, what is it that we offer that makes choosing our services the logical choice for our customers? What other values can we appeal to? And how do we communicate this with our communities so that potential users are aware of the benefits we have to offer them? How do we convince them to choose libraries?

I can’t wait to pick up FREE, Chris Anderson’s forthcoming follow up to The Long Tail. This may be one of the biggest issues libraries will need to deal with as we struggle to define ourselves in the economy emerging around us.

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Guess who turned two this weekend!

Lesson learned: She who buys a bright blue Cookie Monster cake must be prepared to change bright blue diapers.

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This line from Thomas the Tank Engine made my husband, Chris, spit coffee out of his nose the other day:

“Emily was a proud engine. She liked to tell the other engines how to do their jobs.”

F.U. Thomas. And you too, Chris.

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Rochelle Hartman posted a great question on her blog (”I won’t call it a meme,” she says), and got some equally great responses.What she wants to know is what areas of technology are you NOT savvy with?

I responded to the post with an admission of my total lack of competence with phones. Sorry, I just can’t handle voice mail. Or phone trees. And don’t even try me with call waiting. I guarantee that I will hang up on you… but not on purpose.

Other areas where I experience technology “brownouts”?

The clock in my car would not even be in the right decase if my husband didn’t set it for me. And forget the radio presets. I can’t work a VCR to save my life. And record players might as well be from another planet.

This is such an important question for those of us who “work with technology” to answer now and then… especially when we are responsible for training others. We all have particular strengths and weaknesses when it comes to dealing with technology. Acknowledging and sharing our weaknesses is very important when you are trying to help people gain a comfort level with a technology that may be on their “TechNOT” list.

And who knows? If I can connect with someone and help them set up a wiki orrun their statistical reports, maybe they’ll help me get my voice mail.

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Library Staff Member: “Those ‘Bonus Feature’ DVDs? We usually don’t have the right cases to hold them and the movie… especially if the movie is more than one disc, or if it’s one of those TV shows. So we just throw them out. Nobody really wants that stuff, right?”

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Via Library Techie: Check out this cool feature on CNN.com where children’s books are reviewed by children.

(I had forgotten about how CNN does this… it’s how I originally found one of my son’s favorite books, Scaredy Squirrel. This epic saga was reviewed by 6 year old Andrew Oglesby back in June of 2006. The rest, ,at least at my house, is history. Or legend.)

I love the suggestion that libraries could do something like this on their Web pages. It seems like a natural thing to do…

I can just imagine what my son, Robert, would say if asked to review some of his favorite books:

Goodnight Moon - “bunny. BUNNY!!! Shhhhhh!!! mouse mouse mouse up up clock clock mouse. Shhh. Bunny.”

Truck Duck - “DuckDuck QUACK! Truck. Car. Bug…EEEEEWWWWW! DUCK! Bobo. Monkey EEE EEE EEE. Duck!”

Yummy Yucky - “EEEEWWWWW! mommy… mommy… cookie!!!! cookie!!!! EEEEWWW! cheese. pizza. Meeeow! Bug. Sock stinky sock. EEEEWWWW!!!”

Give him a break. He’s only two.

But really, wouldn’t it be cool to share some of what the kids visiting your library have to say about the books they’ve read?

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At the Long Island Association’s Negotiation workshop:

ME: Hi, It’s nice to meet you. I’m Emily Clasper from Suffolk Cooperative Library System.

LI BUSINESS PERSON: (looking me up and down with surprise): Oh! I thought you were from a business!

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I came across this article from Business Week a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to post about it for a while now. The gist of the article isn’t anything new. It talks about the shift away from “traditional one-way messages to consumers” in favor of a more conversational, word of mouth based approach. Like I said, nothing new.

What I like about the article, however, is both its simplicity in outlining the trend in a very understandable way and the idea that this is some kind of “technology-enabled shift back to pre-industrial market behavior.”

“…while most of today’s adults are well acclimated to this “industrial marketing” approach, it does not reflect the historical norm of human behavior. For thousands of years before communications became industrialized, people chose a bakery or blacksmith based on word-of-mouth recommendations, reputation, and social networks. Selection of a vendor might reflect social class, neighborhood, recommendation, or personal relationship… So today, as a new set of community technologies develop on the Internet, we should not be surprised to discover that the sociology of how we buy isn’t new at all. In fact, it is as old as civilization. Today’s markets will come to resemble these pre-industrial markets, with some major exceptions. Our pre-industrial ancestors were constrained by time and distance in developing opinions about vendors. But in the post-industrial world, reputation, relationships, and recommendations can come at any time from anywhere to affect a purchase decision.”

An interesting idea. Put it that way, and maybe the whole idea of ‘letting go of the message’ a little seems less scary.

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OMG How did I not see this video before? I’ll share because I can’t be the only one who has never seen it… (can I??)

I can’t remember the last time a “librarian” video made me smile like this.

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OK, OK. I posted earlier about a great post I read today on encouraging blog readers to subscribe. What was the great suggestion I got form the post? Where did I find the post?

It was from Problogger – here is the post.

The suggestion? Create a sense of anticipation on your blog.

The idea stems from a very practical question:

Why do People Subscribe to Feeds?

Problogger’s answers to this question?

“they think that the blog might produce content that they’ll want to know about at some point in the future…

…People will subscribe to your blog if they think that it will enhance their lives in some way in the foreseeable future.”

Which leads to another, perhaps more valuable question bloggers might want to ask themselves:

“instead of asking ‘how can I get people to subscribe to my blog’ a better question to ask is: ‘how can I convince people that I will write something tomorrow, next week or next month that they just can’t miss out on.’”

A sense of anticipation.

How can libraries create this on their blogs? How can they not only reach out to potential readers and library users, but also keep them coming back for more??

I am eagerly waiting for the followup posts on this topic – Problogger promises to follow this idea with some practical tips. How’s that for building anticipation??

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