PVLD Director's Blog

Libraries and the News

For some reason - maybe the amount of recent media coverage of changes in the newspaper industry - parallels between changes in the world of journalism and changes in the world of librarianship continue to be on my mind.  Today I was catching up on the various blogs I follow and several of them had posts on topics related to the future of journalism, so I'm not alone in pondering these things. (I know, I need to get a life!)  Some of the things that caught my attention -

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism just published its annual report on The State of the News Media.  I haven't had time to read the report in depth, but a few of the trends that they identify seemed as relevant for librarians as they are for journalists. For example "On the Web, news organizations are focusing somewhat less on bringing audiences in and more on pushing content out." has clear parallels with the conversations many of us in the library world are having about how to serve people outside the walls of the library building.  And the idea that "The concept of partnership, motivated in part by desperation, is becoming a major focus of news investment and it may offer prospects for the financial future of news" has clear parallels in libraries' efforts to build strong networks of community partnerships in the recognition that in a world of scarce resources we need to work collaboratively with other organizations for the benefit of all.

The Pew finding that "The data also suggest a clear trend in the changing nature of how Americans now learn about the world around them. People are relying more heavily — both during peak moments and in general — on platforms that can deliver news when audiences want it rather than at appointed times, a sign of a growing “on demand” news culture. People increasingly want the news they want when they want it."  only needs to have the word "information" substituted for "news" to be as true for libraries as it is for journalism.

I also found today's Fast Company article on What Should Replace Your Defunct Local Paper thought-provoking.  It talks about how the shift from print to online news and the demise of local newspapers is creating a gap in truly local coverage that has not really been filled.  It made me wonder (again! - see this post from January) what role the library could play in making truly local information available to our communities.

The last post that caught my eye was also from Fast Company, but on a totally different topic.  It asks the questions Do We Really Need Architects?  It's obviously not about either the news media or libraries, but it sure reinforces the "citizen...." theme that I've been thinking and posting about! It seems that change is afoot in many professions, not just librarianship and journalism, as citizens are increasingly able to do for themselves what professionals used to do for them.

My thoughts about what all of this means for librarians are still forming, but as I alternate work on our Strategic Plan, which forces me to think about the longer term future, with trying to navigate the harsh realities of the impact of the economic climate on our budget, thoughts about the future of our profession are never far from the top of my mind.  The two things I do know are that "business as usual" is a road to nowhere and that with lots of thought, conversations, and experimentation our profession is capable of transforming to meet new realities...it's only the details of that transformation that aren't clear!

 

 

What does it mean for the library to be a "community center"?

As I've mentioned before,the PVLD Board and Management Team are hard at work on a new Strategic Plan.  The process we are following demands that we identify a small handful of Objectives that will be the focus of our efforts over the next 3 years, which in turn has caused me (and I think others) to really think hard about what each Objective really means.  One of our Objectives relates to cementing PVLD's role as a community center for lifelong learning and personal enrichment...and it has been challengng for all of us to articulate just what it means to be a community center.

The conclusion I've come to is that truly being a community center is both less tangible and more profound than just being a place where lots of people come - it's about being so tightly woven into the fabric of the community that if we are weakened the entire community is weakened...and everyone knows it.

That idea is pretty hard to measure quantitatively, although I suppose that it is reflected in things like the success of fundraising efforts.  It also means we have to stop thinking about the library as a building/collection of materials/physical thing and start thinking about it as a node in a rich network of connections with and between individuals and groups across our entire community and beyond.

That sounds simple, but I think it has many implications.  At a very basic level it means we have to first know who represents the other threads in the cloth, and reach out to make contact with them....and that in turn means we need to be creative about using our resources and leveraging technology to touch as many of them as possible.  It means we need to spend less of our staff time and effort on organizing and maintaining "stuff" and more time and effort interacting with people inside and outside the library building.  It means we have to recognize that while we think we are the central node in that network of connections, everyone else thinks they are...so we need to figure how to see the world from their perspective. 

The more we are able to do these things, the more people we will touch and the more people that will reach out to us....and this creates a virtuous circle that continuously expands and the library is truly woven into the social fabric of the community.  

