Library Revolution

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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Thank you, Kathy Dempsey, for this excellent post outlining the meaning of the word “marketing” and several other related terms, including advertising, branding, advocacy, and public relations.

I often hear librarians using these word interchangeably, or mixing them up a bit. I especially hear librarians talking about “marketing” when what they really mean is “advertising,” and then getting frustrated and throwing in the towel when it comes to marketing efforts when they are faced with the costs associated with advertising. But advertising is only one small part of a larger marketing strategy.

Before getting bogged down by one particular element, perhaps libraries worried about marketing should spend a little more time developing a more large-scale and tong-term marketing strategy and using that strategy as a basis for a plan to use techniques such as advertising, promotion, branding, etc. to achive your marketing goals.

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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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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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For years, I have heard library professionals lament how much libraries “suck at marketing.” And I can’t disagree with that. We need to do a much better job in this area, which is, of course, much easier said than done.

It occurs to me, though, that one of the major obstacles that we may be facing is a widespread confusion among library professionals about the difference between marketing and advertising. Whenever I have a conversation about marketing with a librarian, it always ends up being a discussion of advertising.

Here’s the thing, though. Advertising is a component of marketing, but it is far from the whole enchilada. To quote a concise summary of the topic,

“The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy.”

Library marketing is not solely about advertising. It is also is not only about branding. Or PR. Or “Outreach.” Or social networking. Those are only parts of what should be an overall strategy for communicating with our customers and using that communication cycle to reach our ultimate organizational goals.

If we’re really going to get serious about library marketing, we need to forget advertising for a minute and think of the bigger picture.

What is your library’s marketing strategy?

Graphic via

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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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As a contributing author for the book The Age of Conversation, I was recently able to host a celebrity guest as he makes his worldwide tour. That’s right, Curious George (one of my son’s favorite celebrities) spent some time in my home and at work with me, getting to know a little more about libraries, the “Conversation Age”, and how it all fits together.

George and I have learned a lot of lessons about the value of conversation when it comes to customer service, marketing, and public relations by reading this book and engaging with the other authors in (you guessed it!) conversation. As I’ve said before, we librarians have a lot to learn from marketing folks… stuff that can really have effective applications for our libraries. And don’t underestimate the value of what we have to say for these folks. As I have learned in recent months, conversation is really a two-way street, and we have as much to offer folks in other professions as they do for us.

Here are a couple of pictures of the little scamp frolicking in the stacks at my office, and among some of Suffolk County’s historic newspapers.

Where else has George been? Where is he headed? Keep an eye on Flickr to see!

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Last week, I was home sick for a few days, which means a couple of things:

1. My son now has several new knit caps that he can refuse to wear this winter.
2. I’ve been rotting my brain with a lot of daytime TV (OMG is Sami really going to marry EJ?)

But watching daytime TV last week wasn’t TOTALLY brain-numbing (only mostly). This was due in large part to last week’s “Green is Universal” themed programming on NBC. I actually learned a lot of things about being more environmentally conscious from the “green” themed shows I watched. It was pretty interesting, and I thought many of the tips might translate nicely into Library World.

Two recycling tips I thought particularly suited to a library environment:

1. Recycling “techno trash”: Dell, HP, Apple, Gateway, and Toshiba all have programs for recycling old computer components. That’s pretty convenient! Clean out that old closet full of cables, monitors, keyboards, handheld devices, etc that you (or your tech department) kept “just in case.” Let’s face it. Most of it won’t ever see the light of day again. Keep what you might ACTUALLY use. Recycle the rest and enjoy your new storage space. More info here and here.

2. Recycling old VHS/DVDs: Most libraries I visit just junk VHS and DVDs when they’re discarded. Look Here! I had no idea that they could be recycled. I think this is an especially helpful tip for all those libraries out there that are phasing out (or just downright getting rid of) their VHS tapes. Forget paying for a dumpster. Get a recycling box instead. And to take it a step further, maybe put one of these out for your patrons? Depending on how you present it, it might be a good way to deal with unwanted donations, or for taking stuff off the patron’s hands that they don’t want. Plus, you get a chance to show the community how environmentally friendly you are.

Here are some links to online resources that give some more really good tips for creating “greener” small businesses - really good stuff for libraries.

About business tips

Greenbiz toolbox/primer

General principles followed by Greenbiz

eHow: series of 8 articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

I’m not much of a gung-ho environmentalist, I must admit. But after seeing all of the good tips for saving energy, etc. this week on TV, I have to agree that it could be a really great idea for libraries. Besides the obvious altruistic motivations for using more environmentally sound practices at the library, there are also three other practical reasons for thinking about starting a library “greening” project:

1. It’s good PR. Here we are, public libraries, telling everyone that we are an important, beneficial part of the community and that we care about our patrons’ education and well being. A “green” campaign fits right into that message in an overt way that your patrons can understand and even perhaps participate in.
2. It’s on your customer’s minds. “Going Green” is the hot thing these days, and if NBC is any indication, it’s something that is on your patron’s minds. We can learn a lot about our patrons and what is on their minds, I think, by looking at what they watch on TV all day. Since their research and marketing departments make the big bucks, I’d venture to say that they know what they’re talking about when it comes to topics that appeal to the general public. You can bet your life that if Ann Curry is going to the South Pole to learn about global warming, it’s because folk out there are interested. Or at least, they are now. Let’s bring that into the library!

3. Saving energy=saving money. Does it get simpler than that?

It think it’s a great idea to tap into the interest a campaign like NBC’s “Green is Universal” generates among the general public, and join in. I know that I, for one, found myself looking for more information about some of the topics I saw covered this week, such as the pollution associated with cotton production and the benefits of purchasing organic produce. I’d love it if I walked into the library this evening to find a display of resources associated with these topics. Or if my library’s blog published some links to online tips for making my life a little “greener.”

This whole “going Green” thing could be a good way to engage your customers. But it’s also something your library could go a step or two further with: Engage in a campaign to make your library “Greener”.

What tips and ideas do you have for making your library a “greener” place, letting your public know about it, and engaging them to be active participants in the project?

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