PVLD Director's Blog

Text messaging the library

I'm at the Internet Librarian conference for the first time.  It's an annual gathering of librarians and others interested in technology and its application in libraries and despite my initial hesitation that it might be too "techie" for me, I'm getting some great ideas.

The last session by Nancy Dowd, Director of Marketing for the New Jersey State Library was about how New Jersey libraries are using text messaging to reach out to different segments of the community.

At PVLD we've talked about using text messaging as another communications tool for hold notifications and other circulation/catalog driven messages, but we haven't really talked about it as a marketing tool.

The New Jersey libraries are using what Nancy called a "boutique" text messaging service called Gold Mobile  to enable them to send, receive, and manage very targeted text messages at a cost of about $50/month/library.  The service itself looked very simple to use, with a web-based tool that library staff can use to compose and send messages and build /manage databases of subscribers to different types of messages.

Some of the ways the New Jersey libraries are using the service include -

• Sending Spanish-language information about library services to Latino community members who were hesitant to approach "Anglo" staff members. 
• Providing program information and reminders to teens, who are notoriously high users of text messaging, and also were prone to forget about upcoming teen activities
• Acknowleding how difficult it is for parents to participate in normal-length adult programs by conducting 10-15 minute long mini-programs on topics of interest to parents and then asking them to sign up to receive more information about that topic (e.g. information snippets, links to websites or books in the catalog) by text message.
• Sending text reminders of upcoming programs to  anyone who signs up to receive them.  This  one particularly struck me because one of the strongest requests from the focus groups we recently conducted was for reminders of upcoming programs a day or two before they take place  and it seems that text messaging might help us achieve that.
• Sending text-message mini-surveys with just one simple question.
• Asking people to send a text message to the library's text message code for a chance to win a prize as a way of building the library's text message contact database.

Nancy also gave examples of some interesting ways that businesses are using text-messaging as a marketing tool.  For example, Pottery Barn partnered with Barnes and Noble to reach out to college students.  They placed posters with an image of a comfortable Pottery Barn chair suitable for dorm rooms or apartments in Barnes and Noble stores near large colleges and universities with the message "Text 78709 for a chance to win this chair".  What a great way to build a list of people who might be interested in your product.

Nancy made it clear that text-messaging is not a panacea.  You need to make people aware that if they don't have unlimited messaging on their cell phone plan the messages could cost them.  You also need to have a targeted and compelling reason for people to sign up, based on their real needs and wants.  She also noted that success does not come overnight.  The New Jersey libraries have used pilot projects and trial and error to find what works.  They also have learned that it takes time for people to "catch on" so you need to be patient.

Caveats notwithstanding I can see how this might be a useful tool for PVLD as we work to improve how we market our services.  What do you think?  Would you sign up?

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Thank you Stephen Abram for sharing this l"manifesto" from the Canadian design firm Bruce Mau Design.  What a rich source of perspectives and ideas...I suspect it is one of those lists, like the Cluetrain Manifesto, that I will come back to again and again, and each time different elements will resonate. 

Today #3 - Process is more important than outcome really struck a nerve and helped me realize why some recent activities have been less productive than I had hoped.  I need to remember that if the process is sound, the outcome will be right even if it is not the exact outcome I set out to achieve.

I also loved #16's description of collaboration, in all its messiness and hope and #25's admonition "Don't clean your desk" made me feel a whole lot better about taking off for the Eureka Institute tomorrow and leaving behind piled up desk!

What really resonated with you?

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.

1. Allow events to change you.You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study.A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving.The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________.Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late.Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Blogging Sabbatical

The past couple of months that have been extraordinarily busy and issue-filled, and it's been hard to find the time or energy to write this blog.  Even the other blogs I follow have not been their usual source of ideas and inspiration.

Over the next few weeks I will be away from work for all but a couple of days for one reason or another (a bit of vacation, a couple of conferences, and a week serving as a mentor on a residential leadership development program for emerging library leaders) and I suspect I will find it even harder to find time and energy to write anything interesting or meaningful.

With that in mind I've decided to declare a brief "blogging sabbatical".  I'm not planning on writing any posts between this one and when my upcoming travels come to an end on November 2nd.

That said, I'll still my skimming my usual assortment of blogs and other reading material and I am hopeful that the changes of scenery/routine, the exposure to new energy at the Eureka Leadership Institute, and the opportunity to hear new things and interact with colleagues at the Internet Librarian and California Library Association conferences will reinvigorate me. 

Who knows, I may just have a flash of inspiration that leads me to break my sabbatical!  If not, I'm looking forward to returning to more regular posting in November.  Stay tuned!

Ending the week on a high note

It's been a rugged few weeks around here to say the least, so it's nice to be able to pass on some kudos and nice news! I'm sure I'm going to miss some of the great stuff that's happened, but here are a few highlights -

Volunteer extraordinaire (Vice President of the Peninsula Friends of the Library, Book Sale Chair, over 14,000 hours of volunteer service) is being recognized by the California Association of Library Trustees and Commissioners for his outstanding volunteer service.  Gene's award will be presented at the California Library Association Conference in Pasadena at the end of this month.  I can't think of a more deserving volunteer!

Adult Services Librarians Louise Beebe and Debra Petsersen have been working hard on promoting our business resources, and on developing our soon-to-be launched business social networking site www.InfoGalaxy.org .  We offer library cardholders access to the Reference USA database, which is great way to identify potential business prospects but can be a little intimidating to use.  In addition to providing onoe-on-one training to local business people, Debra and Louise have created some great video tutorials  for the InfoGalaxy site to help people use this  resource.  This week Debra received this email from Reference USA's training manager -

Over the weekend I came across the tutorials y'all have up on YouTube -- AWESOME!   When I got back into the office Monday, I wanted to track down Christine to find out more about PVLD and if she minded my contacting you - your library is one of here favorite to visit - I was interested in what software you were using to create your videos - I have a few different tutorial packages and am admittedly on the backside of the learning curve so any insight on to what tools work best is always appreciated.  

Nice!

Then Digital Services and Marketing Manager let us know that PVLD had gotten its second 5-star rating on Yelp in a month, bringing our overall rating up to 4.5 stars.  Also nice!

Last, but certainly not least, Volunteer Coordinator Dori Medina shared this email from the father of a teen volunteer with whom we had been having some issues -

"Thank you for your kind words and patronage. It was my pleasure to met you and Eve in person on Wednesday afternoon. I also would like to thank you and Eve for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me and Sam. It sure was  a great opportunity for us to come to mutual understanding and I appreciate it very much for trusting  Sam to give him another opportunity to prove himself. I am confident that our gathering was a good lesson for him to remember what is expected of him in public and working environment.

I am sure Sam will welcome your kind offer for the new Volunteer position and he would reply to your email soon. My only request is to keep the communication door open and please do not hesitate to drop me a line or two if you see it is necessary. I would like to be involved. I have a lot of respect for you and the Library staff and wish you all strength to continue with your hard work serving the community. My wife ... also has special regards for you and the Library family. Once again, thank you and God bless."

How wonderful to learn about our staff having such a positive influence on a young person!

So...I'm leaving work on this crazy Friday reminded again of what a special place this is, and of how privileged I am to work with such amazing staff and volunteers.  It sure puts tough periods like the current one into perspective!