PVLD Director's Blog

From supply to demand - the role of libraries

On the plane coming up to Sacramento for the Library of California Board I was reading this month's issue of Wired Magazine. I bought it because I wanted to read Chris Anderson's much-blogged-about article on "Free". I'm partway through Free and I'm sure I'll have something to write about that later.

As I skimmed the magazine I came across a very interesting article about Netflix' contest offering a million dollar prize to anyone who can come up with a movie rating/recommendation algorithm that is 10 percent better than what Netflix currently uses.

The fact that Netflix launched the competition in October 2006, has some amazingly talented people participating including a team from AT nT, but no one has yet come up with an algorithm that is more than 8.57 per cent better than the current system makes clear how challenging it is to systematize making recommendations based on people's individual preferences.

Interestingly the contestant currently in second place is not a computer scientist but Graham Potter, a retired management consultant with an undergraduate degree in psychology and a Masters in operations research (and a high-school-aged daughter with a talent for math) who is using his understanding of psychology to focus the design of his algorithm. (For example by taking into consideration that people's perceptions and tastes evolve over time.)

I thought that the following quote from Mr. Potter was very pertinent -

"The 20th century was about sorting out supply...The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand."

The Wired article goes on to note that "The Internet makes everything available, but mere availability is meaningless if the products remain unknown to potential buyers."

The article gave me another opportunity to think about the challenge libraries face in connecting people with information (or reading material for that matter) that meets their individual needs at a particular point in time and in a particular context.

I think libraries have a bit of an advantage over other entities in this arena through the personal interactions and relationships we have with our library users and the credibility we have as a source of authoritative and unbiased information. I also think that the discussion that is underway and the work that is being done by Bibliocommons and others to use social networking tools and concepts to extendand leveragie libraries' reputation as a trusted source provides a path for libraries to play a key role in "managing demand".

Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore - RIP

Given my recent posts about libraries and bookstores it was a sadly uncanny coincidence to read yesterday's Los Angeles Times article about the demise of Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore.  After libraries, independent bookstores are at the top of my list of places to spend time and I have many fond memories of sitting by the fire browsing through the amazing collection at the long-gone Earthling Books in my hometown of Santa Barbara.

This recent post from the Santa Barbara Daily Sound blog fondly recalls Earthling as an exemplar of a "destination booksstore" -

"It wasn’t the inventory or selection; it was the place that made it special—and not just for book-lovers or avid readers. Maybe it was the warmth of the inviting fireplace, the joy of Saturday morning storytime for kids, the intellectual challenge of meeting notable authors on book tours—the best-selling and the obscure.  Or maybe it was the opera nights, the window dedicated to nonprofits or Barnaby Conrad’s amazing, 3-D mural depicting literary giants that filled one wall."

[As an aside  -if that description doesn't bring to mind similarities between bookstores and libraries I don't know what would!]

It's interesting that the LA Times article does not attribute the demise of the independent bookstore to a decline in reading but to the fact that books are now sold in a much wider array of venues, including but not limited to, online.  As Dutton's parter Ed Conklin says in the article,

"it was difficult to make a profit in an environment 'where even a lot of places that sell backpacks sell books." '

The article aslo points out that the challenges of ubiquitous bookselling notwithstanding, there a number of independent bookstores across the country that are thriving, citing Powell's in Portland (where I could happily spend an entire vacation without leaving the premises), and Vroman's in Pasadena which was the subject of a recent comment on this blog.  And in our own neighborhood we have Williams' Bookstore in San Pedro, which keeps  the area supplied with author talks, poetry readings, and works by local authors.

One thing many of these successful independents have in common?  They own their own buildings and have therefore been able to withstand the pressures of redevelopment that brought down Earthling, and now Dutton's.

At least losing our lease is one competitive pressure that most public libraries don't face!

Libraries and Reading

As I noted in yesterday's post, the topic of libraries and reading has been on my mind due in no small measure to the request I received from the Surfwriters (local writing group) to give them a talk on the topic of "Reading and Libraries in the 21st" century.  The text of that talk is contained here -

Download surfwriters.pdf

Readers of this blog know,a nd my talk to the Surfwriters reiterates, that I believe reading is at the core of the public library's mission, recent reports of its alleged demise notwithstanding.  It seems I am not alone in this belief...check out this New York Times Blog post from Timothy Egan, which I came across this weekend...unfortunately AFTER I had given my talk to the Surfwriters!

