Library Revolution

I saw this item via Techdirt today: A Florida woman is suing her library because they limit use of public computers to two and a half hours a day. The library also asks for ID in order to use a computer.

“These measures are enacted at least partly in a mean-spirited effort to remove the homeless and the less than wealthy from the libraries,” the woman claims. “For every person seeking an education or in need of research time while writing a book or even filling out a food-stamp application, the proposed time limit is wholly inadequate.”

My,my.

Well, I’ll be interested in seeing the outcome of this one.

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But it still makes me giddy.

Man, am I a nerd.

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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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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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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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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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I saw a great post today that discussed an element of blogging that really helps encourage readers to subscribe to a blog. This great suggestion is something simple to comprehend, but much harder to implement, especially in the case of library blogs. But it’s something really worth considering  - how would this work for library blogs?

What is this wonderful suggestion?

Where did I read it?

Perhaps I will tell you in an upcoming post…

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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.

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Take a peek at this post from LibrarianInBlack. Sarah Houghton-Jan shares some very astute comments about the library “tech trends” she predicts for 2008, including tough budgetary times, an increasing awareness of the growing (and changing) digital divide, and my favorite: that librarians will have to get off of their high horse about technology and “stop being so bossy.”

“…we have taken on that holier-than-thou role when it comes to online services, where we are telling people repeatedly that we know the right way to behave online. We know what is safe. We know what is appropriate. We know what is cool. No…we…don’t. The mere fact that we put ourselves in to that patronizing role informs our users that we do not know what we’re talking about.”

Great predictions. The only thing I might add is something about library services becoming more mobile… but that is a thought for separate post…

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From the “things I wanted to blog when I first read them but never quite got around to it until now” file.

As my son, Robert, approaches his second birthday, I can’t get over how incredible it is to watch his development. Not only is it fascinating to watch him learn to put words, concepts, and actions together, it is also amazing to see the ways in which his experiences are shaping him in ways that would never have been possible when I was a child. In short, it’s really cool to watch a true “digital native” develop.

He is just now learning that a mouse (”Mowwwwws”) can also mean a small furry creature that causes Mommy to call the exterminator. He thinks Mommy’s laptop is cool… until he touches the screen and nothing happens (unlike his cousin’s Nintendo DS.) Lame. Anything long and skinny (yarn, the dog leash, a belt) is a cord and must be plugged in somewhere. Cameras must be handed to him each time a picture is taken so that he can see the “Bay-beeeee.” Cameras are not held up to the eye, but are used at arm’s length. I have received text messages from my son… mostly reading “44444444″. Elmo lives in the TV and can be brought up at any time. He also vacations in the computer, where specific songs can be viewed at will. His cousin’s Webkinz live next to the computer. You can call Pop-Pop from anywhere at any time. A glimpse of ear buds causes wild dancing.

Robert is an avid “EYEbrarrrr” user already, looking forward to visits to the place where books, “PUZZZ-ulllls” and computer games “clik! clik! beeeeep!” are available for his use. My hope is that his attachment will grow in the next few years of his life (although I hope he outgrows the tantrums as we leave…)

Anyway, to get to the point…

A while back Marketing Prof’s Daily Fix listed a number of things that marketers can learn from a 10-year old. To summarize, marketers should consider the upcoming generation and observe their values and how they operate a little. The basic findings:

1- Kids know a lot more about what’s happening online that you may think.

2- Kids do social networking naturally.

3- Being boring is the cardinal sin.

4- Kids like multi-media experiences.

5- Kids ignore online ads.

6 - Do not underestimate young people.

7 - Kids rock.

Maybe I just don’t have that much experience with kids. But I thought this was a great post… and I can really see this beginning to be the case with my little Digital Native. (The article even describes an incident where the 10-year old in question does a little tech trouble shooting to solve his Runescape problem!)

So let me throw something out there for discussion. I was told by a Children’s librarian a few months ago that while Adult services have been changed dramatically by technological advancements and social networking, Children’s services have basically not changed, and she didn’t see the central goals and missions of Children’s librarianship changing much in the near future. This was a very excellent, experienced and well-respected librarian who I admire very much. But I had to wonder about this…

Maybe this post is a little random, but it’s a question that interest me as a parent and as a librarian…

What do folks think?

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