InfoCommuner's Info Harbor

Outreach

2008-12-16T21:39:00.002-05:00

So, I was talking to a colleague the other day and she mentioned the importance of providing outreach services to users to ensure that libraries are truly embedded in the psyche of their communities ... And that got me thinking about the last time I visited Best Buy ...

I was wandering through the aisles looking for nothing in particular and a guy who looked like he worked there (khakis, a polo, and a name tag) asked me if I needed help. I answered that I was killing time, and he chuckled and said he was too. I was a little surprised, as it was the Christmas season, and the joint was crawling with people. That's when I noticed that he wasn't wearing the obligatory yellow or blue polo -- his was white, and his name tag was emblazoned with the "EPSON." When I asked him, he told me that Epson sent folks out to assist shoppers during there time of need. He wasn't straight-out selling -- he was facilitating the shoppers decision-making process. Think about that ... from a reference/info services/readers' advisory standpoint -- that's what we do ... the problem is that we're still concentrating on in house delivery.

What if we worked with community places (retail, social service, other governmental, etc.) to provide on site services ... to facilitate decision-making.

Even if we go back to Best Buy ... How cool would it be if there was a librarian in Best Buy to help provide access to consumer product reviews so that users could make more informed decisions? Pretty cool ....

Frank Deford, Crazy Stats, and Success

2008-12-11T07:49:00.005-05:00

So, I was listening to WUNC Radio yesterday on my way to work. I'd managed to forgot the fact that it was Wednesday, until I heard Frank Deford lamenting the the current state of sport-related stats -- specifically those of baseball. While my first reaction was to wince and scoff, as I listened I realized how true it was ... and how - often while watching a sporting event on TV/web I found myself thinking that somebody in the production van in the parking lot of the stadium was feeding the announcers random bits of nonsense in order to fill dead air.

And then I realized that we do that in libraries (and probably every business) ... maybe not to fill dead air, but we create numbers and ratios and indicators to identify bits of success. Some of it might be valuable ... but many of them are just a distraction.

In his book, The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham talked about how (and I'm paraphrasing here) what we need is not more numbers, but laser focus on the one number that actually means something. Of course, depending on your business, your audience, or your context, that number (and how you measure it) changes.

NC LIVE - the organization for which I work is in the information delivery/usage business ... we provide online content and services to libraries and users of libraries that they can't or don't get elsewhere. When I first started here, I wanted to come up with an elegant analysis plan that would help identify the value and meaning of our existence ... sounds simple, eh? Yeah ... so, two years later we're no closer ...

In reality though, perhaps we've had it all along. Perhaps it isn't a new stat that we need -- a new and elaborate metric we must devise ... No, instead what we need to do is follow one number:

Cost per item viewed per user

We need to constantly measure it with an eye toward how the actions we take, i.e., products we launch, promotional campaigns initiated, widgets distributed, content pieces added, etc., impact that number. We need to set targets before we take action (during planning), and measure how close we get to the target and ask why we exceeded it or missed it. All of our priorities should be set based on the one number, and all team, personal, and organizational performance assessments should use the one number as our guide.

In the end ... Frank was right ... being distracted by the goofy stats will mean that we'll fail to achieve what we could ... and that we will surely lose value and meaning.

A little boost up from for the sake of time

2008-11-21T07:23:00.005-05:00

At the office yesterday we talked with the folks from CraftySpace.com who also front the YourLibrarySite.com and who've been talked about recently by David King, John Blyberg, and others. They build templated and custom Drupal sites for libraries and nonprofits, and by all accounts are pretty good at it.

In our shop, we've been lusting after a new web space / environment / experience for some time now, and although one of our member librarians described our current site as "making her nauseous," we haven't yet moved it up the rungs of the ladder of things to do. Yesterday, it began an upward climb.

Unlike some of the clients CraftySpace works with, we actually have very talented technical staff who are capable of creating / adapting a CMS driven site with modular functionality ... what we don't have enough of is time to do all of the projects on our ladder. In talking with the company, it became instantly obvious that we could work with them to create a site that will meet our short horizon needs, and we could do it quickly. We talked about hosting the site ourselves and being responsible for all maintenance and further development, but we also agreed that we want to maintain a sharing relationship with them (and/or others) to propagate creativity, time-efficiency, and yes ... craftiness!

No deals have been done yet and we may end up going a different direction ... life's like that. But I like the option of being able to lean on a group that is open to sharing in the open-source sense, and can deliver for a set fee.

Counting things ... that matter

2008-10-28T09:40:00.004-04:00

"Confusion fosters frustration, the sense that this stuff is just too complicated, which in tern leads to surrender ... "

-- From More Lies and Statistics by Joel Best

Oh yeah, baby ... ain't it the truth! -- You're preachin' to the choir, Brother Joel ...

We're in the process of putting together our quarterly statistical report for our board and I'm trying to figure out the best way to count stuff. We learn to count in (or before) kindergarten, and yet when it comes to reporting what we count, we suddenly get all twitchy about it.

Take e-Audio books (known by many names including "downloadable audiobooks") ... We can count the number of downloads ... that seems pretty straight forward ... until you think about the fact that there might be turn-aways (due to lack of "copies") ... so we count those too, and we then compute the average number of downloads per total requests for the title (downloads plus turn-aways) ... And of course, a number is relatively meaningless unless measured over time, so we have to collect these items ... Oh, and then, since we actually expend $$ for the titles, we have figure out the value of our acquisitions -- you know, calculating the cost per item downloaded, cost per turn-away, cost per request, and then all of that as a function time ...

But that's not the real story, exactly, because we also need to spin the numbers and look at it from the perspective "For every dollar we put into e-Audio, how many N does that dollar yield" where N is the number of ... well, whatever you decide it is.

You see how this leads to confusion ... and eventually, frustration ... right?! And so, we give up. Too often we simply give up. We never even get to the point where we actually use the numbers for anything -- that's right, believe it or not, just reporting them is meaningless ... if we don't use them to predict, drive, or measure our effectiveness in our field of expertise, we're really just spending a lot of time doing half the job.

You see, I don't want to know this stuff 'cause it gives me warm fuzzies; I want to know it so I can tell my suppliers "we're spending too much on your stuff - there's a negative ROI" or "we love your stuff, and want more of it because we see a correlation between our users using it and satisfaction with local library service, and that is good for communities (academic or geographic)because of " whatever ... And I think our suppliers want to know the numbers and what they mean too -- it helps them help us help our users, and that's just good business.

Oh, and to not pay attention ... to not measure and report and use the numbers to drive our decisions ... that's just negligent.

Apture ... My dream of Libraries

2008-07-12T11:01:00.004-04:00

Okay ... so I've always thought some sort of library virus would be a good idea ... it would bring the power of the truly linkable universe to everyone's information devise (read "brain", "computer", handheld", etc.,) ... it would be catchy and would feed off of the knowledge and links around it to make us all smarter (at least potentially -- let's face it ... it's only as good as the info out there!).

So then, I'm reading eWeek from July 7, 2008 and on page 28-9 they have this article on Apture, a start up that's producing something called the "Innovative Media Hub" which without any type of client-side anything (aside from a browser) gives users the ability to "Search and discover media online from such sources as Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, ESPN, Comedy Central, Flickr, and WashingtonPost.com. And the cool part is that it only take a piece of code that is then inserted in your site code to make your site Apture-enabled.

Wow, I'm thinking ... that's what we need in our online content offering ... the ability to instantly link to every other piece of online content we (and others) offer ... In stead of the jolting and sometimes randomness of federated searching, this goes beyond Google by moving discovery away from search and closer to find. Can you imagine needing to find information on Beethoven, going to a some sort of encyclopedia (whether it's Wikipedia or Britannica) and finding not just the background with links to other free stuff or content provided by the same publisher, but
everything you and/or your institution has access to ... scores, critiques, sound recordings, video of the Vienna Philharmonic, and even primary sources (digitized). Not only that, but anything that you want to upload yourself ... that's right ... libraries as collectors and curators and PUBLISHERS!

Anyhow ... it's not quite the library virus, but it's getting closer ...

The only downside ... libraries were not mentioned in the article ... not at all ... so ... it's up to us to not get lost in this discussion and implementation like we have with other discovery tools. I guess I just need to figure out how to make it work for NC LIVE!

File under things I think are funny ....

2008-06-24T08:13:00.003-04:00

So we use Mozilla Thunderbird for our email system ... I kinda hate it, but that's probably because I'm too brainwashed by Microsoft to think that anything but outlook is a cheap knock off ... Anyhow, I've noticed some funny occurrences with how spellcheck handles certain names.

Here are some funny (I think) examples -- the real name is listed first with the spellcheck suggestion following it:

Neuwirth -- Mirthful
Jowaisis -- Waistcoat
Suellentrop -- Repellent
Lauffer -- Chauffeur
Lexoria - Inexorable
Dykeman -- Brakeman
Guzzo -- Guzzler
Yurcaba -- Bifurcate
Beaubien -- Beautician
Mostafa -- Hemostat
Hondros -- Wondrous
Putze -- Deputize, and last, but not least ...
Carmack -- Carjack

Of course, every time I see or talk to our think about the folks these names belong to, I think about the spellcheck name ... and chuckle.

Superhero Job Titles

2008-06-23T07:55:00.004-04:00

One of my colleagues hates her job title. Well, I should rephrase that -- she doesn't hate it so much as she thinks it's bland, boring, and bears no resemblance to her job ... the title? -- Systems Librarian. I have to agree -- at least about it not coming close to describing her job.

We've come up with a couple new titles, but none really captures the excitement and joie de vivre she's looking for ... Customer Service Librarian may describe much of her work, but is fraught with the desperate fatigue that goes along with constantly facing other peoples problems: think about working the "Customer Service" desk at Wal-Mart or Microsoft!