It's Friday afternoon, and I'm not even sure that what I just wrote makes sense but it's what is going through my mind lately...at least when I'm not worrying about the budget!

More on Citizen Librarians

My posts on Citizen Librarians and Libraries - Thinking the Unthinkable generated more comments than anything I've written before - some posted on the blog, and some emailed to me directly.  The most recent questions whether I am "intentionally trivializing professional librarians."

This was certainly not my intent.  My intent was to raise questions about how technological and societal changes are affecting our profession, and to propose that we take an active role in understanding those changes and using them as an opportunity to create new models that in my mind offer an opportunity to contribute to society in a way that may even be more meaningful and important than our traditional models.

My experience yesterday at TEDxUSC provided plenty of food for thought about profound societal changes that are upon us and the role that libraries and librarians might play in helping our communities navigate these changes.  It also provided an example of how at least one traditional media outlet is not just accepting the concept of the "citizen journalist," but building a new business model on its basis.  CNN (and isn't it interesting that only 30 or so years ago CNN was considered "new media"!) was covering the conference not only with traditional journalists but via its i.report.com "user generated news" service and had a kisok where conference-goers could provide their own reports on the conference.  Some of the i.report.com news is provided to the public in its unedited and unexpurgated form, and some is picked up by journalists who review and vet it and then publish it with the impramatur of having met journalistic standards.  In this model there is still a role for journalists, but they no longer have a monopoly on determining what is "news."

My point about librarians isn't that we are becoming obsolete, it's that in the face of profound change we can cling to old models and become obsolete or we can find new ways of applying the core values and professional skills that we offer that are relevent to the changing ways information is created and distributed, and the changing ways people live their lives.  In my mind that is the opposite of trivializing librarians...what do you think?

TEDxUSC

 I spent a mind-blowing afternoon on the USC campus attending the first ever TEDxUSC conference, a scaled down version of the "big TED" conference that each year brings together a diverse group of leading thinkers in a variety of fields to share "big picture" ideas for transforming the world.  Today's event mixed videos from the TED conference held last month in Long Beach with live speakers, musical performances, short films, and a reception with multimedia exhibits.

There were speakers on topics as diverse as biomedical engineering, management theory, Biosphere2, the creative process, the collaborative effort to build the most complex scientific instruments ever at CERN (the European organization for nuclear research in Geneva), video games as an art form, computer modelling, aquaculture, and the rapidly expanding capabilities of genetic and tissue engineering.  Throw in amazing musical performances including an electronic organ performance of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges that sounded like an entire symphony orchestra was playing, the fabulous music of Salman Ahmad, one of the biggest rock stars of the Muslim world, and the surprise appearance of Melissa Etheridge to sing a duet she and Salman wrote together and you can see why my brain is whirling.

Two of the themes that emerged from the talks were the interconnectedness of seemingly diverse topics, and  how advances in engineering, including biomedical and biological engineering, are creating a world in which we can engineer changes to human capabilities in a way we never have before.  This talk by Juan Enriquez (founder of the Life Sciences Project at the Harvard Business School) brought those themes together in a way that was particularly thought-provoking, challenging, and more than a little scary (caution - some material is not suitable for children!) -

Watch it and you'll see why my mind is churning! I know much of what I heard today has implications for libraries, but I think it's going to take some time for me to work out how...

Citizen Librarians

Following my last post about the parallels between libraries and newspapers more thoughts on that topic have been bouncing around in my mind.  In particular I've been thinking about how technology has empowered anyone to be a "citizen journalist" and musing about whether there is a parallel emergence of the "citizen librarian." 

If "The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others " then I think it is equally true that people without professional library training can use technology to collect, organize, and distribute information; do readers advisory; and develop and share libraries...on their own or in collaboration with others. LibraryThing is a perfect example but there are many others - the reading lists people share on Facebook, the reader reviews and book lists on Amazon.com, the online book, video, and video game rental services (and don't you love how they brag about no late fees?)

I'm still mulling over the questionof what this means for libraries and librarians.  Some newspapers and other media outlest have adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach by providing forums for citizen journalists (for example the blog hosted by our local Daily Breeze newspaper that recently proved to be the most accurate source of information about candidates in a local election) or by actively using social networking tools like Twitter (Daniel Schorr tweeting?! )with some success.

