PVLD Director's Blog

Boomer Volunteers

A few days ago I came across this post on How To Treat Boomer Volunteers on Donor Power ( a great blog about fundraising). It makes the point that

... baby boomers boast a large number of well-educated, highly skilled executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders, many of whom will feel that their talents are not being put to use in low-level volunteer positions. Research indicates that these boomers should be placed at programming levels to utilize their abilities fully and to keep them engaged.

That got me thinking about our volunteer positions and whether they are going to satisfy the soon-to-be retired wave of baby boomers. While we certainly have some "programming level" volunteer positions such as the Friends of the Library Board, management of the Library Shop, or oversight of the book sales, many of our volunteer positions are important to the smooth operation of the library, but fairly low level. Things like tidying the library, sorting books, and putting out the new periodicals.

Tonight Branch Operations Manager Jennifer Addington and I were at a community event and met a very nice couple who are both soon to retire from executive positions at a very large aerospace corporation. They are looking for volunteer opportunities, and would love to get involved with the library. The more I talked to them about their talents and interests the more it became obvious that:

1. They are way over-qualified for, and not really interested in, many of the kinds of volunteer positions we have.
2. They would be able to contribute a great deal to the library district – but in areas that are currently viewed by staff as "their" domain. For example, the wife is responsible for the corporation's information systems and has successfully managed very large scale and complex software projects. She could be a real asset in our current efforts to replace our systems if we could find a way to make use of those talents in conjunction with those of our staff.
3. Our volunteer program, and to a large extent our culture, is not ready to provide the kinds of opportunities that these highly qualified volunteers are seeking.

I see this a big challenge and a big opportunity for us. The challenge is to develop volunteer programs in which volunteer talents are fully utilized, including using them in areas that currently are the exclusive domain of staff. This doesn't mean replacing staff with volunteers, but it does mean working with staff to integrate volunteers into their work as equals (or maybe even as mentors or coaches where the volunteers are more knowledgeable and experienced than staff) and continuing to change the culture from one in which volunteers are seen as a bit of a hassle to one that values them as a means of really stretching our capabilities.

The opportunity is that I don't think many other organizations have gotten it right yet either…so if we can change quickly enough we will have our pick of the talented people who will soon be available.

Risk

The subject of risk has been on my mind lately. I'm not sure why - maybe because I have been reflecting on some of the risks I have taken in my life (see my Thanksgiving post), or maybe because I have seen the culture here at PVLD evolve into an increasingly experimental one where people are free to take calculated risks in the sense that we are trying something and for which we don't have all of the answers (e.g. the Annex, the new Meebo-based IM service, our pending website redesign….).

Today I was going through my running "blog ideas" list, and came across a couple of links to posts on other blogs about risk that I had found thought-provoking enough to keep for future reference.

Sometimes You Have to Wing It on Slow Leadership (one of my favorite blogs!) makes the point that:

"Knowledge is the only answer to risk. That's why learning is so precious: it takes away a great deal of the risk we would all face otherwise. The greatest benefit of modern science is neither medical advances nor soaring productivity: it's the ability it gives us to live in a world that no longer contains a massive proportion of the daily risks confronted even by our recent ancestors.

Of course, sometimes no knowledge is available and you have to wing it. Or your knowledge stops at a critical point. But, even then, knowledge in principle—conceptual knowledge—can help you to make educated guesses."

I think one of the reasons we have been able to experiment as much as we have here at PVLD is that through lots of conversation we have begun to build a shared set of conceptual knowledge – about what kind of organization we want the Library District to be, the service models we believe our community will value, the trends and technologies that will affect our services, etc. – so ideas can be fairly quickly vetted in terms of whether they make sense for us and then implemented if they do….in essence, they become educated guesses.

I also came across this Labor Day post from the always thought-provoking Seth Godin's Blog . I loved his insight that in today's world working hard does not mean working more:

"Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo….Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you've done that, to do it again the next day.

The big insight: The riskier your (smart) coworker's hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It's the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and, perhaps, still going home at 5 PM) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves."

That's the hard work the staff here at PVLD are doing, and it shows!

Work/Life Balance and Choices

Last weekend we had a visit from friends who we only get to see a few times a year. Steve retired (very) early from his career with the LA Department of Water and Power and Lynn now works from home, so their lifestyle is quite different from ours! After hearing about our schedules and the various community and library activities coming up during the holiday season, Lynn said to me "I thought you moved to California to get a better work/life balance but you seem to be working harder and longer than ever!"