A title we tossed around when I worked at Johnson County Library in suburban KC was Community Engagement Librarian. JCL was (and may still be) pretty committed to the idea of the library as a facilitator for community study and action -- not the library making choices for the community (though, doesn't that sound like a good idea!), but the library providing the tools and resources (including people!) so that community members could make decisions about the direction of future development. I always like that one ...

One of our current member libraries -- the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County has recently restructure and has some cool job titles ... Director of Library Experiences, Director of Community Engagement, Director of Research, Innovation, and Strategy, etc., ... I like those a lot ... makes me think that I'd really go to work with a suped-up attitude!

Anyhow, the search for my colleague's title goes on ... something inspiring ... something descriptive and accurate ... something different, but with elements that ring true for our customers (we want a quizzical look of ... "Hmmm," not an eye-roll) ... In the end, what we're going for is a superhero name ... "The Flash," "Captain America," even "Batman" all inspire, describe, and ring true ...

Perhaps she should consider "Infocommuner" ... ?!?! ... Hmmm ... now I need to start working on a outfit design!

Gravy

2008-02-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

There's this line in Miller's Crossing that goes something like this ...

"Runnin' things ... it ain't all gravy!"

I used to write my blog as a vent ... a way of blowing off steam about what I thought should change in the organization in which I worked ... and then I changed jobs.

Now, I'm responsible for an organization ... and things have sort of shifted ... I can't just whine about how "those so-and-sos at the top need to change things" ... I'm the so-and-so, and I'm who my colleagues write about to blow off steam!

And so my blog has changed ... evolved ... it's now about the things we tried ... how they succeeded and failed, and what we learned from them. Hmmm ... I guess that's the equivalent of a blog in big-boy-pants ...

Maybe the quote should have been:

"Runnin' things ... it ain't about the gravy ... it's about how you spoon it on ..."

Decisions ... it's the business we're in

2008-02-11T20:53:00.000-05:00

So ... I was reading (well, to be honest, I was listening to) Seth Godin rant in "Small is the New Big" ... and I don't know why exactly, but I suddenly realized that we're not in the answers business ... we're not in the information business ... we're not even in the library business ...

Nope ... we're in the decisions business.

Because of that, our jobs, our missions, our people need to be focused -- not on the stuff that fills the shelves or hard drives or iPods or Blackberries -- but instead on the decisions that people make ... we need to be advocates and champions for decisions that people make to better themselves, their friends and families, and their communities.

We need to be able to measure our contribution to their decisions ... we need to be able to measure the impact of those decisions ... 'til we can do that, we're just making noise in the barnyard with a brick and a bucket.

So, how do you measure your own decisions?

"You may be commiting a crime ..."

2007-08-10T08:33:00.000-04:00

I was in a library a few days ago and ran across something I hadn't before ... and it scared me ...

In the front of each book was a small piece of paper ... neatly cut, perfectly centered on the flyleaf, and no more than two inches by two inches, the note addressed all potential readers with a stern and ominous message ... You may be committing a crime if you choose to write in this book ...

Back in November of '05, I wrote a post that dealt with writing in books and associated things ... here's a section of that :

How cool would it be to have access to a book with dog-eared pages and the
scribbles of 10, 50, or 100 years of readers/thinkers in the margins ...
ideas that move beyond those of Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species
and adding to them the opinions, questions, and feelings of a 17-year
old high school senior, a single mother of three who’s going back to
school, or a 72-year old Jesuit priest ... you ... me ...

... I want libraries to be the publishers and archivists and commentarians of content for, about, and by local folks ... I want not just to read the books, but all of the
ideas that my community-mates have left within the margins ...

Anyhow, while I did laugh a the note (how much time/money did the library spend putting them in?), at the same time it betells the issue facing us as a profession ... the fact that we want to protect the books and the ideas they embody instead of ensuring that the ideas live on and grow ...

I know, an over simplification, but what would a blog be without an oversimplified argument ... that's the best way to invite discussion, isn't it? ... Feel free to write in the margins ...

Privately developed public airports and library databases

2007-08-07T10:13:00.000-04:00

Long time since my last post (sounds like an entry that should begin with "Dear Diary") ... in the gap, I've taken a new job (awesome!) ... bought a new house (tons of work!) ... and stopped working out (bad idea!) ... maybe this post will help me turn around the last one ...

So I was listening to NPR on my way into work this morning and there was a story about how a private company is building a public airport in Branson, MO ... not too interesting? -- I beg to differ ...

Apparently, the development company is going to charge the town $8 per person they bring to town ... the town's good with it because they don't have to lay out any upfront cash to build the place, it's a simple pay-as-you-go model ... and if no one comes, they still don't pay.

This got me thinking (again) about out database payment models ... we always lay out our bucks right up front ... then we hope people come to use it ... we do a lousy job of partnering with (or better yet requiring) our vendors to help us promote and market the products ... and then we pay the annual increase despite the fact that usage (using whatever measure you want) barely goes up even proportional to population increases ...

I think the Branson Airport model isn't a bad one ... in fact, I think it's a great one! And I think we should be asking our vendors to "bring people to us" (or at least help) and paying them based on success (i.e., usage) ... that's is capitalism, and since folks are always asking government to be more like business, this approach would seem to move us in that direction.

There are holes in this approach, (like if usage does spike up, we might not be able to pay!), but we're smart ... we can figure out how to handle these issues, right?! I'd like to think that we'd be better off spending our time trying to resolve problems about over utilization rather than underutilization.

Enough for now ... I'll be keeping my eye on Branson ... as inspiration.

By any means ...

2007-01-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

I read a short article by in the Fast Company (embargoed until the next issue is out on newsstands) about a guy named Alfons Cornella ... He wrote a – no wait – he wrote THE first mathematics text written in Catalan ... that, by itself is enough for him to added to my Wall of Heroes ... Catalan, Basque, Irish ... I’m a sucker for all of the doomed languages ...

Anyhow, after his book tanked (imagine that ...?!), he decided that ...

“My mission would be to acquire ideas and diffuse them to society by any means.”

I love that ... probably because that’s exactly what I see as the mission of all libraries ... of all librarians ... to acquire ideas and diffuse them ... by any means ... and I guess that last part is my favorite ... by any means ... one more time, this time with feeling ...

... by ANY means!

It’s a great article ... you should really read it ... you’ll be glad you did ...

If you're interested, you can find out more about Alfons and his idea acquisition and diffusion at his site, Infonomia ... it's in Spanish, but I think it'd be worth learning!

Community strengthening, strategic plans, and the things we should do

2007-01-08T19:38:00.000-05:00

I had lunch with a friend of mine a couple of days ago ... it's amazing what you find out when you least expect it ... intermixed with the stories of his escapemanship travels through Prague and the Philippines after graduating from college, was talk of his "new" job ... He works in educational services for a public television station in the region, and mentioned that after a recent pow-wow with the station president and the board, his roll is to go out into the community and link up with representatives from public, community, educational, and other service organizations to develop strategies for helping them achieve their missions and visions using the station's broadcasting expertise ...

To me, that's what libraries should do ... instead of putting together a strategic plan that identifies how we should build collections, develop a programming calendar, and emphasize our reference/information services, we should focus on helping our constituents (patrons, public agencies, and private businesses) achieve their goals ... that'll bring way more value to a community than would focusing inwardly on traditional "library" stuff ...

Anyhow ... after he told me about his new focus, I bought his lunch ... and began to hope that I'd be able to do the same, very soon!

Theory of everything ... last Wednesday

2007-01-02T21:28:00.000-05:00

I was on vacation a few days ago ... an almost perfect day ... the kind of day that makes me believe in a unified theory of everything ...

It started when I got up early (I love getting up early on days off!) ... I had a leisurely breakfast and went in to the library as soon as it opened ... yeah, I was on vacation, but I wanted to do some totally non-job-related (hah-hah) research about communites of content -- research I could have done at home, no doubt, but there is something wonderful about going to the library when you're not on-the-job ... With a cup of Scooter’s flavor-of-the-day in hand, I found a big window-side table, planted myself, and logged on to the library's public WiFi and found and read through gobs of stuff about communities of content across the world ... I'll write more of that at some time later ... I had my Creative Zen on shuffle, and listened to the likes of Style Council, Van Morrison, Cathie Ryan, Billy Taylor, and a holy host of others ... Four hours passed quickly ... and I didn’t really want to leave ... until I did ...

Back in my car, I switched the radio on to serendipitously discover Steve Kraske’s interview of Dr. Michio Kaku on KCUR ... Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist at the City University of New York, and was apparently in town promoing his book Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos (now that’s a title!) ... I'm pretty much a social sciences/humanities kinda guy, but I've always found the artistry and mystery of science, and particularly physics, beautiful and inviting ...

My favorite part of Dr. Kaku's talk was his likening of physics to music ... string theory as the harmonics of the universe and chemistry as the melodies created when these harmonies play together creating something with infinite layers of uniqueness ... Man, I just love that!

I was also struck by something he said about simplicity ... if a theory on physics is too difficult to explain to a child, then it's not worth the explanation ... the theory of everything requires simplicity at its core and throughout its whole ... and that got me thinking that this should probably be true in libraries too ...

A few hours later, I found myself standing in the halls of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I hadn’t been there for a while, and that was good ... you see, everything seemed somewhat new and different ... and my new favorites were the Chinese and Japanese scrolls and screens ... they told stories, elaborate stories without words ... they reminded me of being a kid and looking through Richard Scarry’s art ... while the style was completely different, the stories had a way of wrapping around me ... I'm a passive observer of art (just as I am with physics, I guess) ... I understand less than I wish, but appreciate more than I used to ... and my few hours at the Nelson made me happy ...