 

Powerpoint

This past Friday I was asked to speak to the "Surfwriters", a local writing group with a long and distinguished history of supporting the literary arts here in Palos Verdes.  I was asked to speak for 1/2 hour, without Powerpoint, about "Reading and Libraries in the 2st Century".  30 minutes?  Without Powerpoint?  Yikes!

I do a lot of public speaking, and a lot of community presentations, but when asked to speak for more than 5 minutes I almost always use Powerpoint.  After nearly 20 years in corporate management, several of them in Investor Relations, I find putting together a Powerpoint presentation the easiest way to organize and present information in public.

Preparing for the Surfwriters' talk I realized that easy is not always better!  The discipline of organizing my thoughts into a coherent whole when I didn't have the "crutch" of graphs, pictures, and dot points was much more challenging that I was expecting...but I think it also forced me to clarify my thinking in a way  that putting together a Powerpoint rarely does.

The result was a 14 page (double-spaced) essay on a topic that is important to me, as I think it is at the heart of the issue of the role libraries play.  It also is timely given recent studies on "reading in America", the debate about "libraries vs book stores", and the ways in which technology is changing the act of "reading".

I'll post my talk and more thoughts on these topics next week. since its a rainy Sunday morning, the library has sprung a leak, and  I need to get moving!

In the meantime, I always welcome YOUR thoughts and comments!

More on Libraries vs. Bookstores

After reading Tuesday's post, Sylvia Richardson, one of our PVLD Librarians, sent me the following email - 

Kathy, I have to say that this article expresses many things I see happening within libraries that undermine our

profession. The idea that we as librarians are qualified to be selectors or guides through the sea of information (& mis-information) is being forgotten or ignored, in part because our culture seems addicted to seeking increases in quantity, not quality---whether it is french fries, widgets, literature or information.  The idea that it is better to read 50 books, (or "items")--never mind that they are mediocre, formulaic repeats of what we read last year, rather than 25 titles that are more challenging, has become the new goal of many library systems.    Our profession used to be above the fray when it came to worrying about sales figures, which made us different, in a wonderful way, from the chain bookstore. If that "supermarket" model is becoming ours, it ought to worry anyone who cares about intellectual freedom and growth in our culture. Our job as librarians is to engage people in growth throughout their lives, before, during and after "school" days, to be a beacon of free thought unencumbered by sales figures, which more often indicates mass market thinking than new and daring concepts; the sales curve always follows some distance behind the new concepts humans create.  (Was Van Gogh a bestselling artist in his lifetime???)  It is our job, as I see it, to include in our collections "items" that may be less than mainstream, but more important precisely because they are out of the main stream; new directions, offshoots, upstarts, wellsprings off the beaten path.  One of my favorite quotations is from Kenneth Burke; "Art may be of value purely through preventing a society from becoming too assertively, too hopelessly, itself."  That reminded me, when I first saw it, of the quotation above Royce Hall at UCLA that I saw daily while i was in Library School there--"Where there is no vision, the people perish."

If we are not serving as navigational beacons by dint of our dedication to --do I dare use this word that has become a derogatory one--"intellectual" training as professionals, then we may as well just pile the mass market paperbacks up and let folks browse like so many ruminants on the chaff instead of separating it from the wheat, and let them wander through the internet haphazardly bumping into information of widely varying quality. .  I hope we as a profession continue to be visionaries, using the new technologies to further open windows to new visions without making the numbers game be our primary motivation.

Sorry I went on!! Got a little excited.  But this matters!

Sylvia raises some thought-provoking points....and I want to think about what she says before I respond.  In the meantime I thought her comments were worth sharing.  What do you think?

Bookstores as For-Profit Libraries?

