Library Revolution

As we embark on a new season of conference and other presentations, I think it’s time for all of us to do a little thinking about our presentation skills and strategies. Check out presentationzen.com for some great tips on using powerpoint for an unsucky, effective presentation. I came across this via The Brand Builder Blog, which pointed me towards this great article about creating good powerpoint slides. I, for one, am guilty of not creating slides that don’t have much of a visual impact… which I think detracts from my presentations sometimes. I will have to rethink this a little. Call it a New Year’s Resolution.

Some other resources that have got me thinking about giving dynamic, interesting and effective presentations:

• Great Presentations Mean Business: I have found some great tips on this blog, along with good examples.
• Business Presentations: More good tips. I especially liked what they said about Doo Wop recently.
• SuccesCo: Boldness Rules: This little article brings up a good point I think a lot of librarians could learn from when they speak. Take some chances. Be bold.
• 10 Deep: Presentations by LIfehack.org: a list of 10 articles giving advice on good presentations. I especially liked the Use Your Audience one. Sometimes corny is good. At the very least, it’s bold.
• Great Public Speaking: Good tips here - especially about how to use humor. But if you need too many tips on this, I wonder if you’d be better off not trying to be funny.
• Speak Schmeak: A fun public speaking blog that often offers gems of advice as well as good examples and analogies. A favorite recent post explains the differences between being prepared and being over prepared. A lesson I could learn a lot from.

Those are just a few off the top of my head… What are some other good places for presentation advice?

 Share

Just for the record:

No, I do not like stereotypes.

No, I do not think all librarians are bun-wearing old ladies.

Yes, many librarians are quite fashionable.

But I can’t say I agree with the outrage over Paula Ryan’s participation in New Zealand’s National Library Conference. See the video here. (via)

http://www.tv3.co.nz/VideoBrowseAll/NationalVideo/tabid/309/articleID/34668/Default.aspx#video

Librarians are professionals, and part of that territory is presenting a professional image when representing your organization and profession. This is something that is well acknowledged by other professionals, and there are tons of resources out there aimed at helping people project the kind of professional image that will further careers as well as portray your profession positively in the public eye. And part of presenting a positive professional image is dressing for the part.

But have you been to a library conference lately? Let me put it to you this way. I would NEVER represent my organization and profession at a conference, meeting, or in a library wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. Or crappy old sandals that look like they’ve spent one too many days at the beach. Or (God forbid) holey jeans. To me, that is not the way to project a confident, credible, competent professional image. But I see others presenting themselves like this all the time.

And maybe I’m shallow. But I really have a hard time taking these folks as seriously as I do their more put-together colleagues. But I know I’m not alone in thinking this way.

A while back, Professor Laura Morgan Roberts posted a good article about presenting a professional image in the Harvard Business School “Working Knowledge for Business Leaders” blog.

She talks about a lot of different aspects of presenting a professional image, and I think her comments about stereotypes are particularly relevant to librarians.

“Members of negatively stereotyped identity groups may experience an additional form of identity threat known as “devaluation.” Identity devaluation occurs when negative attributions about your social identity group(s) undermine key constituents’ perceptions of your competence, character, or commitment. For example, African American men are stereotyped as being less intelligent and more likely to engage in criminal behavior than Caucasian men. Asian Americans are stereotyped as technically competent, but lacking in the social skills required to lead effectively. Working mothers are stereotyped as being less committed to their profession and less loyal to their employing organizations. All of these stereotypes pose obstacles for creating a positive professional image.”

How does one combat this sort of unfair stereotyping, especially when it can be detrimental to your career or profession? By cultivating and maintaining a professional image that you do want to be identified with.

“First, you must realize that if you aren’t managing your own professional image, someone else is. People are constantly observing your behavior and forming theories about your competence, character, and commitment, which are rapidly disseminated throughout your workplace. It is only wise to add your voice in framing others’ theories about who you are and what you can accomplish.

Be the author of your own identity. Take a strategic, proactive approach to managing your image.”

There are many, many ways that professionals can take charge of the image they project. They work on their writing skills. They take courses in public speaking. And they build professional wardrobes. Doctors, Lawyers, and Business professionals all do this. They think it’s important, and seek out advice on how to do it effectively.