I finished the day off at O'Dowd's Little Dublin, one of those staged Irish pubs that have sprung up all over ... I know that a lot of folks don’t care for these, but I have to say, the food was fantastic ... matched with live music (and hysterical conversation) with Eddie Delahunt, the night was a perfect topper.

So ... here it is ... my theory of everything ...

Happiness is time to consider, experience, and imagine the world and all its textures, tastes, smells, sounds, and sights ... most importantly, this happiness is only complete with someone with whom you can share it ...

How cool is it that I had it all of this in one day ... and for the rest of my life I'll have it with me everyday.

Continuing from yesterday ... Simplicity

2007-01-01T17:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a perfect example of what I mentioned yesterday ...

Maryland Share is a community information database (CID) put together by Maryland's public libraries ... while I applaud the concept of a library-based CID, instead of pushing the content out to the Internet to be searched via conventional search engines, it requires patrons first to find the Maryland Share ... maybe with a major marketing campaign that would be more likely.

So the trick is to gather, create, or repurpose content, and then make sure people can find it their way ...

Also, we have to stay away from systems that create barriers between the content and the user ... a perfect example of this is JCL's own Sirsi system ... using the browser's back button instead of the "Back" button provided within the catalog system causes all sorts of problems ... that to me is pretty easy to detect, and should be pretty high on the list of things to fix ... I don't mean to pick on Sirsi at all -- most of the vendor-based systems and home-grown databases have problems equally as ripe for resolution ... don't think I've ever had that problem with Amazon or Google ...

Oh, and a very Happy New Year!

Catalogs, databases, and searching ... Oh My!

2006-12-31T16:49:00.000-05:00

This post will be quick ...

A quick search of your favorite search engine or research database will tell you that there's been a lot written about how library catalogs and library databases should work, i.e., how they should search, display results, and give the searcher functionality that enables him/her to create something of value from the results ... many libraries have developed new systems or partnered with vendors to do so, and I think that's pretty cool ...

But when I think of really breaking through the information ceiling of our mass-market, globalized world, and making the resources of libraries a part of the mix, I think it will mean that we flatten out (not dilute) those resources to be findable through channels that real people are using ... Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Ask, Barnes & Noble, etc., ... whatever tool makes a person feel comfortable.

Dr. Michio Kaku, a physicist from City University of New York, talks quite a bit about the importance of simplicity ... I suppose that libraries and locating information through libraries should be viewed no differently ... simple is better ... and often, familiarity breeds simplicity ...

Right?

Three things at the end of another year

2006-12-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

So quickly these months go by ... more quickly, still, because of all that has been happening ... our boss retiring ... the Board's search for a new director ... wrapping up all things old (an impossible task, mind you) in prep for all things new ... All very interesting, all very exciting, and all very stressful for our staff ...

So ... three things from 2006 to keep eyes on in 2007 ...

I'm a booster of looking at online catalogs that people (not librarians) think are easy, say, Amazon, for instance, but NC State's project with Endeca has me rethinking things ... from the NCSU Libraries' site ...

"On January 12, 2006, the NCSU Libraries announced the first library deployment of a revolutionary new online catalog. Leveraging the advanced search and Guided Navigation® capabilities of the Endeca ProFind™ platform, the NCSU Libraries' new catalog provides the speed and flexibility of popular online search engines while capitalizing on existing catalog records. As a result, students, faculty, and researchers can now search and browse the NCSU Libraries' collection as quickly and easily as searching and browsing the Web, while taking advantage of rich content and cutting-edge capabilities that no Web search engine can match."

Although I've always hated closed stacks, with truly browsable catalogs, Chicago State University's RFID/robot materials retrieval system sounds pretty good ... from Wired ...

"Human librarians shelve post-1990 materials in the traditional stacks and drop older stuff into file-drawer-sized bins. From there, it’s all robots – tall, forklift-style machines that run on tracks and stow the materials in a three-story-high storage facility. No Dewey decimals? No problem. The computer knows where everything is and can hustle the correct bin to the circulation desk for checkout."

The last item is something that librarians talk about, but I still haven't see much of it ... libraries as authors, aggregators, and partners for community content ...

At Johnson County Library, we've done it with www.JoCoFamily.net, www.JoCo.Health.net and www.JoCoHistory.net, and in 2007 www.JoCoArts.net is going to make its appearance. Each of these partnerships combines the library's ability to get information to people in a format appropriate to their needs with the rich body of content that other government agencies, NPOs, civic service groups, educational institutions, and for profit businesses. To me, this is one of the most exciting things local libraries can do. In 2007, we need to do three things: 1) publish more content, 2) be more active in getting that content searchable through the major search channels -- local, national, and international, and work together with our content providers like EBSCO, Thompson-Gale, and Newsbank to ensure that they do the same -- get their content in the hands and heads of the people who can turn it into something valuable.

With that, I'm off to grill up some filets ... Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Seamless customer experience

2006-09-25T22:50:00.000-04:00

I was just reading Coreen Bailor’s article in the October 2006 issue of Customer Relations Management ... in it, she says ...

Naturally, good customer service often leads to customer expanding their
dealings with you. One way to begin: Ensure that frontline reps are well
trained, and equipped with access to a comprehensive knowledge base and to
customer history.

So, I started thinking ... how does this apply to libraries?

Most frontline library staff take one or two classes/training sessions per year ... and those tend to be policy or procedure based ... if we want to get serious about customer service, maybe we should offer customer-oriented service training ... the kind of stuff done by Disney, Nordstrom, Ritz-Carleton, and Southwest Airlines ... and of course it will mean we need to give staff time off the desk to learn, practice, and learn some more ...

In addition, we’ll need to update and improve our tools ... and not just add stuff like Ebsco’s NoveList, Thompson-Gale’s What Do I Read Next, or Books-in-Print ... that’s all good stuff, but we need to harness their individual strengths and integrate them with our ILSs, with Google and its ilk, coming-of-age social networking toys, and with our own locally created content ... that’s our knowledge base ...

And lastly, we need to be able to give staff access to systems that describe our patrons’ patterns of use of information and services ... with the training staff get, the use of these systems will ensure a tighter match between knowledge seeker and knowledge asset ... the main problem I anticipate here is that we’re scared to keep the information ... it might be discoverable ...

Okay ... I didn’t say it was easy or without potholes ...

Cool job title

2006-08-30T09:44:00.000-04:00

Like many ideas that come to me, this one was borne of a mistake ...

I don't know if it's because I scan-read before I really read, but I saw a job listing on a listserv the other day ... what I saw was :

Experience Cataloger

Of course what it really said was:

Experienced Cataloger

I've never been a cataloger and I probably never will be, but if I was going to catalog something, I think I'd focus on experiences ... I think that some think we do this already ... but I'm not convinced we have a way of rendering experiences so that we can find, match, and share them ... we're good with things and two-dimensional aspects of people (people are really just a collection of experiences, aren't they? -- like XTC said in The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul, we're just "a bag to keep life's souvenirs in") and even sort of okay with concepts, but experiences are too layered to catalog ... we need a multi-dimensional medium in which to do it ... I'm sure some one will mash something together shortly ... but for now, it remains nothing more than a cool job title ...

Age of the Spiritual Library ( ... Library 5.0 ...)

2006-05-21T22:11:00.000-04:00

I was looking over Ray Kurzweil's Age of the Spiritual Machines again today ... right at the end of the prologue (have I mentioned that introductions/forwards/prologues are my favorite part of almost every book?), he talks about being able to scan or download our entire consciousness to a machine ...

That got me thinking ... what would the library look like in an age where this type of activity is possible and even common place ... would the Library 5.0 cease to be a collection of books, dvds, even electronic media as we understand it today? .... Would it be a collection of scanned consciousnesses, where we not only have access to the authors' published works, but have - in fact - access to everything he/she ever thought, experienced, said, wondered, and beyond ...

Wow, now THAT would be a library ... of course the digital rights management would be a real bug-a-boo, not to mention a search mechanism that could parse emotions, experiences, and thoughts ... hmmm ... wonder if Google's already working on it?

Hope I'm around for Library 5.0 ...

Local music burnable (rippable and downloadable) at the Library

2006-04-15T18:22:00.000-04:00

Okay this is cool ...

There was a little snippet in Business 2.0 this month (from Hits & Misses, p 140, April 2006 -- sorry, couldn't find it online) ... It mentioned how Umpqua Bank based out of Oregon has set up kiosks inside about a third of the bank’s nearly 100 branches that allow customers to listen to the music of local bands and burn their own CDs for $8 or for free if they open a new account (you know, instead of a toaster or a coffee pot or a clock). They’re calling it the Discover Local Music Project, and apparently it’s a success ... the bank’s had a 20% increase in deposits and 48% increase in profits since the year before ...

To me this is a natural for us, and by “us” I mean libraries ... a kiosk or workstation or central server from which local music can be burned or ripped or downloaded or whatever is next ... I was never in a band, but the guys I knew who were local bands wanted exposure ... they never believed that they would make huge bucks on locally produced CDs ... they usually use them as cheapish marketing tools that will get them into the ears of more folks on the chance that one of those people will be someone who will break it open for them and make them famous.

Anyhow ... in the interest of locally relevant content and making it available and accessible to our patrons while also promoting locally creators of content ... this to me is a great idea and one that we can easily do ... you know, if we can manage the rights issues ... heh-heh-heh ...

What I love about where I work ... or Our Strategic Plan

2006-03-19T19:10:00.000-05:00

Okay ... this will sound weird ... the three things I'm going to talk about are from the preposed revisions of our strategic plan ... normally. that'd be enough to make anyone nod off, but do me a favor ... read on ... 'cause this is cool stuff ...

