Library Revolution

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

It usually means that your toddler has been feeding him PlayDoh. (Again.)

He doesn’t have a rare and incurable intestinal disorder. He hasn’t been abducted by aliens and replaced with an extraterrestrial canine. Don’t call your local news station, the federal government, or try to sell the poop on eBay as a unique natural phenomenon. The explanation is so much simpler than that.

I find that this is usually the case when dealing with our libraries, as well. Good old Occam… the simplest explanation is usually right, and the simplest solution will generally do the trick. This rings especially true when working with the ILS. Whenever I’m troubleshooting with library staff members, I start with the simplest solutions - and most of the time, that’s as far as we need to go.

For example:

• When your search doesn’t work, the first thing to do is to check the search you put in. I can’t be the only person out there who has made a mistake!
• None of the overdues generated today!! Is it one month after a holiday or other library closing?
• Patrons find it difficult to select the correct item in the OPAC because the edition statement doesn’t display on the browse screen? OK, so let’s turn that on.
• We had an item that’s supposed to check out for two weeks go out for three days! Maybe, just maybe, is one of the codes in the record incorrect?
• Our patron go a bill for 9 million dollars for a paperback novel!! Hmmmm…. Maybe someone scanned a barcode into the item’s price field?

My point is that I encounter people every day who want to all out the dogs over some “emergency” or other phenomena related to their ILS, when all it really takes to explain the situation or correct the issue is a bit of common sense and some perspective.

Don’t worry, for the other, more serious problems that can’t be dealt with so easily I’m more than willing to raise some hell. But that’s not every problem. Nor should it be. Sometimes you really do need to check the simple things before escalating an issue to full blown emergency status.

You’ll usually find that the dog’s poop stops being blue when your toddler runs out of blue PlayDoh. Next week it will be orange.

My son’s teacher: “I can’t believ eI had over $8.00 in library fines! I haven’t even been there in at least a month!”

My husband: “Well, maybe that’s why.”

Library staff member: “That seems inefficient. A duplication of work. You do know that would NEVER happen in the business world.”

yeah. right.

How about this story about the library that got a wrong delivery…  They opened a package containing book with no pages, but pot, porn, and a PlayStation inside.

Found via gamecouch.com. To quote their take on the situation, “Here’s hoping the librarians had a great weekend!”