But librarians get all huffy if someone suggests that they, too might want to consider the image that their professional wardrobe projects and look for tips for improving that image? Come on.

Why is professional attire for librarians such a taboo topic? I feel like by talking about it I’m opening myself up for tons of criticism about “perpetuating stereotypes.” I think that’s a big part of what happened in NZ. Somebody thought it was a good idea to include a speaker about professional attire, and it caused a huge stink. But if we don’t talk about it and open ourselves up to the idea that all professionals, including librarians (maybe especially librarians, given the stereotypes?), can use help in presenting their desired professional image more effectively.

 Share

I am moving to Denmark.

This video, sent to me by Sidsel Bech-Petersen of the Aarhus Public Libraries in Denmark is just that cool. It looks at the Transformation Lab project done to explore new possibilities for the library’s physical space. Awesome.

My favorite part (of many favorite parts!) is the comment: “The users like to become involved, providing it is not too much trouble and there is an instant result.”

There will be a presentation about this at the 17th Halmstead conference in Aarhus this year. The program is called Elevations, and it looks awesome. Maybe some of the European folks who stop by this blog would be interested!

 Share

I’m far too tired to write much tonight, but I did want to pass on one thing before I hit the hay.

So far this conference, I keep hearing the same phrase over and over:

Partner with your patrons.

It’s simple. It’s elegant. And it works on so many levels. 

 Share

Check out the Innovative Interfaces IUG 2007 photostream on Flickr.

I have to find the person with the camera so that I, too can be famous…

 Share

This is a blog about my profession, not my job. So I won’t bore anyone with accounts of the sessions I have attended at this conference regarding “job” stuff.

What I do want to talk about, though, is the opening session/keynote address given by Bob Cringely. Other bloggers have done a great job of summarizing, so I won’t “re-invent the wheel,” as so many librarians seem to like to say. Here’s Terry Ballard’s take on what happened, and Bill Topritzhofer’s account.

Bob touched on a few points in his speech that I’d like to address.

1. The disappearance of the physical manifestations of knowledge in libraries. In short, libraries are not going to be all about books. If you ask me, I’d say this is already true, but will become even more so in the future. And that’s OK, all you shocked book lovers out there. I’ve long felt that the role of the “library of the future” has more to do with education and the interpretation of information than with books. Which leads me to another of his points.

2. Librarians will be of value because of their expertise in handling knowledge. Here is how we stay relevant. Of course, that means that it has to be true that librarians are experts in finding, organizing, and interpreting information, no matter what the format of that info is. Which in turn means keeping up with the technological changes that will continue to accelerate. If you don’t want to keep current now, that’s fine. But don’t expect to be able to make a valuable contribution to your profession or your patrons in the radically different library environment of twenty years from now.

3. We tend to overestimate change in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. To me, this was a real AHA statement. It seems like many librarians (me too!) love to try and jump on the new interesting stuff that is out there, but then get disappointed when the new technologies, etc aren’t adopted by the general public right away. Then the efforts get abandoned as “failures.” How discouraging. It’s even more discouraging when things catch on later and become part of mainstream culture, but we seem like we “missed the boat” because our abandoned efforts were ahead of their time. Bob mentioned ebooks as a great example… remember when ebooks were all the rage in libraries… but nowhere else? Well, they’re coming back eventually, once the planets of social and economic forces have properly aligned, of course. Will we be ready? I sure hope so. I also hope that all of the great Web 2.0 initiatives that may or may not be a little ahead of their time will not be abandoned by discouraged librarians who don’t see enough ROI on their projects right away. I hope that we can all be patient with this… it’s coming, and it’s coming BIG TIME.

Overall, I really liked the keynote speech. It was engaging and fun, and the speaker made some great points about the future of libraries. And I think his message was received well, although I did sense some ruffled feathers when he talked about the disappearance of the book.

The world is going to be very different in 10, 15, 20 years. The baby boomers will have become our elderly population, Gen X and Y types like myself will be sending their kids off to college, and those kids (like my one year old, who already knows how to use a mouse) will be entering adulthood with a whole new set of expectations. Libraries and library professionals will need to adapt in order to remain relevant in that new world.

Where will your library be in 2027? Or should I say, Who will it be?

 Share

And now to make some people mad.