We started with the outcome ...

“People benefit from Johnson County Library’s role in the community.”

The first of three strategies was ...

"Proactively create a culture of engagement within the library."

As you can probably guess, this was our way of saying that engagement starts at home ... we need our staff, across all dimensions of the organization, to think of their work as community engagement ... to that end we need to go to “engagement school,” or as we’re planning on calling it, the Ambassador Coaching Institute. This staff development activity will better prep our people (who were probably hired to provide utterly different services 10+ years ago) to more easily and ably deal with the library’s challenges of today and tomorrow.

In addition to our informal approach to readying staff for engagement, we also said that we’d need to establish formal liaisons to other organizations, institutions, and community groups focusing on neighborhood and niche service development. We’ve kinda kicked that off already, as we’re hired a youth services librarian to liaise between the county’s school districts and us. She’s only been on staff for a few months, but her presence has already brought us closer to the schools. Formal liaisons to county agencies, NPOs, and even industries can only be a positive as we try to lock in engagement networks across subdivisions, neighborhoods, cities, and the county.

We recognized that this shift to engagement would mean a shifting of resources ... so we’ve stated that we really need to examine the needs we’d have with regard to people hours and skills to create this engagement stuff ... I can’t tell you for sure what it will look like when we’ve done it, but I can guarantee it’ll be different than what you see now ...

Isn’t that cool!?!?! .... more later on the next two strategies ...

Public Agenda online

2006-03-18T16:22:00.000-05:00

I imagine some are already aware of this site ... Public Agenda is an pollster site that (in their own words):

"has been providing unbiased and unparalleled research that bridges the gap
between American leaders and what the public really thinks about issues."

I didn't spend a ton of time on the site (I'm rooting on the Wichita Shockers right now!), but I did find this item about Internet Speech and Privacy ... it's kind of dated ... be interesting to see more recent info ...

Rewarding Our Users

2006-03-12T18:43:00.000-05:00

I wanted to comment on something I read recently in Red Herring magazine ... "Sites Reward Good Users" talked about companies that encourage “web users to contribute content in exchange for a stake in its success.” Basically, it works this way ... a site asks users to contribute content (photos, stories, music, video, ... you name it!), and then the users receive some percentage of revenue taken in for the sale or use of the content. To some extent, the site becomes the middleman or agent for the citizen content provider ... the sites (or service providers mentioned were:

Gather.com (blogs)
Newsvine.com (newsite)
Wurldmedia.com (peerimpact.com – music/video)
Revver.com (video)
Scoopt.com (photos)

Mentioned in the article is the fact that some of this is not new ... it was there before the so-called bubble burst at the turn of the century ... but according to Anil Dash (of Dashes.com), back in those days “there weren’t enough people online.” With the ubiquity of digital cameras, podcasting tools, and the willingness of people to share content, it seems to me this approach might find some legs this time around ... and of course, we’ve seen something like this before ... it’s called eBay ... it’s just that this time what’s for sale is digital content.

I guess there are two things that I see as relevant to libraries ... the first is that we should be out there encouraging our patrons to contribute content to library-run sites so that we can serve it up back to them as part of the collective local experience. We can use the model talked about above by managing the digital rights for our patrons and paying them back for use based on certain types of usage.

My second thought on this is that – whether our patrons choose to share their home-made content through our systems or through commercial providers – we need to figure out how to zero in on all those really cool local content chunks held disparately across the face of the earth and make them available to our users. That may seem pretty obvious, but we haven’t really done too much of it ... When was the last (or the first!) time you saw a library catalog or collect a list of locally created blogs? Now with the proliferation of locally relevant web pages, images, videos, audios, blogs, etc., we have more information about our patrons and their environs than ever before.

The concept of citizen journalism is being extended to all aspects of life, and we can and should be the connection that brings the authors closer to their readers. Our role will be more than that of indexers and archivists ... we will be publishers ... promoters ... and connectors of people and their stories to others whose lives will be changed by our work.

Because remember ... it’s all about ...

... Answering the questions ...
... Inspiring the next questions ...
... Interacting to create understanding, and ...
... Engaging to change lives and build communities.

My Pirate Name

2006-03-11T17:46:00.000-05:00

I've heard that sailors are fickle, unreliable, and capricious ... well, according to this "scientfic" analysis brought to you by fidius.org, I might be an exception to that rule ...

My pirate name is:

Dread Pirate Read

Like the famous Dread Pirate Roberts, you have a keen head for how to make a profit. Even through many pirates have a reputation for not being the brightest souls on earth, you defy the sterotypes. You've got taste and education. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Games, Libraries, and Semiotic Domains

2006-01-16T22:23:00.000-05:00

I’m always surprised and delighted by serendipitous convergence of ideas ... let me share what I mean ...

A few weeks ago, our library held a trial video game tourney ...
I’m currently reading What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee
On Friday night, I came across Jason’s post on the Cognitive Science blog on Tribe.net about “Life the Game” ...

One of the points I always make is that libraries need to be able to answer questions, inspire new questions, create interaction that builds understanding, and provide opportunities for engagement that changes lives and builds communities. So how does gaming fit into this world of librarydom? Perfectly ...

We know that games (unlike tricks) are not just for kids ... as Mr. Gee says, games are semiotic domains ... they are worlds of meaning that incorporate language, culture, story, and learning. They connect us to our innerselves, to the people around us, and to our history. I didn’t realize it until yesterday, but games are what provided me with an opportunity to know my grandparents ...

When I was a kid, my parents, grandparents, and their friends would spend countless hours around the dinning room table playing pinnocle. Long after I’d gone to bed, I still hear their voices in constant motion. Chatting, arguing politics and ideas, telling stories, cursing their luck ... it was the sound of relationships being built and strengthened ... it was the sound of family ... the sound of community.

As I got older, and began my trek into adulthood, I was allowed to watch them play ... to listen to the language ... to be a part of it without actually interacting. But this was also when I first began to connect with my grandparents. They were people of the Great Depression ... they had worked hard to survive together and had built up a comfortable life that they would never take for granted or even feel secure would be there the next day. They were gracious without gushing and seemed to keep themselves hard around the edges so as to ensure that they’d never forget the hard times. As a little kid they were hard to get to know ... they were harder to want to know. But as we sat there in their dining room, and I heard the stories of family members and friends, as I listened to them rib one another and laugh, and as I grew to understand the meter and rhythm of their interactions, I began to get a sense of them for the first time.

Baseball was the other connection. I grew up in Upstate New York in the days before cable TV spread the games of the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs to every nook and cranny of America (okay, so now I even sound like my grandfather!). Back then (you know ... in the olden days), we could catch a weekly ballgame on TV, but radio was still the only way to get the daily game. When my grandparents would visit, my grandfather and I would sit in the living room and listen to Phil Rizzuto and Bill White talk about the Yankees. My grandfather would sit there with his Seven-n-7 and a handful of peanuts recounting Yankee players and teams of the past. He’d talk about guys whom I’d never heard of, but who – years later when I had the great fortune of working at the National Baseball Library – I learned about and reshared with him. He was gruff on the outside, and like I said earlier, hard to get to know ... but when we’d talk about baseball he softened and gave me a peek inside at the person he was ... the life he’d led ... the history he’d seen ... it was the game that allowed that ... that was our common semiotic domain ... our shared experience and language and culture ...

Games are important to the future of libraries ... regardless of the venue or medium in which they are played, games enable us to meet new people, to interact with them, and build relationships that lead to community. Games are about stories ... yours ... mine ... and ours. These stories help us learn about and from one another, and they help us form our other circles ... our other semiotic domains.

So ... play on ...

People as Quantum Machines

2006-01-06T02:01:00.000-05:00

This is a little choppy ... bear with me ...

Way back on December 21, 2005, Kathy Sierra from Creating Passionate Users talked about The Quantum Mechanics of Users ... it was all about waves and particles and how, by observing a user, we can actually change how he or she uses our services ... and not necessarily for the better. Her focus was on the difference between what people do and use versus how they describe what they do and use ...

She quotes Gladwell (from Blink) where he talked about the jam experiment ... the long-and-short being that when people were asked to choose the best jams their picks were in line with experts (add that to the list of my fantasy job titles ... Jam Expert), but when they were asked to say why they made the choices, suddenly their choices changed ... The simple act of asking changed the results ... but why?

As I found myself poring over the comments left on her post, I came across one from Dave Rogers (no relation) who talked about the idea of extra-experiential intellectualization, attributing it back to "God in the Dock" by CS Lewis. According to Dave, Lewis wrote that people didn’t/couldn’t intellectualize when they’re in the throes of something (passion, laughter, sorrow, etc.) ... instead, he says:

"Human intellect is incurably abstract... Yet the only realities we experience
are concrete--this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving
the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually
apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. ... This is our dilemma--either to
taste and not to know, or to know and not to taste--or, more strictly, to lack
one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind
because we are outside it.”

On a more personal note, this totally ties in with something a friend of mine (not aware of my newly piqued interest in extra-experiential intellectualization and quantum mechanics) said to me earlier today. He was trying to "think" through an emotional conundrum ... saying "no matter how I look at the problem and the way it's making me feel, I can't seem to think through a solution that I like." In quantum terms ... his waves were willing, but his particles were weak. He was trying to use his particle (i.e., thinking/logical) mind to shape his wave-shaped emotions and was failing miserably. I guess the physicists among us would have expected it ...

In the end Kathy says:

“We have to get better at making inferences from what we observe without
intervention. We have to get to the spirit of what we observe, rather than
focusing on the specific details. We have to recognize that what they do says
much more than what they say, especially when they're not saying anything at
all.”