On the face of it she is right, but somehow it doesn't feel that way. I think that's because I really love what I am doing now. I love being able to really influence the direction of PVLD in a way I could not when I was just one of a team of executives, I'm involved in both my professional community and the local community in a way that I was not before, I get to work with a really wonderful group of people (staff, volunteers, and community members), and I can see how what we do is directly improving the quality of life for people in this community. Sure, the hours are long…but that is mostly by my choice. There are stresses…but again they are usually of my own making when I say "yes" to too many commitments.

The bottom line is that I chose this job and this life. Any stresses are (at least mostly!) offset by the benefits of doing work that I love with people that I like and respect, and being able to enjoy all the benefits of living where I do (walks by the beach each morning, hikes on the Peninsula, a great neighborhood….).Is the proportion of "work" to "life" perfect?  Not always...but most of the time it doesn't even feel as if there is a tension between those two dimensions.        

I think that's why the "Don't fall for the wrong ideas about work/life balance" from the Slow Leadership blog really struck a chord. To quote the post, many times the elusive work/life balance really is about "choices and consequences". Finding that balance is not the responsibility of my employer, my spouse, or my family – it's mine!

Staying in Touch Web 2.0 style

Last night I was pleasantly surprised to get an email via Linked In (a professional networking site) from a guy I had worked with in Australia back in the early 90s. Michael and his now-wife Sara were both part of a project team I was on, they are now living in San Francisco, and Michael found me via Linked In and decided to get in touch.

This got me thinking again (or maybe that's still!) about how technology can enhance connections between people. When we first moved to Australia back in 1989 we were amazed to learn of a concept called "long service leave". Essentially after 15 years of employment with a company, or in some cases an industry, you get a 13 week paid leave of absence. Then someone explained the roots of the practice. Back in the days when the only way to get to Australia was by ship it took 6 weeks to sail from Australia to England. Long-service leave was designed to provide people with an opportunity to make a once in a lifetime trip home to see family – six weeks to sail to England, a week to visit, and then 6 weeks to travel home. In between people relied on letters – which if they were sent to the "old country" also took six or more weeks to reach their destination. Writing a letter took effort, so you probably only maintained contact with a few people other than those who lived in close proximity. You might not learn of important events in the lives of loved ones – births, marriages, deaths – until months after they took place.

Contrast that with today's world where a former colleague can find you via LinkedIn; you can keep up with what is happening in the lives of family and friends via personal blogs, Facebook, or Flickr photostreams; email and instant messaging allow communication whenever you want; and an international phone call using an Internet service like Skype costs nothing and might even include the ability to see the person you are talking to on video.

To those who bemoan the onslaught of technology I say this - which world would you rather live in? For all the risks of online predators and information overload I'll take today's technology thank you very much….although if you want to give me long service leave as well that would be just fine J

Meebo Us!

Got a question for PVLD?  Want to chat with a librarian?  Now you can contact us via Instant Messaging directly from our home page at www.pvld.org

The story of how this came about is a testament to both Web 2.0 techologies and to the "can do" attitude of the PVLD staff.

Some of us at PVLD have been playing around with IM for a while trying to figure out whether/how to take advantage of it for internal communication between staff members as well as for the public.  We discovered Meebo ( http://wwwm.meebo.com/ ) - a neat tool that lets people IM whatever system they are currently using (gmail, Yahoo, etc.) or by setting up a Meebo account you can IM someone on any other system from the Meebo website.

A couple of weeks ago I figured out how to put a Meebo "widget" on my blog which allows anyone to chat with me via IM from my blog as long as I am logged into Meebo.  The other person doesn't even need a Meebo or any other IM account.

Earlier this week I was showing this to Debra Petersen, Assistant Manager - Adult Services and as we played around with Meebo we realized that it could provide a quick and easy way to test out whether people would use IM to communicate with us.  So on Wednesday afternoon we decided to just do it!

By 1PM David Campbell, our Manager of Digital Library Services, had the Meebo widget up on our website.  The first question came in about a minute later.  Over the course of the afternoon Debra fielded a number of questions.  Many were about things like the library's hours over the Thanksgiving weekend, or how to get a library card online, and there were also seven "real" reference questions. 