This approach is being mimicked by libraries that, for example, are linking their catalog to LibraryThing or adding reader reviews and tagging to the library catalog.  I'm just not sure this goes far enough.  I don't think citizen librarians are going to go away any more than citizen journalists are, so I wonder what we can do to truly empower them?  If they have books they are willing to lend to others could we allow them to add records to our catalog and provide a location or a process to enable the transaction to take place?  Can we ask "civilians" (as Joan Frye Williams) calls them to help develop parts of the collection where staff expertise is lacking? (And I don't mean just by submitting individual purchase suggestions, I mean by actually letting them actively manage a subject area on which they are expert.)  And for that matter, if someone in our community truly is an expert on something can we find a way to connect them with community members who need to know something in that area as an alternative to asking a reference question of a librarian who may not have any knowledge of the subject at all?  Can we not just allow reader reviews in the catalog, but host blogs where community members can share their views of what they have read?   

Maybe the role of the librarian in the future isn't about doing the professional things we learn in library school, it's about finding ways to empower civilians to do those things for themselves and without our mediation.

Just a thought...

Libraries - Thinking the Unthinkable

I spent Friday working with the PVLD Board of Trustees and Managers on our new Strategic Plan, and Saturday morning listening to library futurist Joan Frye Williams and Interim State Libraian and futurist in her own right Stacey Aldrich at the annual workshop of the California Association of Library Trustees and Commissioners (CALTAC)so thoughts of what the future might mean for PVLD, and for libraries in general, has been on my mind even more than uusual.

This morning, thanks to Stephen Abram's post on Asynchrous, Assymetrical Threats to Libraries I came across a blog post titled "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable"  by Clay Shirkey (author of Here Comes Everybody)that both scared me to death and in an odd way gave me hope. 

The parallels between newspapers and libraries are (at least to my mind) profound.  Both are institutions that came into being in one world, and are caught up in the transition to a whole new world.  Describing newspapers' response to their realization beginning in the 1990s that the world around them was changing profoundly, Shirky notes that "the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses."

Here in libraryland there are plenty of examples of trying to give a "digital facelift" to old structures and models....witness the OPAC (online public access catalog), which basically digitizes a model of information retrieval developed for a world in which information was bound by its physical container; or the online "Ask a Librarian" services that are basically the online version of desk-based reference services....

Shirky's assertion is that we are in the midst of a revolution, and that in revolutionary times chaos reigns for a time as the old models get broken before the new ones are formed.  I think this is as true for libraries as it is for newspapers.  As I think about all of the conversations that are going on about how libraries need to change if they are to stay relevent, these comments from Shirky (emphasis mine!)send chills up my spine:

"And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to."  and

"The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model."  

Replace the word "newspaper" with "library" and you might start shivering too! 

I know some of you will read this and say "But look at how library use is growing.  Surely we're more relevant now that ever."  The question I would ask "Is this due to the current economic sitatuation, and if so do we want to stake our future on continued suffering of our communities?"  I think not!

That said, I see reason to be hopeful.  As Shirky says about newspapers,

"Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work."

Again I think these words ring as true for libraries as for newspapers, and they echo something I heard Joan Frye Williams say on Saturday - "We need to quit talking about information and start talking about transformation."

The things librarians stand for - transparency, universal access to information and to lifelong learning, the importance of a life of the mind, preservation of our history and culture, the transformative effect that access to information and exposure to new ideas can have on people's lives - are going to be as important in the brave new digital world as they were when public libraries were founded. The challenge is to separate those values and how we deliver them from the institution of the "library" as embodied in our current models and organization structures, and to relentlessly experiment with new models and structures (even knowing that many will fail) for delivering these values in the new world.

If we can do this, and especially if we can find models and structures that uniquely align with these values rather than being derivative of models that are working for other purposes (it's not about copying Netflix or Amazon!), then to paraphrase Shirky over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the librarianship we need...and the experiments I see bubbling up in various libraries and the conversations I have with the PVLD staff and with colleagues give me hope that we just might be able to do this!