I’d add that we need also to remember our waves and particles ... that while we absolutely need to get better at inferring without changing peoples' behaviors, our true test will be to determine which part of our human quantum machine our patrons will be using as they both experience and intellectualize what we provide.

JoCoLibrary's Winter Gaming Tourney

2005-12-27T23:38:00.000-05:00

This is a really quick post about something that I was lucky enough to experience today ... the Johnson County Library's Winter Gaming Tournament (JoCoWGT)! Though just a pilot program (a precurser of cool things to come!), we brought in thirty 15-19 year-olds to play for the JoCoWGT championship ... it was completely fantastic!

My job was your typical administrative fare ... walking around talking to teens, parents, and the media. We got great coverage from KMBC Channel 9 and the Kansas City Star, and everyone really had a great time. In fact when it was over, some of the participants were still hanging out asking us when we were going to do it again.

My favorite story was from a woman who's son came home with a flyer for the event, and asked if he could play. His mom (already a JoCoLibrary booster) told him she would let him play, and would even take off work and drive him to the library ... but there was a catch ... he needed to get A's and B's on his report card. The young man answered that because he was going to a really good school, C's should be considered good grades. His mom stood firm ... A's and B's ... or no gaming. Well, the kid took it to heart ... he got all A's and B's ... and in the end finished second in the JoCoWGT to boot!

This is the kind of thing we should be doing ... giving people great places and opportunities to have shared experiences for learning, interaction, and engagement ... While some of the participants brought their parents, others came with friends, and some came alone ... by the end of the day, everybody (regardless of age) talked and joked like old pals ... there was energy in the room and it passed through all of us. I don't know if it was "Library 2.0" or not, but it was definitely "JoCoLibrary.NOW"

Cyber Six-Pack, High Octane Boot Camp, and the Kelsey Study

2005-12-27T23:19:00.000-05:00

In his post to the Community Engine, Bud Gibson mentioned a Kelsey Group/ConStat study that said that :

“70 percent of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source
when shopping locally for products and services—an increase of 16 percent since
October 2003. This puts the Internet on par with newspapers as a local shopping
information resource, with the Internet likely to surpass the impact of
newspapers in the very near future.”

He then talks about setting up the High Octane Boot Camp for MBAers at U of Michigan to proactively change the way people search for local info ... let me say that again ... a class to proactively change the way people search for local information ... (are you getting chills?) ... Linking these classes to the Kelsey/ConStat study, the assumption is that we can teach business folks to better design their services so that people can find them locally on the Internet. As a 4-year old in my daughter’s pre-school class said the other day, “Tasty!”

And so we should do the same ... Sarah Handgraaf, one of our Web Content Developers has set up something similar for our library staff and patrons ... the Cyber Six-Pack is a series of (wait you’ll never guess ...) six mini training sessions on tools like Flickr, del.icio.us, RSS, blogging, etc ... stuff that is already part of the mainstream techno world, and which is now quickly catching on in the real world, and by extension, the library world. She and her boss, Erica Reynolds, figure that the best way to help patrons find the local information that they want and need is to train librarians and local service providers on how to extend the reach of their content through the stuff covered in the Cyber Six-Pack classes. Just like the super minds of GE always said, education and awareness are the best PR an organization can buy.

Sarah and Erica have only just begun with this approach, but I think that we’ll see their work pay off for local government, commerce, and of course individuals as we head into 2006.

Community Intelligence and the Library Role

2005-12-26T12:04:00.000-05:00

Found this article about Community Intelligence (what I like to call Library-Initiated/Sponsored/Created Community Information) by Jennifer Rice on her What’s Your Brand Mantra blog the other day ... for those of you who hate to think of libraries within the same context as business, you might want to read something else (even though you are the ones who need this the most) ...

Jennifer mentions an article in Reveries in which Yahoo’s Jeff Weiner talks about the “evolution of search” writing itself as a play in three acts. Act One is the story of the public web ... what we’re all used to browsing and searching using our search tool of choice; Act Two is the story of our own private hard drives ... searched and browsed locally with tools that may in the future become part of Act Three; and Act Three is the story of community searching ... “where the results are improved based on the successes of other people’s searches for the same information.”

I personally think that this plays perfectly into the whole Library 2.0 thing, as our organizations seek to become less about being the container for information (an idea that shifted long ago, at least in Internet years) and more about facilitating the creation, access, upkeep, and renewal of locally relevant content.

I’m not a tool creator ... but an adopter of tools ... I’ll use what someone else creates to get my work done, and I’ll switch tools depending on my (and my users’) needs. And, of course, I’m a librarian, so I love the idea of libraries using whatever technology is available to help real people turn information into knowledge and then turn knowledge into action that changes the their lives and their worlds. And it’s really not that hard ... we just have to decide to do it.

Stuart Hinds, one of our web content developers and a local history librarian of some renown, thought it would be cool if we developed a DSpace-y type set-up for local citizens to save the stuff they want to have available to then always ... a big hard drive for locally created content. The academic world has already embraced this approach and we could too ...

And what if we focused on being the binding tissue that enables peer-to-peer sharing and indexing (there’s an ‘ole timey word) of locally relevant content ... what if ... instead of focusing our efforts on creating new library-specific tools, we focus on getting people to contribute ideas, questions, things that inspire others, and activities that result in community engagement. Training and encouraging folks to share content for the betterment of communities using existing (and relatively mature – it’s all relative!) technologies seems to me a great fit for our skills and positions in the community.

If we do that, we become the library for the next generation ... active ... involved ... distributed ... and conversant in the whats, whys, and hows of the whole information-to-knowledge-to-engagement thing ... in the words of Jennifer Rice ...

“You might consider thinking of your business as a facilitator instead of an
all-knowing entity that must retain control over every aspect of the business.”

Amen.

"Something about Humanity" from Kevin Harris

2005-12-25T22:12:00.000-05:00

Wow ... that’s all I can say ... Kevin Harris posted yesterday on his Neighbourhoods blog, which if you hadn’t guessed, is a site devoted to “neighbourhood relations and social capital” based out of the UK ...

Using BBC 3’s Bach Christmas series as a backdrop, Kevin talks about how things with deep meanings to people often can carry an equally deep, and sometimes opposite meaning for others. That’s pretty poorly put, so I’ll let him say it:

“thoughts about things global and local, universal and private - how Bach could
represent such diversity to so many, how he could unite people in peaceful awe,
how he represents a stable co-existence - the notion of the civil - with the
possibility of radical expression and mystical vision.”

Beautiful, Mr. Harris ... beautiful!

A little change of pace

2005-12-25T20:02:00.000-05:00

Don't freak! ... This is that same great InfoCommuner that you've grown to know and love, it's just taken on a smoother look ... got tired of the bland orangy set up ... so ... hope it leaves you wanting more ...

Humility, "No," and Keeping Everybody Satisfied

2005-12-25T15:38:00.000-05:00

Way back on October 31st of this year (yeah, yeah, yeah ... so I’m a little behind in my posting ...), John Windsor of BrandShift posted about creating more satisfied non-customers ... the gist of it was that by saying “No” and not spreading yourself too thin, you not only create more satisfied customers (because they’re getting you at the top of your game without additional stress and distraction), you also ensure that those to whom you say must say “No” are not unsatisfied by the distracted, burned-out, and tired old version of you (or your organization) that you’d present to them because you stretched yourself beyond your capabilities.

I read the post and felt comforted ... ahhh ... I am not the only one who feels this way from time-to-time ... thanks for the companionship, John. And yet, I have to admit, I don’t always I recognize my need to say “No” in the heat of the moment ... sometimes, I need to be reminded, prompted, or straight-out told ... so here’s my lecture on making sure you surround yourself with people who are not afraid to tell you when you’re off your nut ... when you need to slow down and wait for reality to catch up ... or just that you’re being jerk.

I love my job because the one thing I’ve truly strived to do is to make sure that the people in our organization are not afraid to tell me the truth. When I propose a project or initiative that goes off the rails a shade (or an entire color), they let me know. That doesn’t mean that I’m such a benevolent guy that I always remember to invite critique ... but I’ve tried to build the trust into our relationships that allows them to say ... “Um ... Tim ... you know there’s not a chance in Hell that that’ll work without killing morale in the process ...” And then I rant and rave for a couple of minutes until I finally realize that they’re looking at me with eyes that ask “Are you almost done?”

I guess what I’m saying is that the ability to say “No” is usually about humility, and that’s something that few of us have too much of. John was right when he said that the only way to preserve our long-term customer and non-customer (also known as future customer) relationships is to learn when to say “No.” I ‘d like to add that the only way to ensure that we can develop and maintain the entire spectrum of customer relationships is to invite all of the people who work with, for, and around us to be organizational humility touchstones.

A friend of mine once told me that failure to successfully lead people is guaranteed the minute we stop trusting them or start thinking that we’re smarter than they are ...

Learning Ecologies (thanks to Nancy and Darren!)

2005-12-18T21:23:00.000-05:00

Lifted this (like some earlier things) from Nancy White at Full Circle ... she tends to come across the coolest and most poignant thoughts on communities, and specifically communities of practice (CoP). If you haven't yet, check out her stuff ... I love her brain!

Okay, so anyway, she came across the idea of learning ecologies from Darren Kuropatwa ...

An ecology is an environment that fosters and supports the creation of
communities ... A learning ecology is an environment that is consistent with
(not antagonistic to) how learners learn ... The Instructor plays the role of gardener.
What are the needs of a learning ecology? Learning/knowledge is more than
static content. It's a dynamic, living, and evolving state. Within an ecology, a
knowledge sharing environment should have the following components:
Informal, not structured
Tool-rich
Consistency and time
Trust
Simplicity
Decentralized, fostered, connected
High tolerance for experimentation and failure

And Nancy adds her own flavor ... that ecologies have to possess a high tolerance for ambiguity and diversity.