If that trend keeps up our little spur of the moment pilot will be a real success.

This got me thinking about why it was so popular so fast when our other "online reference" tools like "Email a Librarian" or the Asknow Virtual Reference Service which uses also uses IM technology are hardly used at all (on average less than 10 questions a month combined).  Of course I don't really know, but my guess is that the Meebo widget has several things going for it:

1.  It's intuitive.  It doesn't even say that it is an IM system. All you see is a box that says "The PVLDLibrarian is online" and a prompt to "Type here and hit enter to send a private message".  Its as easy as that...no special training, user account, or other folderol required.

2.  It's right there on the home page.  You don't need to click down to get to it.

3. It's informal,personal, and local.  You're not interacting with some anonymous librarian somewhere in the country - you are chatting with the PVLDLibrarian from your local library.  It's not intimidating - you don't have to be asking a "reference" question.  If all you want to know is whether the library is open the Friday after Thanksgiving that's fine.  I think this probably makes it MORE useful to most visitors to our website than the AskNow type virtual reference service which implies you have some meaty question you want answered and is really not set up to deal with questions about local library services. 

4.  It encourages human interaction.  Even when using technology like a library website, people want to "talk" to another human being.

As I said, these are just my thoughts.  Whatever the reason, its been fun to see how people have responded.

Try it out!  Just remember that we are still experimenting and may not be online at all times. 

Why I’m Giving Thanks

A little over 4 years ago my husband Don and I moved back to California after nearly 15 years away. I had spent those years working in a variety of management and executive positions in the mining and manufacturing industries - nothing to do with libraries other than as a user and, for part of the time, the spouse of a librarian. By 2003 we were living in Louisville, Kentucky; I was finding life as a corporate executive increasingly unrewarding (or is that decreasingly rewarding?), Don and I had purchased my grandparent's home in Redondo Beach; and we were eager to get back to California. In August, 2003 we quit our jobs, packed our dogs into the car, and moved west. The original plan was to take six months off to work on remodeling the house and then start looking for work – Don as a librarian in some capacity and me in a non-profit or other position where I felt I was more directly able to make a positive difference in the community. Three weeks later I was surfing the Internet and came across a posting for the job of Director of the Palos Verdes Library District, and soon after that Don decided to apply for a job with the County of Los Angeles Public Library. By mid-January 2004 we were both working … just as well since I discovered that despite all of our saving and planning to be able to afford the 6 month sabbatical I really like having an income!

So what does that have to do with why I am thankful? Our move to California in many ways felt like leaping off a cliff. Don and I have done some pretty risky things in our lives – getting married despite a 20 year age difference, moving to Australia to take jobs in a field that was entirely new to us, diving with sharks, driving on the LA freeways….but nothing on quite the scale this move. And yet it has turned out much better than we could have hoped and given me so much to be thankful for:

• That I got this job in the first place. When I quit my job in Louisville I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would end up in what I think is the best job in the world. I love libraries but thought that with a 20 year-old MLS and only a couple of years of real library experience there was no possibility that I would be able to return to the public library world, and certainly not at anything above entry-level. This job builds on both my base knowledge of librarianship and my business experience….and also gives me the opportunity to learn something new every day and to see how what I do can make a real difference in the community.
• The amazing PVLD staff. I have never worked with a more creative, energetic and capable group. They are continually looking for new and better ways of doing things. Recently someone commented that with all of the things going on at the library staff heads must be spinning. My response was that the head that is spinning is mine…the staff are the ones coming up with most of the ideas!
• Our 220+ volunteers who give unstintingly of their time. There is no way PVLD could offer the services it does without their hard work and support.
• Our Board of Trustees both past and present. Each of the Trustees I have had the privilege of working for has been a person of integrity, committed to the long-term health and growth of PVLD. They have different backgrounds, personalities, and points of view but have found ways to resolve their differences constructively and respectfully. This makes my job so much easier!
• The support both the library and I have gotten from the Palos Verdes community. I have felt welcomed from the day I started work, and have made wonderful friends.
• The relative freedom that being an Independent Special District Library affords. If a staff member has a good idea, and it can be accomplished within the framework of our strategic plan and budget, we can pretty much "just do it". That makes it so much easier to build the kind of innovative and entrepreneurial culture we have here at PVLD.
• That both Don and I work less than 6 miles from our home. We both work long hours and have plenty of "after hours" events and activities, so we are grateful that we don't have to battle the freeways every day.
• That I work surrounded by books! I am a reader and I love that when I need a break I can just go up to the library and cruise the stacks.
• That we are able to live where we want to be. We have the best of both worlds – all of the amenities of a city combined with proximity to the beach (I am a water baby and love to swim in the ocean and body surf) and to all of the natural beauty of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
• A supportive husband who puts up with me when I get crabby and stressed out.