 

Now Available! Online Donations to the Peninsula Friends of the Library

You can now support the Palos Verdes Library District by making an online donation (using credit card or Paypal) to the Peninsula Friends of the Library! 

I'm thrilled because this comes after several years of discussion about how best to implement online/credit card giving, and also because a chance encounter that I had with a community member led to our first (and very generous!) online gift only a few days after the online donation capability went live.

At the end of a week where we further reduced our 2009/2010 property tax revenue forecast (88% of our budget) in the face of re-assessments and increased delinquencies and worked on a strategic plan that will require funds beyond what our normal revenues provide even in good years, it's great to give library users and community members another way to support the library....we need it!

To our first online donor - Thank You!

The Future of Education - What does it mean for public libraries?

PVLD has worked hard to develop a community awareness of the role public libraries play as a partner in education, and to develop active partnerships with local schools.  As the current economic crisis unfolds and our public schools are forced to lay off school library staff, technology aides, and teachers  our PVLD staff have been wrestling with how best to support students, parents and teachers within the constraints of our own limited resources.  Through the current strategic planning process we've also been wrestling with developing a vision for our future in the face of technological and societal changes.

One of the things that seems certain is that we are almost certainly, as David Lee King put it in a recent blog post, at "The Beginning of a New Normal".  David's post was primarily about the restructuring of our economy with the potential for entire industries to disappear (print media? American automotive manufacturing?), an acceleration of the shift from physical to digital channels of distribution of content, and the growing importance of the "long tail"...and the implications for libraries.

All of that is of great interest, but what grabbed my attention was a link that was somewhat buried in the body of the blog post that triggered David's thoughts. The blog post that got me thinking was Hacking Education (continued) by New York Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson.  It reports on a conversation among a number of leading entrepreneurs and education thinkers on the topic of how education needs to be "hacked" (i.e. broken into and reconfigured).

In the blog post Wilson summarizes a number of trends that I think have significant implications not just for schools, but for libraries.  How will we -

• Support an array of alternative forms of education from home schooling to online learning?  We do some of this already (for example the information literacy class one of our librarians taught to a group of homeschoolers the other day) - but as these forms of education become more popular we probably need to look not just at the services we provide, but the design of our facilities and technology.  At a minimum I can see a need for more computers and more bandwidth, more "learning lab" environments where learners who aren't part of a formal school setting can come together, and staff/collections to support these new forms of education.
• Understand, educate our communities about, and make use of technologies like open courseware, lesson sharing, social networks, and lightweight/public publishing tools that will become an increasingly important part of the education infrastructure?  We need to be better than ever at learning and applying new technologies

In a world where the line between student and teacher is increasingly blurred, we'll need to figure out how to provide the tools for people to develop and publish content and learning (e.g. podcasting, webcasting, courseware etc.) not just get information from the Internet. This probably means moving from computer workstations out in the open to self-contained and sound-proofed learning/production stations.

As education and learning moves from classrooms to home- or office-based and/or online environments, it also will become a round-the-clock activity.  This will increase the pressure on us to uncouple access to our resources and services from our physical facilities.  We'll need to continue to find ways to answer questions, deliver information and content, and provide support to people who aren't at the physical library, and to do it 24/7.

These are challenges for sure, but they may also provide a real opportunity to engage with our local schools in a much more meaningful way to help them navigate these changes and to integrate our respective activities to provide seamless support to the learners in our community - wherever and whenever they need it.   Food for thought....

The future of libraries - what if it's not about delivering content?

PVLD is in the process of developing a new strategic plan which is forcing us to both take a hard look at what we currently do and how we do it, and to think about what we want the library to be in the future.  As we've looked at what we currently do and how it fits with our future aspirations, one of the questions floating around in my mind is how important/relevent our content (i.e. our library collection - whether physical or electronic) will be.

We currently focus a lot of time, attention, and energy on maintaining that content - choosing what to buy, processing the orders and paying the bills, deciding how to organize the collection both in the libraries and online, cataloging the various items, weeding things from the collection, and handling the books, movies, cds, etc. as we check them in and out, shelve them, and move them between branches.  In many respects this management of content dominates what we do.

