Library Revolution

One point that kept coming up at Computers in Libraries is the importance of not asking for feedback unless you actually intend on doing something with it.

In this age when “transparency,” “collaboration” and “feedback” are the hot buzzwords everyone is trying to capitalize on, there is no faster way to wreck your credibility than saying you want to hear what your users or staff have to say, only to blow off the comments. That’s a sure-fire recipe for squashing any creativity or collaborative spirit faster than you can say “totalitarian regime.”

I think that we can really learn from a recent experience of the New York Mets on this one. See, the Mets organization asked fans to vote online for a new theme song to play during games, and they totally got rickrolled. Yes, indeed. An online viral campaign ensured that when the five million or so votes finally were tallied, the winner was Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

The results were obviously the result of a prank, but the Mets organization did something I can really respect. While they didn’t go so far as to actually declare the song the official winner for the season, they did play it at a game… where it was soundly booed. They were prepared to follow through based on the feedback they received, even if it was in a tongue-in cheek sort of way.

When you ask your staff, users, and colleagues for feedback, are you prepared to do something with that feedback? Do you have a mechanism in place for handling suggestions in a productive way? Are you ready to encourage the development of the ideas offered up, constructively criticize, and put forth the effort necessary to transform raw ideas into effective, creative, and innovative efforts? How do you prove that the suggestions you’re asking for will be taken seriously… even if they involve bad 80’s dance-pop one hit wonders?

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One of the major points I will be taking away from this conference is the idea that we really need to be watching mobile trends closely. Very closely.

Megan Fox’s presentation on the topic was fast paced and almost overwhelming… which I found quite fitting for the topic. I highly recommend checking out her presentation slides…. I couldn’t possibly get all of the info into a post!

To summarize some of the market statistics:

75 % of all US adults have cell phones
90% of college students have them
95% of US mobile phones support text messaging
62 % of subscribers use text messaging regularly
text messaging increased 95% over last year

Put this together with the info from Lee Rainie’s keynote and we’re really seeing some clear signals here! 

For me, it’s so exciting to think about the possibilities when it comes to the mobile Web. But it means that we really need to think long and hard about how libraries fit in to the wireless world. It’s something I will be pondering…

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OK, so I’m lumping two sessions together here. But they were back-to-back sessions in the “Industries Using Hot Tech” track, so I don’t feel too bad.

I’m glad to have attended these two programs, as I am a huge believer of looking outside of LibraryLand for inspiration.

The first, “Learning From Newspaper Publishing,” featured a look at changes to the New York Observer’s online presence (check out their “head cloud!”). David Free wrote up a great rundown of the basic points from the presentation.

My take:

Libraries can learn so much by looking at what other industries have done, the challenges they have faced, and the concerns they are thinking about when building these online community interfaces.

Especially helpful here was the notion of examining your users in terms of basic “types” and examining ways the site could address the habits and needs of those kinds of customers. For example, “Loyal Readers” tend to go straight to the home page and browse… so they need content on the home page to cater to those habits in much different ways from “Accidental readers” who find the content based on a search and have a single article focus… and therefore need different features to engage them.

Libraries: How often do we really aggressively study the habits of our users when it comes to our online resources? Do we have good data to back up the assumptions we make about how patrons use our services? Are we providing use options aimed at different kinds of users with different goals and habits?

Also, the idea of pulling in third party apps to meet users needs is something libraries need to pay attention to. If somebody else does it better, why do we always seem to want to re-invent the wheel?

Third, I was glad the presenter talked about aggressively marketing the services once they were built. And he wasn’t just talking about ads, but an entire marketing strategy for attracting users and encouraging use. This includes complimentary services and features to further engage potential users, and seems integrated with the whole community atmosphere now created by the site.

After the Newspaper session, I stayed on for the “Learning from Politics” session featuring Justine Lam, the eCampaign Director from the Ron Paul campaign.

This fascinating session looked primarily at the fundraising initiatives of the campaign, and definitely had a few interesting ideas for libraries.

For one, I was intrigued by what the speaker referred to as the “hub and spoke” model for the online campaign. She stressed that what they created was not a new social network, but a means by which existing social networking tools were connected for a common cause. YouTube, Meetup.com, Facebook, etc. already exist and are a part of users lives. So the strategy was to reach out and use these existing networks to spread the word in an efficient, low-cost way.

She also spoke a lot about transparency and the way that the campaign used graphics using real time fundraising figures to (very successfully) encourage fundraising efforts. This was one of the real community building features that helped the campaign site become a collaborative effort between the campaign and its supporters.

The campaign also used a strategy of helping teach supporters to create, collaborate and share – giving them the tools to spread the campaign message and then letting them more or less do the work for them. Giving the supporters ownership and letting them go was the thing that really made this campaign revolutionary and successful.