Last week George Needham of OCLC wrote a post titled "Is Borders Becoming a For Profit Library" at It's All Good.  He linked to this article on Borders' new strategy for integrating technology-based services into the bricks and mortar bookstore experience:

"... Borders' newest retail strategy: a digital center where you can download music or books, burn CDs, research family histories, print pictures and order leather-bound books crammed with family photos — with help from clerks who know how to do those sorts of things and won't embarrass you if you don't...reinventing itself as a hub for knowledge, entertainment and digital downloading."

Ah, what you can do with money!  Here at PVLD we'd love to offer services like this, and to have the resources to train staff to "do those sorts of things".

For me, however, the most telling part of the article was not the description of the gee-whiz technology, or the description of how the new Borders "concept "store will be organized, with "... new themed book islands are built around lifestyle genres, including travel, cooking and health."

No, for me the most telling part of the article was this (emphasis mine!) -

"One of the saving graces for bookstores, say analysts, consumers and industry officials, is they offer people with shared interests a site to gather and socialize. The addition of coffee shops — which you'll find in nearly every Borders and Barnes & Nobles store — has accelerated the trend. Now, Jones hopes digital downloads can take the stores to the next level.

"Bookstores are typically the place that people like to go and congregate, so if (the stores) can monetize that, it's powerful," says Schick, who calls Borders' move "an attempt at evolution."

That's something that Amazon, for all its considerable market muscle, can't quite duplicate."

A major theme of the article is the threat that the slowing economy poses to bookstores.  When people are worried about job security, the housing market, and gas prices they are less likely to buy books.  That's good news for libraries because we offer much of what the book store does (ok maybe not the digital kiosk!) and its free.  That's why library use goes up in tough economic times, while bookstore sales go down.

The bad news? 

If you didn't know they were coming from Borders, phrases like "a hub for knowledge, entertainment, and digital downloading" or "they offer people with shared interests a site to gather and socialize" could have come straight from the strategic plan of many a library.

I'm one of those who thinks that bookstores actually do pose a competitive threat to libraries and that we need to face that threat head-on, and articles like this just reinforce that view. 

Borders and its ilk are definitely playing on our turf, and if they succeed in "monetizing" services that we offer for free (or close to free) while we struggle to maintain and improve services with budgets that are under even more pressure than usual in tough economic times, we're going to have to be pretty creative to hold our ground long-term. 

But back to some good news...evidence of our creativity abounds!  With examples like the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County's Learning 2.0 program; the growing use of free Web 2.0 tools like Meebo or eBlogger to deliver library services; a culture that encourages sharing and collaboration; and technology-based tools that make that collaboration easier than ever before (witness the viral spread of the aforementioned Learning 2.0 idea), I think we have the ability to meet the competitive challenge, even if it sometimes feels like David vs. Goliath.  We should disregard what the bookstores are doing at our peril, though!

What a week!

It's Friday night as I write this, and I just got back from the California Library Association Legislative Committee meeting in Sacramento.  Since this entailed getting up at 5AM after a PVLD Board of Trustees meeting last night, I am a little tired.

I'm not alone, though!  The new website and ILS have meant a lot of hard work for a number of our staff members.  Thanks to their efforts we've made it through the first week of operation in good shape.  We resolved a number of the issues that we found early in the week, have a better understanding of some of the system limitations, and managed to get quite a bit of content onto the new website.  The fornt line staff did a wonderful job of explaining the changes to our customers, who for the most part were very understanding about the slower-than-usual service as we got used to the new systems and the occasional "glitch".  We even had a few customers who for some reason were not charged fees that they should have been alert us to that fact.

While many people have contributed to this project, a few deserve special mention:

