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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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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Summer is officially coming to an end, and things seem to be returning to normal for me, but by bit. These last few weeks were a little tough for me, which is why I’ve been eerily quiet. Between my husband’s recovery from back surgery, some big projects at work, being involved in a major car accident (we’re OK, but there has been some recovery time from that!), and of course taking care of a very active toddler, I haven’t had two minutes to even hear myself think!

But all is well now. Chris is starting to go back to work, my projects are starting to take shape, the whiplash is getting better, I get the car back tomorrow, and Robert… well, Robert is still a toddler with all of the stress and drama that goes along with it.

I tell ‘ya, the kid should win an Academy Award.

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Two links came my way from a local library ListServ yesterday (see, sometimes ListServs are useful!):

NYT: A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

BBC: Librarians “Suffer Most Stress”

It’s so funny. I hear both of these feelings expressed by librarians on a daily basis. It’s either, “OMG, we’re so cool and nobody seems to appreciate that” or “Most people just don’t see the pressure we’re under.” Or sometimes, I hear a combination of them both.

In the end, I have a hard time really taking either position too seriously. For one, if you find yourself in a position of explaining to people why you’re so cool, then you’re not. And are we just trading one stereotype for another, as Meredith Farkas suggests?
For the other, come on. As vital as we like to think libraries are, in the end, it’s not a life or death situation you find yourself in. It’s a library, not an operating room. So relax.

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