I could go on, but I won't! Suffice it to say that the past four years have proven that sometimes when you take a risk the rewards are beyond your wildest dreams.

The Social Catalog – What does it mean for librarians?

Last Friday I had to go to Sacramento for a meeting, and the time on the plane gave me a chance to continue my exploration of Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I seem to only find time to do this kind of reading on airplanes…uninterrupted blocks of time are pretty scarce! At least this time I was smart enough not to attempt to drink orange juice J. Sorting through the stacks on my desk today I came across the following quote that I jotted down on the plane:

"Reality is multifaceted. There are lots of ways to slice it. How we slice it up depends on why we're slicing it up."

A fundamental shortcoming of the library catalog is that it doesn't (and as currently designed can't) know the why for any given search. A search for the subject "breast cancer" in PVLD's catalog results in over 40 distinct subject headings listed in alphabetical order from the simple "Breast – Cancer" through "Breast – Cancer – Religious Life" to "Breast – Cancer – United States". The catalog doesn't know that one person is searching for books on this subject because she has to write a term paper, and another because his wife has just been diagnosed with the disease – and therefore it gives no clue as to which of these subject headings is most relevant to each person.

I was excited by my conversation with Beth Jefferson yesterday because the folks at Bibliocommons understand this dilemma and are finding real, practical ways to harness social networking concepts to transform the catalog into a place where people can slice the information based on their individual "whys" and then share that learning with others whose "whys" might be similar – the social catalog.

Beth and I talked a bit about what all of this means for librarians. After all, we have traditionally seen helping people find relevant information as one of our key roles.

The "reference interview" is really nothing more than a way for a librarian to understand both what information someone is seeking and why so they can help point them to the most relevant resources. This is seen as such a core professional skill that librarians get nervous when "non-professionals" start looking up books for customers because they fear that without the assistance of a librarian the customer may not be made aware of all of the relevant resources.

Similarly, the "pathfinders" and "webliographies" that librarians spend so much time developing and maintaining are attempts to slice up the libraries resources to answer a particular "why".

So what happens when this role of helping people find the information that meets their particular needs is transferred from the librarian to the user community at large? I certainly don't know for sure, but I think some of the areas we need to continue to explore are:

• Reinforcing the librarian's role in developing the systems that underpin the social catalog.
• Providing a human interface to the digital world for those who need or want it – either through traditional tools such as the reference interview (whether conducted in person or online) or by providing training, coaching, and advice.
• Being one of the voices in the social web – sharing our knowledge through the creation of reviews, commentary, lists, etc. We will be just some voices among many, but as Beth Jefferson pointed out to me yesterday librarians should become among the most trusted of sources.
• Creating the programs and services that enhance the library's role as a community hub. We should be the center of a rich network of physical and virtual connections within our communities, and the librarian can play a key role in building that network.

What I do know is that there are and will be many opportunities for us to play a meaningful role in this new digital age – as long as we are not afraid!

The Catalog - The Heart of the Library’s Online Social Network?

Readers of this blog know that I have lots of questions about our cataloging systems and whether they are relevant in the age of Web 2.0 and the social web. Earlier today I spent a very interesting hour on the phone with Beth Jefferson of Bibliocommons (www.bibliocommons.com ) talking about the whole idea of social knowledge and how it might apply to libraries. Bibliocommons is using the library catalog as the foundation for what Beth called an "architecture of participation" for people who may not yet be participants in the social web. And as Beth reminded me, this is still most people!

