PVLD Director's Blog

Art and Libraries

This will be a quick post since I think that, while my body is here at work, my brain is still on its way home from Washington DC.  I certainly don't cope with time zone changes and long flights the way I used to!

I had a spare couple of hours before my shuttle to the airport yesterday afternoon, so I took the opportunity to take one of the public tours of the Library of Congress - what a testament to the commitment our forefathers had to ensuring access to knowledge and ideas for all citizens.

Tours of the main Library of Congress buidling are led by volunteer docents who undergo six weeks of training and a comprehensive exam.  My tour guide was a gentleman named Gene Rowe.  Gene not only was extraordinarily knowledgeable about the history of the Library and about the facilities, but he positively sparkled with enthusiasm as he described the artwork that decorates the building and the way in which that art reflects and reinforces the Library's mission of fostering the pursuit of knowledge.  He also managed to get the 1/2 dozen or so adolescents on the tour caught up in his enthusiasm.

PVLD has several beautiful pieces of public art commissioned with the same intent, and has worked in the past few years to further integrate art into our service and program offerings, so it was wonderful to see that we share this vision with the Library of Congress and even more wonderful to see Mr. Rowe exemplify how art can engage people's imaginations and enhance the mission of the library.

Truly an hour well-spent!

Deconstructing librarianship

One of the bonuses of spending this week at the Eureka Leadership Institute is the opportunity to spend time with my fellow mentors, who bring diverse perspectives and backgrounds but share a common passion for our profession.  OVer lunch yesterday a conversation with Joan Frye Williams (consultant/futurist/librarian) and Cheryl Gould (of Infopeople, the organizers of the Institute  and no relation although we joke about it) about a workshop Joan is developing on the Restructuring Reference.

Joan talked about her view that what librarians call "reference" is really a bundle of activities that we need to desconstruct in order to find the best way to delvier that particular service to our communities.  For reference the activities might be seen as

• "Directional" - either helping people find there way to somewhere (the restrooms, the biographies, etc.) or helping people find a particular item ("do you have this book and where do I find it?")
• "Coaching" - helping people become more effective problem-solvers/information seekers (this would include what we traditionally call "information literacy", teaching people to use our online resources, etc.)
• "Advising/Consulting" - recommending reading material or resources, recommending solutions to a particular need or question
• Research - actually digging out sources and finding information on behalf of the customer

As Joan points out, we try to provide all of these activities at the "reference desk", when the customer would probably be best served if we consider each individually and figure how best to provide each in terms of staffing, location, design of the access points, etc.

The conversation got me thinking about the language we use for other core professional activities and how the terms we use obscure the richness and importance of the activity.

For example we talk about "programming", but in my mind (as I've said to some of the staff) that is really a code word for the critical activities of providing lifelong learning opportunities and finding ways to connect the library with the community.

"Collection development/management" has an "order fulfillment" element (all of the logistical systems that go into meeting customer demand from standing orders for bestsellers through the ILL and holds processes) but it also has a "discovery" element of creating those serendipitous connections between people and books that they might never have otherwise found (so it includes the use of professional judgement to select materials that might be outside the mainstream, as well as thinking about how we make those items available so people can discover them...the "connecting people and ideas" part of our PVLD vision).

That fairly brief conversation with Joan and Cheryl over lunch has helped me see what we do with new eyes....and I think will have a big impact on how we approach the design of PVLD's services going forward.  That alone is worth taking a week of my time to participate in Eureka!

Curiouser and Curiouser

I came across this gem of a video of Seth Godin talking about the importance of being curious on John Blyberg's blog today and I was struck by the role libraries can and do play in "priming the pump" of curiosity.

I was also reminded of a post I wrote back in February in which I quoted an impassioned email from one of our PVLD Librarians, Sylvia Richardson, about her perception that in their quest for relevence librarians are chasing numbers and growth and forgetting, as she puts it, that

"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."

Sylvia's comments have been bouncing around in the back of my mind since she wrote them, and it was one of those interesting instances of synchronicity to first see the Seth Godin video and then, within an hour or two, to read John Berry's column in the April 15, 2008 issue of Library Journal in which he reminds his readers that libraries are more than gateways to information and librarians are more than "information professionals".  I'm sure Sylvia would agree with Berry's comment that while people do come to the library for information, they also

"... come to the library to do much more than that. Many are, of course, studying, searching, reading, seeking, and finding the recorded stuff. But many more are there enjoying, interacting, exploring, and, as old Jesse Shera once put it, engaging in “the quiet stir of thought” unrecorded, unmanaged, uncaptured."

I am a firm believer in the role libraries and librarians can play in exposing people to new authors, new thoughts, and new ideas and I'd be the last one to say that we should let the development of our collections and services be driven solely by giving people what is popular.