Of course, the speaker did mention that once you put the campaign in the public’s hands, you can no longer control the message… and she pointed out that while it is great to let the users solve your problems, that of course means that you then need to let them know what your problems are. How many libraries are ready to deal with this???

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Keynote: Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

For full notes on the presentation, see the following excellent recap form Nicole Engard.

For more Pew Internet use information see the reports here and here.

He made some very relevant points during this talk, and there are a lot of conclusions one could draw from the statistics he presented. But here’s what stood out to me… forgive me for putting my own spin on things.

• Wireless Internet. Cell Phones. Pay attention folks. This is where we are headed, and libraries had better be ready to ask the necessary questions about where we fit in.
• Education level is a good predictor of library use. Should this make us worried that the people who may be the least likely to use the library may be those who need us the most?
• He spoke about community evangelism and the value of giving your zealous patrons access to and training in Web 2.0 tools so that your happy customers can sing your praises to the larger community. I often think that the only marketing tool more powerful than an happy customer is a happy customer given a voice and a platform for spearding the word!
• Lee Rainie: “Aspire to be a node in people’s social networks.” For everyone out there who is unsure about libraries becoming engaged in online social networking initiatives, I think this statement comes pretty close to pointing the way. Unless you work in a library, nobody’s life revolves around the library. But if libraries are there as part of someone’s social environment, they become a likely resource someone may turn to when a problem needs solving. I guess it was always that way… but now many of us have moved a good amount of our regular daily lives online, and libraries need to be part of that landscape as well.
• People who don’t use the Internet when solving problems usually don’t so because they aren’t really aware of what is there to help them. Are non-library users similarly unaware of what the library has to offer? I say hells yeah. Rainie suggests that “Gen Y” users are so much more likely to use the library when trying to solve problems in part because they have the most recent “forced” experience with what the library has to offer (through school).

There was a lot more food for thought in this session… and he started to get to a slide looking at different types of literacies (graphic, navigational, contextual, etc) when the session was brought to a close for time. But maybe all of this is fodder for another day.

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I must say that it is pretty awesome to see so many laptops out here at CIL as folks are click-click-clicking away, blogging the sessions live. I know that I am going to be very thankful for these many posts as I try to organize my thoughts on the conference in the next couple of weeks, and for getting a little insight into the goings on during sessions I did not attend. So thank you very much to my live blogging colleagues!

But while I will be blogging this conference, I won’t be doing the live blogging thing. Why not? you might ask (and someone did this morning). Here are my reasons for putting it off until later… and it (mostly) has nothing to do with procrastination.

• I like to be light on my feet… and let’s face it, lugging around a laptop, no matter how small, could get pretty annoying. At least, it would for me. Plus, my laptop bag doesn’t coordinate well with my shoes.
• I love those little side conversations I have with the other session attendees, and I feel like I’d be missing out while focused on my computer. I definitely would have missed out on a great conversation this morning about marketing library services.
• Some might say I like the sound of my own voice a little to much. I like to interject my own comments, asides, tangential thoughts, and ramblings into the commentary I offer on programs I’ve attended. And I wouldn’t have enough time to give my unsolicited opinion if I were trying to do it all on the spot. I’d hat for everyone to miss out on that.
• Call me a slow processor. When a lot of information is thrown at me all at once, I like to take a little time to digest and review before commenting and editorializing.
• Plus, did I mention that my particular laptop isn’t very “fashion forward”?

So if you see me furiously taking notes this week, be assured that I’m jotting down all manner of facts, observations, asides and snarky comments so that I can later synthesize these into a little more of a coherent, well thought out product. For me, it’s more fun to do that… and it sure helps me write up conference reports for my boss in the end!

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So here we are in Arlington, ready for Computers in Libraries!

It was a quick 6-hour drive from Long Island… a journey that was saved in the end by mobile devices. It seems that getting to the hotel is not ass straightforward as it might seem on paper. But with the help of Google Maps on my phone and a quick call to the hotel, we got here safe and sound.

And tired.

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I got an interesting piece of advice this week about attending Computers In Libraries for the first time, and it goes a little something like this:

CIL is a great conference, and you’ll come away with so many fantastic ideas that I’ll likely end up on the verge of a meltdown trying to learn and do everything the minute I get back.

Has anyone found this to be true?

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I can’t even fathom where the time has gone lately.

One more wek until Computers In Libraries! I’m so excited, as I’ve never been to CIL before, and I’m jealous every year of my colleagues who get to go. So watch out… here I come! I’ll be the devastatingly stylish whirlwind trying to track down a Screech doll for my son.

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