Lapping it up, I thought of my library's own coming-of-age journey as an environment for learning and knowledge ... our attempts to set up a leadership institute have met much of the same hesitancy and sideway glances that a recent gaming project have ... and the reasons ? ... Well, we've probably paid too little attention to Darren's (and Nancy's) components ...

The two projects I referred to above have to this point lived only on the internal synapses of our organization ... so it's not hard to see why we run square into turbulent seas when the winds of changing identities blow across our paths ... Libraries that take up the challenge of being more than a collection of books to lend need to think about how they will create and deliver new (but still on-mission) services by adhering to the ecological components ... failure to do so will simply lead to ... well, failure.

Thanks again to Darren and Nancy! Cheers!

Thanksgiving and thanksgetting

2005-11-24T18:29:00.000-05:00

So, I was thinking ... what am I thankful for ...? Of course the low hanging fruit ... I’m thankful for my family and friends ... I’m thankful for my health ... I’m thankful for music and art and literature ... I am an absolutely fortunate person, and I know it ...

But then I remembered – while this is a completely self indulgent – it’s about libraries and communities and information ...

Serendipitously, I was read an article this morning in Business 2.0 that described the “Golden Rules” of 30 business leaders. I won’t tell you them all (but it was a good, quick read – you should do it!), but I’ll give my top three ...

Number 3 ... Carlos M. Gutierrez (US Secretary of Commerce):
“Believe in something bigger than yourself.”

Number 2 ... George Steinbrenner (owner of the New York Yankees)
“Surround yourself with people smarter than you.”

Number 1 ... Steve Balmer (CEO of Microsoft):
“Make hiring a top priority.”

Okay, so it’s time I come to the point ... what am I thankful for ... ?

I sat in on an interview on Friday ... a perspective employee for one of our Web Content Team positions ... the person was fantastic ... she was open, smart, funny, confident, calmly comfortable, she understood the questions we were asking and why we were asking them ... a nice breath of fresh air ... so many times people when they interview tell you that the reason they want the job (it doesn’t even matter what job!) is because they love books and love to read.

This candidate may have loved books and reading, but the reason she was interested in working with us, was because she understood the need for libraries to be involved in the creation and presentation of information and was passionate about her role in serving that need. She reminded me of what I’m thankful for ...

This year ... I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to work with people who believe in something bigger than themselves and who are smarter than me (and I mean exponentially!). I’m also thankful that I understand that we don’t do great things for real people with a staff versed in mediocrity. We look for and hire the best ... and I love that! I love knowing that when I’m sitting across from one of my team and we’re talking about the work we do, the work we want to do, or just dreaming up new ways to interact and engage our patrons and each other ... I love knowing that they totally get it ... I love seeing that passion and I love that I’m a part of that excitement. It's really more like thanksgetting ...

So, anyway ... that’s what I’m thankful for ...

Write On!

2005-11-13T16:51:00.000-05:00

Write On!

Here’s a random thought ... I was thinking earlier about writing in books ... I was in the airport about a week ago and overheard a mother chastising her child for writing in a library book ... the kid was probably ten years old (in his mother’s eyes, old enough to know better).

It made me remember a meeting of our staff a few years ago ... staff were complaining about a specific patron who consistently wrote in books ... nothing obscene or damaging ... he simply kept notes about what he was reading and what it meant to him. His comments were always in the margin and never impeded the reader’s view of the original text. I remember thinking ... “Surely we have something more important to talk about than a guy writing in books!”

These days, I’m a few years older and (I’d like to think) a shade more enlightened ... and what I recognize is that there is not much that’s more important than the idea of a guy writing in library books ...

We’re in the age of collaborative and compound content ... not just the original work but interactivity between the original content and the derivative stuff too ... writing in books is exactly what we want ... we want kids (and adults too) to not only read for enlightenment, we want them to understand the deeper meanings and be able to apply it to their own circumstances.

How cool would it be to have access to a book with dog-eared pages and the scribbles of 10, 50, or 100 years of readers/thinkers in the margins ... ideas that move beyond those of Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species and adding to them the opinions, questions, and feelings of a 17-year old high school senior, a single mother of three who’s going back to school, or a 72-year old Jesuit priest ... you ... me ...

Now, I’m a rabble rouser, I understand that ... I want us to actively invite our patrons to comment and question everything local (including their library service, which they too often accept passively as “good”) ... I want libraries to be the publishers and archivists and commentarians of content for, about, and by local folks ... I want not just to read the books, but all of the ideas that my community-mates have left within the margins ...

I don’t know what that kid in the airport wrote ... maybe it was nothing ... maybe it was spectacular ... I’m pretty much an optimist, so I’m banking that it if the kid wrote it, it was worth writing ... I don’t often say “I wish I would have ...” but this time, I wish I would have said to his mom, “Let him write ... it’s important to his development and to the well-being of our society ... Right on kid ... write on!

What's next? ... Getting to Engagement

2005-11-12T22:51:00.000-05:00

Library administrators and board members love visioning ... but there has to be some sense that in pretty short order the vision will become reality. So, it won’t be a big surprise to anyone when I tell you that one of the first questions I received after the talk about the future of public libraries was “So how do you make this whole engagement thing happen?”

Hmmm ... GREAT QUESTION! I wanted to say ... “We just have to buckle down and do it!” ... but that sounded lame, even to me.

In reality, it’s really more of a strategic planning or organizational/culture change question, but that doesn’t scare me. So, here are my thoughts in no particular order ...

1. You have to get the right people and get them involved ... where that means hiring them or getting them as volunteers or whatever, you can’t do it without the right people. The hard part here is that often times the folks that have served you well in their traditional library roles will have a hard time buying in, let alone performing. We shouldn’t be afraid to get people from outside the profession to help us.

2. Tell stories that lend passion and emotion to your vision ... once you have the right people you need to get them on board. While some vision statements can do that, stories give a vision bounce and breath ... they add humanity to organizations, and we can’t get enough of that!

3. Accentuate the positive ... every library and every community has specific strengths. Start with those areas first and build off of them. It’ll be better than building from scratch.

4. Create experience opportunities for patrons ... give them an environment where they can experience new ideas, old ones, interactions with people like or different from themselves. Changing the world doesn’t happen when people all agree on something ... it happens when people who share some aspect of thought and emotion get together to put that thought and emotion into motion.

5. Out of control is good ... remember that interaction and engagement must be organic to work and to be sustainable. If you try to control every aspect of the experience (as we in education, government, and the library worlds too often try to do), you will drive the life from it and lose any hope of people wanting to try it.

6. Partner to deliver what we can’t ... forming close ties with organizations, businesses, and agencies that can do things better than we can is good for our patrons, our communities, and of course us. Let’s face it, we just don’t have some skills we will need, but we can’t ignore them ... find who has them, match up your values and stories, and get them on board!

7. Be nimble ... this gets to the heart of a metaphor war I’ve been fighting in my mind ... in strategic planning we talk about the plan being the road map to success for the organization. Well, I’m a sailor ... we use charts. While road maps are good at showing you how to get from here to there when there is a fairly solid and stable highway to take you, a chart gives you an understanding of what was there last time anyone (namely the guy who drew the chart) checked. People who use charts recognize that sometimes stuff just moves, shifts, and often disappears. Nimbleness requires an understanding that as we sail toward the future, we need to be chart-minded and not road map-minded ... because things in life move, shift, and often disappear.

8. Put your money where your vision is ... it doesn’t matter how pretty the vision, the plan, or the outcomes are if you don’t put the resources of the organization into the activities that will turn your stories into realities.

As I've written this, I’ve been thinking about something I said above ... the line about just buckling down and doing it ... lame or not, it’s true. Let’s face it, you get a top-notch staff capable of providing experience, interaction, and engagement, you focus on the stories/vision of the organization, you let everyone play and live in the organic, uncontrolled anarchy that is human life and is the only thing that can truly deliver what they need, and you put the resources in the right spots so that the stories come to life as passionately interwoven harmonic voices from across the community ... I mean, what’s left but to just do it?!

The Future of Public Libraries

2005-11-12T02:07:00.000-05:00

This is a long post ... it's been building ...

I was asked to deliver a talk on the future of libraries recently. Some of you know that a lot of my job is in the administration of technology ... Web development, Internet access, technology training, ... you know the list. So when asked to talk about the future, I think my audience expected me to talk about how technology would impact libraries ... instead, I told a story ...

Joanna was in the doctor’s office with her husband Dan. They sat there is sort of stunned silence. After 35 years, they’d been through a few scrapes here and there, but this was the first time they’d faced anything like this ... The doctor had just told them that Dan was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Joanna spoke first, asking the doctor if he had any information they could take home to help them understand a bit more about the disease. He handed her a few pamphlets, then told them that their local public library might be the best place to get some more info, as much of it is aimed at consumers, not medical practitioners.

The next day, Joanna visited the library. While she often borrowed books and CDs, she was outside her element when it came to locating medical information. So, she found a librarian at the service desk and asked where she might find something about Alzheimer’s disease. The librarian steered her toward some books, articles, and videos available in the collection, and left her to consider her choices.

When she got home, she shared her findings with her husband. It seemed to cheer him up a bit. While it couldn’t change the diagnosis, it helped him better understand what was and would be happening to him. But it didn’t help Joanna ... she needed something more ... something different ...

After a few days, she went back to the library. She found the librarian again, and this time told her that she needed some information about how to care for someone with Alzheimer’s. The librarian asked her if the woman was comfortable with Web resources. When she indicated that she’d try anything, the librarian steered Joanna to MyHealth, a site the library built in partnership with the public health department, several local hospitals, the National Library of Medicine, and a local pharmaceutical company. Included among the resources in MyHealth was additional locally relevant information for her husband, but it also had some of the things she needed ... how to deal with your loved one’s emotions, ways to care for him, where to get local assistance, how to get financial help, and how she might find help and support for herself.