At the same time, I recognize that in order to expose people to Sylvia's "...."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."  We need to get them in the door (whether the physical door to our physical libraries or the virtual door to our virtual libraries), and they won't come (or won't come back) if we don't also give them what they are looking for.

Finding this balance between giving people what they want and providing them an opportunity to discover something that they will value but would not have asked for is to my mind one of the core responsibilities of the professional librarian.  It is particularly challenging given the always present limitations on money (do I buy another copy of the latest Michael Crichton or do I buy something by a little known but outstanding new author?), space (How many copies of this Sue Grafton do we need?  Should I keep our only copy of The Sun Also Rises even though it hasn't circulated in a year?) and staff capacity (do I offer another session of Clutterology, which practically runs itself and always gets a good turnout or do I take a chance on a speaker who might be a bit challenging and may only attract a dozen people?)

It occurred to me today that when making these decisions we could do worse than ask ourselves "How does this "prime the pump" of curiosity?"

Bringing 'Em In

I am currently reading and thoroughly enjoying Letter from Point Clear by Dennis McFarland.  This morning I read a scene in which the young pastor (whose name is Pastor!) of a growing evangelical church who, while describing the church's plans for a new Christian Center complete with a gym, basketball courts, meeting rooms, and running track, says "Half of it is getting them in the door....the other half is building community."

My immediate reaction was "could have been spoken by a library director".  And if you think basketball courts and running tracks are beyond the mission of the library, here's a reminder that this may not be so from Neal Pierce of the Washington Post Writer's Group in a recent blog post on the important role libraries play in the assimilation of immigrants -

"The idea of libraries as social gathering places is hardly new. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built 2,500 free public libraries around the world in response to the immigrant flows and broad social gaps of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intended them to be places to attract young people. Robert McNulty, a library advocate and president of Partners for Livable Communities, reminds us that Carnegie actually built gymnasiums, boxing rings and swimming pools into some of his libraries -- hoping that once there, the youths would "be exposed to books and learn to read." "  (emphasis mine)

Puts the 21st century debate about gaming in libraries into context, doesn't it?

Hmmm...as we think about the expansion and remodel of the Miraleste Library maybe we ought to think about a gym!

More on the Library Catalog and the Dewey Decimal System

If the persistance of a topic on the conference circuit and in the blogosphere is any indication of its importance as a topic of professional discussion, then the issue of whether the Dewey Decimal System meets the needs of 21st century library users is on the minds of a lot of librarians these days.  I've blogged about this before, but wanted to share a couple more contributions to the debate.

From the PLA Minneapolis Blog put together by PVLD librarians Jennifer Addington and Debra Petersen some thoughts about ways that library collections can be organzed to better meet the needs of users without abandoning Dewey.  There are some great ideas that we can use at PVLD...and I know Eve Wittenmyer and Melissa Little up in the Circulation Department have even more ideas about how to make the collection organization more user friendly.

And I loved this from Michael Casey , whose Library Crunch blog I is one of my favorites -

Wholesale abandonment of Dewey is probably not practical for an established library, but the discussion of its relevance is healthy, and its amazing to see all of the amazing ways libraries are adapting or working around it to better serve our customers.  Look for some of these kinds of adaptations at PVLD in the coming months!

Is PVLD already a 2.0 library?

  I came across the following video by Cindi Trainor on the Travelin' Librarian today.  It displays a bit wierd so you may want to go directly to the blip.tv website

Apart from the fact that the "follow me as I type" format is pretty cool, I liked the fact that the video does not define "Library 2.0" in terms of technology but about people in the library and their willingness to experiment and embrace change.

I was struck, however, by the fact that there is not a single thing in the green "Library 2.0" circle that PVLD is not already doing and that PVLD employees have not embraced. Does that make us a 2.0 library?

I don't think so.  To my mind the journey to "2.0" (and beyond) as just that - a journey. "2.0" is not a destination, its an orientation. It's the difference between saying "we're going to San Francisco" and "we're going north". Every step that we take in the direction of "Library 2.0" also shifts our perspective so that we see new opportunities (and sometimes challenges).

Now that we've gotten our feet wet with console-based video games we are talking about how to offer web-based massive multi-player games like World of Warcraft. Now that we have a content-management based website we see opportunities to really trick out our blogs as a way of delivering content.  Now that we see how much customers like the face-out shelving in the new book section we're looking for other opportunities to merchandise the collection....

If "Library 2.0" is fundamentally, as the video implies, about being willing to change what we do so that we can enhance our ability to connect with users then the journey towards 2.0 is one that many libraries, including PVLD, have been on for a very long time.  And as this video highlights, it's not about the technology....it's about the people. 

News from the Public Library Association Conference 2008

Adult Services Assistant Manager Debra Petersen and Branch Manager Jennifer Addington attended the Public Library Association's biennial conference in Minneapolis last week and came back full of ideas and enthusiasm.

They are sharing what they learned and their thoughts on their PLA Minneapolis blog.  Check it out for some great ideas...and keep checking as there is more to come!

