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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2007? What 2007? Never happened.

It’s 2008, baby.

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Michael Stephens blogged recently about librarians being timid, a theme Michael Casey wrote on in The Transparent Library.

To quote the article,

…getting new initiatives off the ground sometimes seems to need an act of God, simply because new services mean change. For some librarians, change represents the potential to fail. For others, it’s a fear of success, that a new service might be too popular and draw too many people.

This is something I struggle with all the time when working with librarians on new initiatives, so it really struck a nerve with me.

Actually, it really gave me one of those “AHA!” moments. He’s right. Most of the librarians I work with and have trouble motivating to try anything new aren’t afraid of failure at all. It’s success that scares them to death.

Then I saw this commercial during the Mets braodcast:

I think that this is exactly what we are like a lot of the time.

Oh my God, if we succeed in this new project, we’ll have to deal with the consequences! We’ll have to make decisions, set new priorities, and (gasp!) make some changes!

I don’t mean to belittle the feeling. It’s potentially overwhelming. Especially if we start succeeding all the time.

But as the guy in the commercial sums it up, “Isn’t that kind of the idea?”

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Emily Clasper is a librarian, computer geek, and library gadfly currently working as System Operations Manager for a large public library consortium in Suffolk County, NY. She got her MSLIS from Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library Information Science, and has dome extensive graduate work at Stony Brook University in the area of Music History and Theory. In her current position, Emily finds herself involved with virtually all aspects of public library service, with the rare opportunity to observe and participate in in these efforts in a wide variety of public library environment, working with library staff of all types.

Library topics of particular interest to Emily include Library technology, Library 2.0, customer service, information literacy and training issues. When she’s not spending time in the various public libraries of Suffolk County, her personal interests include gardening, the New York Mets, and spending time with her family (husband Chris, son Robert, and Jack Russell Terrier, Peanut).

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