The librarian stayed with her until she had guided the woman through the avenues of the site. Among the items that interested her most were the listings of area support groups and an online bulletin board. The librarian told her she could post questions, concerns, greetings, ... anything to the bulletin board, and it could be completely anonymous.

An hour later, when she had reviewed some of the postings, she entered her own message ...

“Hi, I’m new to this ... I don’t know too much about this bulletin board, or about Alzheimer’s. My husband’s been diagnosed ... and I’m hoping someone might be able to help us ... help me ... Thanks in advance.”

When Joanna returned the library a few days later to attend a support group meeting, she arrived a little early. She decided to check the bulleting board to see if anyone had read her message. When she logged in, she saw that 23 people had left her messages. Messages like “Welcome to the group,” “Glad you stopped by,” and “I hope we can help ... we’ve all been there, and we’re here for you.” As she stepped into the support group meeting, she felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her. She felt like there were people out there – not too far away -- who would help her and Dan get through what faced them both.

So this is the future ... the future of libraries ...

It’s about four things ... answering questions ... inspiring new questions to be asked ... interacting to build understanding ... and engaging to change peoples’ lives and their communities.

The first two, we’ve been doing pretty regularly for years – answering reference and readers’ advisory questions like “Where can I find information on Alzheimer’s?” and “I’d like to read a book sort of like The Moviegoer by Walker Percy ... do you have anything?” We put on programs for kids and adults that gave them new concepts and ideas and spurred them to seek additional information that wouldn’t even have appeared on their radar screen before the program. Pretty standard library stuff ...

But the new meat ... the stuff we need to prepare for as part of the not-so-far-off future is in the last two pieces ... interaction and engagement. Interaction to build understanding is really all about linking up people to information and to other people who can provide them with ideas and experiences that broaden their views of the world. It’s done through book clubs and study cells and support groups and online chat and bulleting boards. We’re using new technology and good ole fashion face-to-face communication to extend the reach of the traditional library. It’s not just about hooking folks up with the printed page anymore ... there is too much value out there in experiences and emotions and conversations that just can’t be transmitted through the old paradigm of library work. Interaction creates the connection that will drive the next generations, and libraries need to be a part of that.

The last chunk ... engagement that changes lives and builds community ... to me, this is the holy grail. It’s the stuff that allows us to move past learning, past understanding and into real action. On this plane, the library takes a central role a facilitator for community change and public good. It will occur on a personal level as well as across neighborhoods, cities, and counties. The library will not simply be the building, the collection, the technology, and the staff working to achieve something good and valuable for the community ... Instead, it will be all of those things plus community volunteers, civic leaders, educators, healthcare providers, business leaders, and of course library patrons. It will be all of these folks together working through the one perfect partner for community well-being, the public library.

A year after Dan’s diagnosis, Joanna was preparing to go to her support group meeting. She logged into the bulleting board and saw an entry from a new name. It was a man whose wife had just found out she had Alzheimer’s. She smiled knowingly as she read, “Hi ... I’m new to this and don’t know what to ask or say. I just wanted to say hello, and ask if there was anyone out there who could help me get acclimated to all of the fears we’re probably going to be going through. Thanks in advance.”

As Joanna began typing off a quick response, she thought of how far she had come ... A year before she had struggled to find out where to go for help, and now she actually ran her own support group and was chairing a citizen committee that lobbied for low-cost care for Alzheimer’s patients. She changed her life and increased the possibility of a better life for her husband, She touched tens, hundreds, possibly even thousands of lives across the community. Through questions and answers, inspiration of new questions, interaction with others, and engagement, Joanna used the library to change the community for good. This is the future of libraries. This is what I see.

Commitment, Realizing Potential, and Service

2005-09-23T21:39:00.000-04:00

Just read my buddy Whitney's blog (:30 Librarian) ... she said:

What makes MCMLA a special event is not
the location and not the speakers, but the participants themselves. This group
includes major academic medical library directors, hospital librarians in
blazers and sensible shoes, movin' and shakin' outreach librarians, library
science students, and every other stripe and type of librarian you might hope to
find.

The tie that binds them together is a commitment to library services and a
forward-facing optimism that medical librarians are and will continue to be
important as long as we work hard and stay relevant. I'm often a hard, hard
cynic, and it is refreshing to drink of this optimism for a few days.

This reminded me of something I read from Max Dupree ... he was talking about how we should strive to make our organization places of virtual, philosophical, and face-to-face realized potential. His quote:

The driving force in our organizations, both for-profit and not-for-profit,
ought not to be goal achievement or asset management or quantifiable growth,
important as these are. Rather, our society badly needs organizations and people
that move relentlessly toward realizing their potential.

That is what we do ... good librarians (public, medical, academic, school, special, etc.) don't seek to control information, but to help our patrons realize their entire potential through access to and use of the stuff we collect, create, and sponsor. Makes me happy!

2005-07-31T13:16:00.000-04:00

Quick post before I go scrub the tub (no, not a euphemism ... just a household chore) ...

The Community Engine Blog has an interesting post talking about distributed blogging and how to adequately capture the zeitgeist of a community. He mentions that while some commercial aggregators are out there, they can't really do what's necessary to keep the community alive and kicking ...

His thought is that :

"... zeitgeist as captured by near real-time blog aggregation is insufficient to sustain decentralized communities for the long term. For that, these communities need archives.

Archives crystallize what such communities found important over time and ultimately define the community."

So, as I read this, I thought archives ... hmmmm ... a of of people (except archivists and librarians) confuse or combine the two ... Bud's a smart guy, so he's probably not confusing them, but when you look at the role of the library in an organization (or community) it is to provide for the information needs of users ... we commonly collect and aggregate stuff ...

So we should be the entities that perform the crystallization (or at least one of the partners) ... librarians should absolutely collect, aggregate, encourage, and in other ways enable the creation of community blogs ... and they should also contribute too -- that's the part we too often forget!

Of course, the next piece after all of the aggreagtion and crystallization is to turn it into real action ... real good for real people ...

Thanks Bud!

Off to the bathroom!

Measurement, engagement, and libraries

2005-07-30T23:37:00.000-04:00

Just read a post by Andy Lark at BrandShift ... he mentioned that the advertising industry is in the process of reimagining (apologies to Tom Peters) the way they will measure (and eventually charge for their work ... this new measurement is engagement ... Mr. Lark says:

"This will only become more important as communicators discover the need to measure the degree to which customers are participating in their communities and brands. The best campiagns will measure what changed: did we move markets, change minds and increase sales? This isn't just about driving communications accountability, its also about driving marketing accountability."

So my question is ... how do we measure our ability to produce real change for real people? How will we measure how we helped change minds and improved our communities? The answers will define our legacies ... and it will drive library accountability and be the next step to governmental accountability.

Definition of Community

2005-03-22T00:27:00.000-05:00

Looking for a straight-forward definition of "community" ... then try someplace else, but if you want to read in interesting conversation about what community is, was, and will be, check out this conversation from CORANTE (via Nancy White at Full Circle). It's long, but full of precious bits and pieces and some damn good chunks!

I've been struggling with this issue of community of late, as I've been trying to figure out how to "build" it ... Our strategic plan calls for building community ... I guess I see it as an organic thing ... it grows ... it can be helped along ... watered, kept warm, and nourished by the light ... but built? ... hmmmm ...

I was reading Richard Florida's Cities and the Creative Class, and he talked about quality growth (which may be a way of describing economic community building) being determined by a community's approach to the 3Ts -- Technology, Talent, and Tolerance ... if you've got 'em, you build community ... if not ... well, you're just biding time until you go the way of the dinosaurs ...

Designing for Civil Society - Models

2005-03-08T17:15:00.000-05:00

I just found David Wilcox's blog from the UK (that United kingdom to those of you who are die-hard Kentucky fans) today ... looks like he's moving, but I thought the site was great ... I dug down a bit and found a piece from December 1, 2004, entitled Models for a Civic Commons. He listed a couple of interesting sites ...

I didn't spend a ton of time, but on first blush, iCAN! (from the BBC) is the most interesting to me. It looks like there are two components -- the BBC provided content, and the 'You" provided content which could "

Bring issues you care about
Publish advice and tips
Work with others to create your own campaign

Pretty cool stuff ...

Blogging as PR for libraries

2005-03-06T18:10:00.000-05:00

B.L. Ochman from Bacon's has put together a PR-savvy blog -- How To Write Killer Blog Posts And More Compelling Comments that, well ... doesn't suck! If your library (or other org) has a PR person or department, this would be a nice thing to run by 'em. Since most of the librarians I know are still unfamiliar/uncomfortable with the idea of blogs, it might be good to have the PR types pushing the idea ...

Painting the invisible

2005-03-05T00:37:00.000-05:00

Nancy White posted a piece on/by the artist Dawn Meson today ... gave me chills ...

"My work is an attempt to paint the invisible ... Using color,
translucency, textures and shape as symbols, I hint at the rich complexity and
mystery in the subatomic realm."

There is something beautiful about merging art and science ... math and music ... it's like Hesse's The Glass Bead Game ... Of course, Hesse wrote really long books, so you can find a beautifully written analysis in the introduction of D.D. Nolte's Mind at Light Speed (ISBN:0743205014) ... like I said ... chills!

Four pieces of the web pie ...

2005-03-03T23:01:00.000-05:00

I was talking with our Web Content Team a couple of days ago. I was trying to convey my philosophy for what our web services should look like ... here's a slightly less extemporanious version ...