• Technical Services Manager Mary Cohen has been the project's true heroine.  Her work to understand the data structure, support the data migration, and set up all of the many rules and configuration settings has been truly amazing.  Unfortunately for her the workload will not ease up for a while yet, as we still have to "go live" with the acquisitions, serials, and Inter-Library Loan functionality.
• IT Manager Laszlo Latkoczy has served as project manager, making sure we got everything done on schedule and within budget and keeping track of the many issues and their resolution.
• Customer Service Manager Eve Wittenmyer led the implementation of the Circulation module, and assisted by Assistant Manager Melissa Little, Branch Manager Jennifer Addington, and staff members Matt Fukuda and Jesse Wolf made sure the system operates as we need it to and trained all of the Circulation staff at all locations.  Eve and Melissa have also been scheduling themselves to ensure that one or the other is on duty every day that the library is open to assist the front line staff, so they've had some long days and weeks.
• Digital Library Services Manager David Campbell and Digital Services Librarian Erik Adams both designed the new website and set up the online user interface into the new catalog and circulation functions.  Their commitment to designing with the user in mind has led to many new features, such as the ability to limit catalog searches by format (books, movies, music, audiobooks) right from the point the search is initiated.  They've got lots of ideas for continuing to improve the website, and for making the interface between the website and the catalog even more seamless.
• Network Adminstrator Brett LaForest and Computer Technician John Jakobsen set up all of the hardware and spent many long hours trouble shooting issues in the face of documentation that often reflected earlier versions of the software.
• And last, but certainly not least, all of the Circulation staff members, Librarians, and Technical Services employees who have embraced the new systems and helped promote them to our customers.

Thank you!

New systems - 24 hours later

Well, our new systems have been up for more than 24 hours and overall things are going pretty well.  There are still issues with the online calendar, the Integrated Library System software has some inherent shortcomings that we didn't realize were there until we went live, we need to continue to fill out the content of the new website, and we continue to find and fix little glitches.

Some of the key realizations and learnings from this process for me include -

• The traditonal software sales/support model that hands the customer off from the sales team to the implementation team to the help desk and "post-implementation sales" really sucks.  You just get one group of people understanding your organization and what you are trying to achieve and then you have to educate a whole new group.  Vendors - what about an organization structure that aligns with the customer relationship?
• If the technology model of Web 2.0+ is (as I think it is) one where various pieces of software are connected togther via open interfaces in ways that are transparent to the end user, the library technology world seems to have its feet firmly planted in Web 1.0.  Our goal is to have the integration from the PVLD website to other software/systems such as the ILS' online catalog or the online calendar be as invisible and as seamless as possible.  I think our guys have done a great job moving us in this direction, but has been much more difficult to get everything to work together than it should have been.  We can only imagine the challenge when we want to start layering on a new social catalog a la Bibliocommons or knowledge sharing system a la Libguides.
• There is a long way to go to make the library catalog and user account functionality even close to what is available in commercial sites such as Amazon or Netflix.  We believe we selected the best available off-the-shelf ILS for a library of our size, but it has a ways to go to deliver an excellent user experience.  The online catalog has some nice features, like RSS feeds and user reviews and ratings, but they seem to have been "patchworked" into the system rather than being part of a comprehensive and integrated design.  Our vendor does offer an alternative online user interface, called Encore, but it is expensive and still nowhere near what we would consider state-of-the art.  We will be looking at alternatives once things have settled down around here. 

On the plus side

• The new website looks incredible and has some great new features.  It will only get better as we fill out the content and add new functionality.  Even the challenges have provided learning opportunities, so we will also get faster and better at implementing enhancements.
• The new ILS is on the whole far better than the old one.  We lost a couple of important features in the transition, but we gained much more than we lost.  We also have a core group of employees that have a deep understanding of the system's data structure and functionality, which will enable us to work with the vendor to resolve issues and identify opportunities for improvements.
• Our frontline staff have been amazing.  They've embraced the new system and done a great job of dealing with the inevitable little glitches and customer issues.

Are we where we want to be from a technology standpoint?  Not yet.  Are we a LOT further down the road?  Absolutely.

 

New website, new catalog - what fun!

Yesterday we closed all of our libraries in preparation for going live with our new website (note that if you are a regular user of our old website you may need to clear the cache of your Internet browser and then restart your computer to see the new site) and Integrated Library System (or ILS - the system that supports all of our library operations like the catalog, issuing library cards, checking library materials in and out....). 

Closing the libraries is a big deal for us, as we take great pride in closing only on a very few major holidays like Christmas and the 4th of July.  We took advantage of the opportunity to have all of the staff together for a Staff Development Day...the first in many years.  We had a great time as staff from the various locations got to meet one another, we did some training, and finished the day with our first ever PVLD Drum Circle:

This proved to be energizing, stress-relieving, and a lot of fun...just what we needed to get ready for the launch of our new systems today.