I’m getting a little tired of hearing librarians complain about the profession having a bad image and librarians not being taken seriously as professionals. How often do I hear folks complaining about the “bad rap” we get - being perceived and portrayed as dowdy old ladies.  I overheard several such comments today at the conference I’m attending.

Well, cry me a river. Or, as my grandmother would say, “I just want to say this about that.”

If you’re so concerned about the perception the public has of librarians and libraries, then stop proving it true. I you don’t want to be seen as a dowdy old lady, then don’t dress like one. Especially when you are out representing yourself, your organization, and your profession at a professional function.

As I walked around the conference today, I was struck (once again!) by the severity of the fashion violations that were everywhere. I half expected that the convention center was about to be ambushed by the What Not To Wear fashion police. No such luck.

Hey librarians! You are at a professional conference. You are not about to dig around in your garden. You are not on your way to the beach. You are not going on safari, the gym, prospecting for gold, or moving west in a covered wagon. This is not a ski trip, and you are not in your living room.

I’m not saying you have to blow your paycheck on expensive clothes and Armani suits. But a professional function, such as a conference, should mean professional attire. If you are cold, leave the hoodie sweatshirt alone and get a blazer, or even a nice sweater (and I said nice, not some old moth eaten thing my grandmother would be embarrassed to wear). Feet hurt? That doesn’t mean you have to go straight for your ratty old sneakers or comfortable sandals that have seen better days. And for God’s sake - the hotel provides an iron in every room.

Am I just being superficial? No, I don’t think so. You are the face of your organization and of your profession whenever you attend a conference. In this case, the people of San Jose, your colleagues and counterparts from other libraries, as well as your vendor are all looking at you. (Actually, three different people asked me today if I worked for Innovative. I took that as a compliment, as the representatives from that company were all quite put together.)

You are a professional. Take some pride in your profession and represent it and yourself in an appropriate manner. If you don’t then you have no right to complain about librarians having a bad image. The next time I see something like the ubiquitous March of the Librarians, don’t make me cringe.

 Share

Tomorrow I’ll be up bright and early (OK, maybe not so bright.) to catch a flight to San Jose. There, I’ll attend the Innovative Users Group Conference to see what is new and exciting with our automation vendor. Looks like it will be an interesting conference this year!

It makes for a little bit of a bittersweet Mother’s Day for me, though. This will be the first time I’ll be away from Robert, and the first time Chris will be alone with him for a whole week! So here are some pictures I can look at while I’m away Library-ing.

The second one is to remind me of what Chris and Robert looked like PRE spending a whole week on their own. That is to say pre-pizza for every meal.

Good luck, honey! I hope you like tantrums!

ETA: Chris was mad that I mentioned him but didn’t link to his very excellent blog. FINE.

 Share

I resisted the temptation (the BIG temptation, I must admit!) to leave the Long Island Library Conference after lunch. I could have enjoyed the rest of a gorgeous day digging around in my garden before picking up the little terror from daycare. But there was one more program I wanted to attend before I went home. So I gave up my gardening dreams and persevered through the end of the conference. I was glad that I did!

Sophie Brookover and Liz Burns of Pop Goes the Library gave a great presentation that ended up being the highlight of my day. Using a broad definition of “pop culture” (one that encompasses anything that is of interest to your patrons), Sophie and Liz presented an entertaining and engaging program centered around a general principle I hold very dear. To summarize (and over simplify!), they were talking about creating user centered services based on opening the lines of communication with your customers.

This is the essential lesson of the so-called library 2.0 movement, and its something I think that the libraries of our area should think long and hard about.

Let me put it this way. At the very same conference, as I was walking around and talking to people, I had a conversation with some folks from my own local library. They wanted to know when I was going to bring my son in for some children’s programs. “When you have them on a Saturday,” I replied. (This is not the first time we’ve had this discussion.) No dice. They just don’t offer programs for his age group on the weekend. End of conversation.

I was checking my email on my PDA (the country club had a great WiFi connection), when I overheard a conversation between two conference attendees about how their teen patrons are overly attached to their phones. “I wish I had a laser beam to knock the phones out of their hands!” one person said passionately. Then they started a long conversation about devising new ways to ban cell phones from the library so that the teens could concentrate on more worthwhile pursuits.