If the recent growth in our circulation statistics is any indicator access to our content is still very important to the people we serve, particularly in these difficult economic times, and yet I've had this little niggling thought bouncing around in my head for a while - In a world of myriad cheap (or even free), easy, and convenient ways to access content electronically, what if our future isn't about content management and delivery? What then?

In one of those curious bits of synchronicity that seems to happen as I surf the web and read various blogs it turns out I'm not the only one with this thought on my mind.  Over the weekend I came across this post from Aaron Schmidt's Walking Paper blog.  It's a great articulation of the competition faced by libraries in a world of "content anywhere/anytime."  Aaron uses the example of Netflix and how it is partnering with the New York Times and others to allow people to download Netflix content via widgets at online locations (like movie reviews) where it is most relevent.  Not only do most libraries lack the technology to do something like this, we are also constrained by digital rights management laws and technologies that prevent us from making the best online content available to our customers.

Today I read on the O'reilly radar blog  (thanks to a tip-off from Stephen Abram)  that the fastest growing category of applications for the IPhone is downloadable e-books - most of which cost 99 cents or less, and one in twenty of which are free.  Couple that with the ability to get everything from bestsellers to classics anytime, anywhere and without the hurdle of shared collections and limited checkout periods and you can see that the downloadable books offered by libraries are a poor alternative.

And if this post on Ross Dawson's Trends in the Living Networks blog is any indication, libraries aren't alone in thinking about the extent to which content management and delivery is their future. 

So if our future is not about delivering content, what is it about?  I'm not sure anyone knows for sure.  I think Ross Dawson's phrase "the shift from expert curators to facilitators of participation" is as good a description of what the future might hold as any I've seen. And Aaron Schmidt was pursuing the same idea when he wrote about creating "excellent programs and experiences based around content and conversation" and "providing shared experiences by gathering people together at hosted events." 

What I like most about this concept is that the role of the library is really enhanced, not diminished.  If we can take all of the time and energy we spend managing content and redirect it to finding ways to enrich peoples lives by helping them make richer connections with both the content and one another, the future is bright.

That said, I still think providing access to content will be a role for libraries in the future.  The question will be how we do that.  We don't want to become the poor cousin to commercial content delivery services like Netflix, Amazon, and Itunes - there primarily for people who can't afford or otherwise can't access the commercial services, but with inferior content and delivery mechanisms. 

One thought is that we need to step outside our traditional models and partner with the Netflixes of the world to make content available anytime, anywhere.  For example, what if when people search our catalog and an item is either checked out or not in our collection they could just click on a button to buy it on Amazon or download it from Netflix (with a commission for us of course)?  PVLD's upcoming trial of a Redbox DVD dispenser is another example of how we can work with commercial services to deliver content - in this case physical DVDs.  The Redbox machine will not only allow us to offer a wider selection of titles and more copies of the popular ones, it will also allow customers to obtain them outside of library hours, request specific titles online, keep them as long as they want, and return them to any Redbox location...with no investment of library staff time once the machine has been installed.

Of course, these are just my thoughts.  I'd love to know yours...     

Libraries in tough times - more than books!

My husband and I were driving between errands on Saturday morning and happened to catch this great piece on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.  This morning a friend forwarded me the link to this story from CNN.com on Saturday.  Both include some great examples of how libraries can help people navigate these choppy (to say the least!) financial waters...and free access to books is just a part of the story.  

Here at PVLD we're trying to do our share by offering financially-oriented programs like the "Building Wealth" program in early February; beefing up our collection of business, job-search, and investment resources; offering free online access to the Value Line and Morningstar investment advisory services; and trying to figure out how to add more computers....and like the libraries mentioned in the news stories our usage is way up.

Apart from the interesting content, the other great thing about these stories and the many others that have been popping up on the subject of the value libraries provide in this economy is that they are being aired at all.  For years it seemed that the media's view of libraries was as the information age equivalent of the dinosaur, doomed by the advent of the Internet.  It's great to see the recognition dawning that while traditional media are withering away in the face of the ubiquitous Internet, libraries with their multifaceted roles, services, and ways of touching people are thriving.