So...how're we doing with the new systems?  Overall pretty well although we have found a few glitches, like -

• When we moved the new website into production some of the feeds to our online calendar of events broke.  We should have this fixed tomorrow, though.
• There are wierd discrepancies between how the ILS functions when it is being operated by staff vs when a library user tries to do things via the online library catalog.  We're working on trying to resolve these.
• Some features seem to work intermittently, but not consistently - like the ability to add user reviews, and the display of book covers alongside items in the catalog.

The biggest surprise of the day has been the number of people complaining about the fact that the new system doesn't have the capability to create and save lists of items from the library catalog for future reading/reference.  In our old system not only could a user create such lists, they could go directly from a list item to the catalog to place a hold.   We had no idea this feature was so popular, and unfortunately we didn't do a good enough job of alerting people to the fact that it would disappear.  Definitely a "lesson learned" but also a reason to continue our exploration of Bibliocommons which is built around the ability to create and share lists.

The new systems have some great new features, though - things that our users have been asking for like the ability to rate and review items (once we get it working consistently - it seems it may be a software bug), the ability to keep some or all of your borrowing history for future reference, and new email notification capabilities like getting alerts of pending due dates BEFORE the item is due, or saving catalog searches on topics of interest and then getting email notification when new items that meet the search criteria are added to the collection.

All in all its been a good couple of days, although this is definitely a work in progress as we resolve issues, add new content and capabilities to the website, and implement additional features like the ability to pay fines and fees online.

The staff have been as amazing as always - the core project team has worked long and hard to get the new systems set up and tested and the front-line staff at the public service desks have accepted the changes willingly and are doing a great job of coaching our customers through the transition. 

Everyone is a bit wearly right now, but if we can get through the next few days and get some of our niggling issues resolved we've got a great foundation for continuing to offer leading online services to our users. 

Change

We are three days away from going live with both our new Integrated Library System and our new website design.  All of our libraries will be closed on Monday while we cut over to the new systems.  We'll take the opportunity to have all of our staff together in one place for training and teambuilding  - something that has not been possible for many years because of our commitment to keeping the libraries open as much as possible.

The new systems will mean significant changes for both staff and library users.  Most of the changes are for the better - a more intuitive design and many new features - but changes nonetheless.

Because of the new systems and everything else that is going on around here the topic of change has been on my mind.  I've put together an update presentation to give to the staff on Monday, and one of the slides lists some of the new/"extra" stuff that the staff has taken on over the past few months and the list is amazing.

This is clearly a staff that has learned to deal with change...so I'm confident that we will get through the transition to the new system with flying colors.

I've never had a lot of time for the myriad business books, articles, and consultants that set forth methodologies for "managing change" as if there is some simple set of principles and steps that will work in organizations that are complex systems made up of individuals with intellect, free will, and a wide diversity of backgrounds and points of view.  On the one hand change is part of life and in every organization I have been involved with I have seen people adapt to profound changes in both their work and personal lives without the benefit of a formal "change management program".  On the other hand I have seen many efforts to "drive change" fail.

That's why I was delighted to come across this post by John Fletcher on "One Industry That Ought To Be Declared Bankrupt NOW" on the Slow Leadership blog.

The whole post is well worth reading, but I especially loved his description of

"... is the arrival over the last twenty years or so of a veritable Ideology of Change. All of it is negative, but nothing about it is more dangerous, more intellectually slovenly, and more needlessly arrogant than the phrase “there’s always resistance to change.” This is an (unfortunately effective) way of deflecting questions and opposition, no matter how well founded, and dismissing any dissent on ideological grounds, even before it is articulated."

Apart from being, as Mr. Fletcher puts it "intellectually slovenly" in my experience the statement "there is always resistance to change" is simply untrue....just look at PVLD and the changes our staff have embraced.

And of course, if there is widespread resistance to change, Mr. Fletcher reminds us that "...Even if, as Joseph Goebbels remarked to Heinrich Himmler in 1934, there’s always resistance to change, those who resist are statistically most likely to be right."