I see four components of the library's web approach ... 1) questions; 2) inspirations; 3) interactions; and 4) enagagements. Each builds on the previous component, and moves us from simply providing a way to answer our customers' generic questions to inspiring deeper ones, and from deep questioning to linking them with others who share (or disagree with) their concerns, and from there to providing means and methods for turning ideas and conversations into real action.

I think we do the question thing pretty well ... we're able to put together content and tools that enable our patrons to ask us or search it out themselves. Currently, they're somewhat limited on what answers they can get, but it's getting better ... it's getting deeper and broader.

We're only just now beginning to venture into the inspiration of ideas ... for example, we've something called Project Insect starting soon ... an "artist in residence" will be painting a large oil on canvas of an insect ... she will be using the web to display her work, techniques, information about the insect she’s painting, etc. As they watch her, as they read about how she does what she does, they will be inspired.

Interaction with the artist is the easy part ... we can stream her, set up a blog and message boards, and use IM to get people involved. Ideally, interaction with the artist will lead to interaction with other viewers, readers, and bloggers.

The engagement thing ... to me, this is the really cool piece of the pie ... wouldn’t it be awesome if we could sponsor an online collaborative work of art created by our patrons with the artist in residence! And the funny thing is, it’s actually pretty easy ...

Web Content Manager position

2004-12-04T00:29:00.000-05:00

Here's some more info from the DCIC mentioned in yesterday's post ... this section talks about the Web Content Manager position .... it's a little dry, but it was one of the best things we've done, and yet not with a cost ... due to the way our County makes it nearly impossible to get additional positions added to the staff roster, we gave up our Network Admin position to create the WCM ... It's made life more complicated for some folks in our IT department, but we were able to work with the County's IT group to ensure adequate coverage and oversight.

Section 5.3.1.1 (p28)

"A new position, the Web Content Manager, will be added to ensure that the library’s Web sites (including its partnership Web entities and the intranet) will be adequately managed. The WCM will work with the Web Services Coordinator to plan, create, and sustain each Web initiative, will supervise those who perform the library’s content creation, management, and publication, and will act as the library’s “editor-in-chief” for all Web publishing. Content management standards and styles will be adopted and codified by the WCM and will become a part of the formalized content management system. This position will work with library staff and partners to create new methods and digital delivery vehicles for carrying out service missions and goals. Close and frequent interaction with county and library staff will result in annual and long range plans which will follow existing monitoring and reporting procedures. The Web Content Manager will collaborate with Community Relations staff to develop marketing plans to build community awareness of each Web entity. External funding opportunities will be identified and sought to ensure that necessary resources will be available as planned. In addition, the WCM will assist the library’s Training Department in delivering online tutorials and classroom training which will allow staff and patrons to make the best use of the web-based content.

"By assigning these duties to one individual whose entire job will be focused on the development and delivery of web-based products and services, the library sites will show greater consistency, a higher level of functionality, and will run more efficiently and effectively. An additional advantage to the library will be that the current content supervisors will be relieved of their content responsibilities, and will be able to focus more time and effort to providing direct patron services.

"As identified in Bob Boiko’s Content Management Bible (2002), the Web Content Manager will need to have a full understanding of the discipline of content management, specifically, the appropriate processes, technologies, and standards associated with collecting, managing, and publishing content-rich sites. Along with the obvious content management knowledge, the WCM will also need to be conversant in Web delivery technologies (including hardware and software, networking issues, and database structures), editorial processes, cataloging and informational organization, and abstract information analysis."

Erica Reynolds was hired as Johnson County Library's Web Content Manager about a year ago and has done a great job ... it helps that she agrees with me (at least publicly) on most things content-related. She can be read at QueequegLib, though she told me she might change the name soon ... I'll repost when she does.

Web Content Team

2004-12-03T02:12:00.000-05:00

Dave King from Dave's Blog wrote me today and asked for some info on Johnson County Library's Web Content Team. What follows is right from the 2002 Creating Johnson County Library's Digital Community Information Clearinghouse: a Strategic Plan (you'll be happy to know that upon hiring Erica Reynolds, we changed the name to JoCoConnect). I'll post a link later that will take you to the full document, should anyone want it ...

Section 5.3.1 (p27)

"The library will centralize content creation and Web entity development into a single focused work team. The library has attempted to answer its Web development and maintenance needs using several different methods. From outsourcing the entire site to a vendor, to involving as many as 30 people across six departments, the library continues to seek a model which is responsive and sustainable. Outsourcing left the library unable to quickly respond to information need changes, while the inclusive approach involving nearly 10% of the library’s entire staff led to bureaucracy, inconsistency, mediocrity, and lack of proper content management or control. A team of five Web Content Developers supervised by a Web Content Manager will be utilized to provide adequate planning, scheduling, publishing, and regular content changes and maintenance for all library pages. With administrative oversight and assistance for the Web Content Manager, the Web Content Developers will also be responsible for creating and developing content partnerships (page and content development for one or two Web entities. Two database entry clerks will be used to support the developers by performing database entry and content layouts. The Web development team will report to the LIT department, and will be required to participate and successfully complete an intensive orientation program to teach them about the library in general, and specifically about the subject areas in which they will be developing content ..."

" ... The shift to content-rich Web entities will require some staffing changes from traditional library work to project management and facilitation, with an emphasis on Web page content development and design. In addition to those mentioned above, existing staff will be needed to provide clerical, technical, indexing or cataloging support, training, and marketing."

I've gotta run, but will add more tomorrow ... thanks for the interest!

Frustrated

2004-11-30T02:22:00.001-05:00

I gotta say ... I've been working on an article for Library Journal's netConnect issue on Community information and it's getting to me. Don't get me wrong, I've seen a lot and I've learned a lot, and basically I'm glad I'm writing it, but it just gets me that we're not where I'd like us (www.jocolibrary.org) to be.

Don't know if you've seen Kansas City Public Library's page (www.kclibrary.org), but they do some cool things ... things we've talked about, but haven't pulled off yet. I know (vaguely) the guy over at kclibrary, and I guess at Internet Librarian (in Monterey) he talked about what I've been saying (though mostly to myself) for the past few years -- that we gotta stay away from trying to describe the Internet, and should focus on creating, managing and delivering high quality content that is locally relevant. That's going to be the bread and butter of the future. I don't mean that we won't be doing the book/AV thing, or even that we won't be providing leased digital content ... but I think that local content is our niche, and if we don't find it, we'll be SOL, because someone else will do it and libraries will be standing there saying ... "hmmmm ... you know, we could have done that."

Of course, we've done some good local content. I was just re-examining our JoCoFamily (www.jocofamily.net) page tonight. It was developed to help youth-at-risk, their folks, and their service providers with information about the Johnson County juvenile justice system -- basically it was supposed to be a tool to help them stay out of the legal system or to get through easily and quickly. It has some good stuff there, but it's on a system we can't easily manage, so it'll need to be forklifted ... it just seems to take so long to get stuff done.

Would love to hear what some of the rest of libraries are doing ... guess I need to take this blog more public.

Community Info and the Digital Nation

2004-11-25T17:03:00.000-05:00

I recently finished Anthony Wilhelm's Digital Nation ... the basic premise is that as we move to a more digitally connected society, we need to remember that many folks are without the skills for and/or access to technology necessary for participation. Dr. Wilhelm mentioned more than once that by pushing more services online we -- as governments, libraries and schools -- are creating an environment of depreciative value to those individuals who can get the services nowhere else.

Obviously, libraries -- specifically public libraries -- have the ability to help deal with both of these issues. At Johnson County Library (JCL), we have 350+ publicly accessible PCs for patron use. In addition, we offer training on basic PC and Internet use. One of the things that we've talked about and planned for (but not actually implemented) is providing more focused training at the library for county, state, and even federal services that can only been be accessed online.

Unfortunately, JCL is no different than many organizations -- we simply are not aligned or prepared to deliver training or other related content like this. Wilhelm comments: "Parachuting information and communications technologies into these environments without addressing underlying issues of organizational readiness, continuous professional development, and infrastructure would be precipitous." (Digital Nation, p.97).

The challenge will be to assess the real needs of the community and apply what we learn so that the realignment can happen. It'll be difficult, because the folks that we have who provide more traditional library services do not have the talents, experiences, or interests to be able to deliver the new services. But it won't be impossible ...

Our first step has been to create a Web Content Team. Their job is to assess, plan for, and develop content for the library's sites. When I say "develop," I mean create, write, and negotiate for content that people want access to. The specific focus of all of our content is localness, so the latter statement (negotiate for content) comes down to working with local agencies and organizations to get access to their stuff so that we can make it available.

The Content Team's focus matches up well with the whole training concern. If we want people to use the content, we should market it and train people how to use it via our sites. But, realignment of resources is what will make it possible.

Community Information and Libraries

2004-11-23T23:53:00.000-05:00

I think that libraries do a pretty poor job of creating, collecting, presenting, and delivering the information about their communities. It's not that we don't have the resources available to do a good job ... I think it's that we just don't value the information enough. Which is absurb, since it is the one chunk of content that we actually have the ability to grow.

I'm talking about more than just big directories of public services, not-for-profits, and local businesses ... I'd like to see us do more to provide the answers and not just links to where the answers are. If I'm a single mother of three looking for information about afterschool daycare within a 30-minute drive (my break from work) of my kids' school and my work, I don't just want a list of daycare 17 providers that I then have to call and query ... instead, I'd like there to be a db-driven survey type tool which poses a few questions and yields a real result list tht meeting my criteria.

Of course my library -- the Johnson County Library, in suburban Kansas City -- doesn't do it either. All that will change soon ... we need to reposition staff to put the resources in the right place. Haven't figure out how to do that yet, but at least I realize where the bottleneck is.