By the conference dessert bar, I happened to start chatting with two librarians I know, who were discussing downloadable audio books. “We’re really not too interested in them because so many of our patrons are elderly,” one woman said. I stuffed a brownie in my mouth and walked away.

So I think the message of the Pop Goes the Library talk is one that is sorely needed around here. The only thing was that I wished they had spent less time talking about what “pop culture” is, and more about how we can communicate with our users (and potential users) about what their needs are and where their interests lie. This is where many libraries seem to have a real hang up – in actually engaging out customers in a productive dialog and putting the feedback we get to good use. But that’s a minor point. Sophie and Liz did a great job, and I hope that their message got through to some of the people I saw in the audience!!!

 Share

I love the idea of a readers advisory blog for a public library. There are a lot of these blogs out there, and some of them really seem to have met with some success. One of our local libraries gave a presentation at the LILC about theirs – and I was mostly very impressed by what they have done. But there was one big thing that left me… well, puzzled.

The presenter kept referring to their strategy of using a single “corporate persona” on their blogs. In the case of their reader’s advisory blog, they had invented a young person named Hunter to be the voice of their blog. Every staff member contributing to the blog signs in and writes as Hunter.

The presenter explained her library’s justifications for adopting this strategy. She cited the necessity of creating a professional “feel” to the blog, as it was representing the organization. She spoke about the desire to present a consistent tone from post to post and throughout the blog, especially as a way to keep the readers from “getting confused.” She also cited the need for many staff members to be able to contribute (this one I simply didn’t get. How many blogs out there have multiple contributors???) They also seemed to have a lot of concerns about preserving the anonymity of the librarians.

I understand wanting to sound “professional” and the anxiety that may come from representing your organization in a public forum. We always want our organization to come across well in the public mind, especially when we’re talking about a high profile service based profession like ours. But I would be inclined to encourage contributing bloggers to follow a set of loose content guidelines in their posts and trust them in their own sense of professionalism.

One of the main strategies driving corporate blogging is the trend towards presenting organizations with more “human” faces. Blogging is a great way for companies to seem less corporate, less distant from customers, and to become more of something that the customers can identify with on a personal level. Companies are finding out that customers are looking to deal with “kinder, gentler” organizations with a certain level of transparency. Imagine that! People want to deal with other people, not just big, scary corporations!

This is a strategy that I think libraries could easily use, since most users already have some sort of personal connection or association with library use. So let’s take advantage of this connection and help it grow by letting our blogs take on real, authentic, human personalities our users can identify with. Maybe that means taking a true multi-user approach where contributors all have their own voices – an approach I really don’t think folks would find confusing at all, especially in the context of the larger blogosphere!

The part of the presentation that really didn’t sit well with me was the fact that the presenter kept referring to the idea (and I am definitely paraphrasing!) of keeping a level of anonymity for the blogging librarians, preventing those pesky patrons from bothering them because of the blog. This really bothered me, because I really firmly believe in blogging as a way to open lines of communication between libraries and patrons – crating the means for a conversation that goes both ways. Blogging, for me, is all about community building. It’s about reaching out to people who you hope will reach back. And encouraging them to reach back.

In order to do that, you need to be approachable. In fact, in order to be an effective public services librarian, you need to be approachable. Anonymous, in my opinion, is not approachable. It really doesn’t do much to encourage communication with your customers. Doesn’t the adoption of a single corporate persona bring us right back to the old newsletter/press release broadcast model of corporate communication – you know, the one where communication means talking to, but not necessarily with your customers?

I don’t want to sound like I am bashing the particular readers advisory blog being discussed at the conference. I think most of what they were doing with it was so terrific. And it’s obviously a success for them. I just wonder about this one aspect of the project, which is an aspect I see reflected in many “official” library blogs. Is a “corporate persona” the right way to go when trying to engage your customers? Could taking a different approach help a reasonably successful blog then become something remarkable? Could opening up communications help an already wonderful library (and this one is!) reach new heights in the hearts and minds of their community?

Many companies have found out the hard way that hiding behind a made up corporate persona when blogging not only doesn’t work as well as they thought it would, but they can even backfire. Required reading for any libraries considering organizational blogging: Naked Conversations.

 Share