Beth pointed out that studies have shown that more than 90% of the traffic on library websites is directed to the online catalog which makes it a prime platform for social interaction. (Actually, at PVLD about 80% of our web traffic goes to the catalog…not sure what that says about us!) Bibliocommons is developing some interesting ways to leverage this platform to foster interaction and participation. One example is allowing people to select "trusted sources" from those who have provided user reviews and ratings. If there is a reviewer whose opinions a user finds particularly helpful or relevant they can select that person as a "trusted source". This will allow items recommended by that reviewer to be listed at the top of a relevancy ranked search result. Similarly, if there is a reviewer whose opinions a user does not value or trust, the user can elect not to see that person's reviews or have them influence the search results. In effect these tools allow users to select what voices they want to listen to and for what areas of interest. Users will also have the ability to contact the reviewer and comment on the review, thereby fostering dialogue and interaction.

Beth and I also talked about the inadequacies of the search tools available for our subscription online resources – inadequacies that tools like "federated search" (which allows multiple databases to be searched at one time) do not overcome, and in fact may exacerbate. One of the biggest problems is that as the databases get populated with more and more stuff, searches return an overwhelming number of results – many of which are not relevant. As Beth noted, a search for "brain injury" is as likely to pull up an advertisement for a ski helmet as an article on coping with the effects of brain injury in a loved one and which of these is relevant to the searcher is entirely dependent on that searcher's individual circumstances at that point in time. Bibliocommons is starting to experiment with solving this problem not by re-engineering the search process, but by allowing users to compile their own lists of the search results that are relevant to them and then share those lists via the online catalog. In this way, someone searching the catalog for "brain injury" would get not only the books that have brain injury or something like it as a subject heading or in the title, as well as any books that have been "tagged" with the words "brain injury" by users, they would also get any user-compiled lists on the topic – for example (to steal from Beth's presentation at CLA) a list of "articles that were useful to me when my husband had a brain injury". With tools like these the search results would be both richer and more relevant.

The whole conversation with Beth made me start to think about how the online library catalog, rather than becoming obsolete, might be developed as a gateway into the social creation and sharing of information. As Beth said the catalog could provide a "safer, smarter place for enabling people to engage in conversation around the library's core offerings." Just as these thoughts were tumbling around in the back of my mind, I had a visit from Audra Eagle, a library school student who is currently an intern at PVLD. Audra was telling me about the project she is working on to organize a collection of papers and other items (what we librarians call "ephemera") that was donated to PVLD. She is creating what she called a "resource map" that provides a window into the contents of this collection, and is working with our Technical Services Manager to have that resource mapped cataloged so that it can be found by someone searching the catalog. She has also developed a procedure so that our volunteers can create similar resource maps and have them added to the catalog, too. For example someone could create a map of the items we have related to the old "Marineland" park that used to be located on the Peninsula. Then, someone searching the catalog for Marineland would find not only books and traditional catalog items, but also the posters, postcards and other ephemera that otherwise would be hidden unless individually cataloged. This struck me as yet another way to enhance the concept of the catalog as gateway.

In "Everything is Miscellaneous" David Weinberger describes says the library catalog "enables us to navigate the library by giving us only a narrow slit to look through". I had been thinking that the natural consequence of this would be that the catalog would become increasingly irrelevant. Beth and Audra opening my eyes to the possibility of using social networking concepts to make the "narrow slit" of the catalog wider and at the same time more focused to the unique needs of an individual information seeker at any point in time…and at the same time to open up the world of social networks to library users (many of whom do not participate in the social web today)in an environment that is safe and familiar to them. Lots to think about – but really exciting!

Tough Times Ahead

I just got back from a meeting of the California Library Association Legislative Committee in Sacramento, and the news on the budget front is not good.  The State budget is facing a nearly $10 Billion shortfall, and department heads have been asked to develop plans to cut their budgets by 10% next year.

We've been making a real push to have funding for the Public Library Fund (which provides a small amount of per capital funding to every public library in the state) and Transaction-Based reimbursement (which partially reimburses libraries for the costs of serving non-residents) restored. Neither program has ever been fully funded, and in this years budget both were cut severely.

Our efforts have included trying to mobilize the library community, but the results have been disappointing.  Only a handful of people have taken the time to make phone calls or  write letters.

In the face of the huge budget deficit and with the challenge of getting people in the field engaged in the advocacy effort it is going to be a real struggle just to maintain this year's funding levels, and achieving a funding increase next year seems nearly impossible. 

A discouraging day, all told....

Readability

This tool for assessing the reading level of a blog has been floating around for a day or so, and I thought I'd check out my blog!  I was pretty pleased with this rating - to me it seems to indicate a writing style that's nott too complex, but not too simple either....