I think we might transform this blog into the "PVLD conference" blog as a way of sharing what we learn at the various conferences and workshops that staff attend. 

Designing Libraries for Fun

I came across this blog posting from Jenny Levine of the Shifted Librarian about her visit to DOK, the public library in Delft, Holland and I had to share it.  You've got to love a library that has designed its facilities and services around the idea that “life is all about having more fun than you can think of, and it starts at the library.”

Not all of the "ultra modern" furniture and ambience would play well in our PVLD libraries but ideas like computer "pods" and listening stations?  Collections identified by "natural language" names?  Modular shelving and display stations on wheels?  Embracing genres such as graphic novels and romance novels?  There's plenty that we could figure out how to do here....and not all of them take much $$$

Fewer items, higher circulation? Can we learn from Borders?

Under the leadership of Customer Service Manager Eve Wittenmyer and Assistant Manager Melissa Little PVLD has been working to more effectively "merchandise" our collection by displaying more books face-out and displaying more books on the ends of the shelves.  We started with the new book area, and are doing our best to apply these techniques elsewhere in the library in the face of space and shelving design limitations.  Customers seem to love the face out display, but we haven't had it in use long enough to get real data about whether it is resulting in increased circulation.

That's why I was interested to read this article from the Wall Street Journal about Borders Bookstores' experience with face out displays.  Sales went up 9% when books were displayed with their covers, not spines, facing out!

As we are experiencing, face-out display means more shelf space consumed per book, and Borders is anticipating that it will need to reduce the number of titles carried in its stores by up to 10% to accomodate the new approach.

This overturns a longstanding orthodoxy in the bookstore business that faced with competition from Amazon.com and its ilk the bricks and mortar stores need to carry more and deeper inventories.

However, as John Deighton of the Journal of Consumer Research notes "We can be overwhelmed or thrust into indecisiveness by the presence of a large number of temptations," Mr. Deighton adds. "People don't want choice, they want what they want. And what they want is sometimes constructed for them in the store by the attractiveness of what's on offer."

Interestingly, "Borders says customers visiting its prototype store said their impression was that more books were available." [emphasis mine]

Borders also intends to couple its merchandising strategy with a new online service that will give customers fairly ready access to titles that are not in store inventory.

Commenting on the Borders strategy Seth Godin  makes the point that Borders is adopting the second of two potentially valid strategies:

1.  "Order taking" where you try to stock everything so that the answer to "Do you have....?" is YES, or

2.  Marketing and selling so that instead of trying to answer as many permutations of the "Do you have...?" question as possible you instead do the asking and the question is "Do you want...?" (and as Mr. Deighton notes in the quote above, sometimes wants are created by what people see when they walk through the door.)

As Seth notes, "Bookstores that follow this strategy need to be pickier about what they carry, organized differently (alphabetical order again!) and staffed differently as well. Don't put all the cookbooks in a little corner. Instead, put books for me (whether they are cookbooks or computer books) together and make me delighted I found you."

If the Borders strategy works there are some interesting implications for libraries -

• Maybe we can get higher circulation, and better customer satisfaction, with fewer items displayed more creatively and attractively....surely a good thing in the face of perennial budget pressures.
• We may need different types of shelving and furniture - more display cubes, tilted shelves, etc.  Bookstores make good use of temporary displays, cardboard fold-outs, etc.  Can we?
• Our Dewey Decimal and alphabetical shelving schemes are counter to the idea of,as Seth Godin so eloquently puts it, putting books for me together -

  "Do you want this cool new cookbook about Spain? It's right next to that amazing new novel about food in Spain..."
  
  Dewey may not just be too limiting for the digital world, it may be to limiting for the physical world as well.

Interesting stuff...and an indication that Eve and Melissa are leading us in a worthwhile direction.

Getting the Word Out

After yesterday's post I don't want anyone to think that I am anti promoting the library....of course we want to let people know what we offer.  That said, I'm not sure traditional approaches to marketing, promoting, branding, etc. will work in the Web 2.0 world. 

As the blogs and articles referenced in yesterday's point out....in an era of "cheap, ubiquitous interaction" one of the goals is to "do something worth talking about" (worth talking about positively of course!)

Another goal is to find ways to get yourself into the conversation.  That's why having a presence in online communities is so important.  We still haven't had a good opportunity to get PVLD onto Facebook, Ning or some of the other social networking sites, but we re taking steps to get ourselves out ontp the social web.

We're now on the new LibraryThing Local, which allows us to make people aware of our libraries and our programs via the popular LibraryThing social catalog (and, by the way, mark us as a favorite, subscribe to an RSS feed of local events including ours,  or add comments to the "comment wall".

I'm also pleased to see that we now have 9 reviews on  Yelp.com - with an average rating of 5 stars.

Ways of getting into the conversation...and they didn't cost us a dime!