PVLD Director's Blog

Meebo Us!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Library 2.0 - again!

This was on the "Gather No Dust" blog today - http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/

http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/2007/09/so-what-would-20-library-look-like.html

I loved the ideas for how to put control into the hands of our customers!

In a similar vein Helene Blowers of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County passed on an great comment about the learning libraries at http://www.librarybytes.com/2007/09/more-thoughts-on-learning-libraries.html

Yesterday at our Peninsula Center Library Advisory Committee ( a group of community members interested in the library)  One of the committee members, a retired librarian, made an eloquent plea for us not to abandon the systems and structures (her example was the structure of a catalog that can be searched very much like a traditional card catalog) that older adults are familiar with.  This generated an enrgetic energetic discussion about the challenge of serving the needs, skills, and learning/information seeking behaviors of our older community members  vs the very different needs and behviors of other groups such as kids and teens.  In this context I particularly appreciated the comment from Helene:

"A learning library should empower users to achieve their goals, not provide libraries with a means to push forward our own personal objectives (and yes, admit it... every organization has personal objectives that sometimes counter customer's needs - it's only natural).

I think the challenge here for many us in libraries is to realize that when we can abandon our own personal agendas in favor of our user's needs (and put them first at the top of the pyramid), we not only make our libraries more valuable to our community, but we also create a cascading effect that saturates the insecurities that drove those personal agendas in the first place.

BTW: The pyramid I see here is inverted with users filling up the the top plateau and library staff at the tiny pointed base, supporting this huge community through a flexible and adaptable balancing act that allows everyone to achieve success."

Now there's a challenge!

The Changing Nature of Information

Over the past couple of weeks I've encountered some thought-provoking news and blog items about how technology is changing the nature of information.

On Saturday, June 16th NPR ran the following interview with Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur" - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872&sc=emaf  Mr. Keen decries what he calls the "cacophony of amateurs" using "web 2.0" tools such as wikis and blogs to broadcast their opinions and their version of the news and describes this "information" as "unreliable and often corrupt".  Mr. Keen concludes that he prefers the "wisdom of experts" to the "wisdom of crowds".   

I had mixed emotions as I listened to the interview.  The librarian in me wanted to cheer Mr. Keen for supporting the role of professionals in creating, evaluating, and disseminating information, while as a blogger and blog-reader I have come to appreciate the way Web 2.0 has allowed me to learn from and exhange ideas with people in a way that would not be possible through the professionally-mediated  media journalistic process that Mr. Keen espouses.   As someone interested in personal investing, I also thought about the contrast between Mr. Keen's views and the well-accepted view that in general investors are better off with broad market indexes (the wisdom of crowds) than with managed investment funds (the wisdom of experts).  I also had to chuckle at his implication that traditional newspapers unbiased!

Yesterday I opened my local paper, The Daily Breeze,  to see a front page article about the challenges newspapers face as they experiment with Web 2.0 tools such as blogs but wrestle with how to manage the implications of an open and uncensored dialogue with and between readers.  The article began -

"Imagine you were run down by a hit-and-run driver, your local newspaper reported on it and, along with the article on its Web site, you saw this:

"I am so tired of people making excuses for their actions. What are they doing crossing a busy street in the first place? …

"Don't get me wrong, I feel really, really bad for the guy, but come on, be RESPONSIBLE!"

Or imagine your doctor sexually assaults you, and readers who commented on a story about his trial called you a "whore."

Or you're reading an article online about a drunken driving fatality, and the dozens of comments that follow are mostly hateful, profanity-laced and racist, based on assumptions and not facts.

Imagine no more, it's all real. These comments were posted on the Daily Breeze's Web site by readers.

The article was a sobering reminder that with powerful tools comes a responsibility to use them wisely.  In the days when commentary on the news was limited to the editorial pages and letters to the editor the ill-informed and downright nasty comments that are appearing on the Daily Breeze website would never have seen the light of day.  Does that mean we should go back to those days?  I'm not sure... 
Finally, I just came across this posting by Helene Blowers of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (and originator of the Learning 2.0 concept) - http://www.librarybytes.com/2006/08/library-20-its-more-than-flickr-and.html   

This is a much more optimistic view of the Web 2.0 -driven changes to the way information is created and shared, but raises some excellent questions about the role of the library profession in this new world.

"As my husband and I tuned into CNN over the two week course of our vacation to catch up on world events, we were surprised to find a good deal of their news coverage showing and acknowledging the power of “soft information” as they shared quotes from bloggers caught up in the conflict and videos posted on YouTube about the crisis in middle east. Why, because information is time sensitive.... because CNN didn’t have enough reporters in the area yet to cover the complete conflict... and because human interest/frontline experiences are worth their weight in advertising gold. (It might also help that they don’t cost the network a cent to air.) Anyway, CNN was very upfront about the airing of these videos as undocumented news sources, but even so they were information and they filled the great need for the “first person” experience.

So what am I getting at?? Simple, it’s this … 2.0 is radically changing the way users get information and that means big, BIG, BIGGG fundamental changes to the information profession and libraries as a whole. As I said to a group of librarians attending a recent presentation I gave … "I believe right NOW is the most exciting time to be a librarian in the information profession because information is changing!!" And not only is it changing, the channels are changing too!!! And what’s most important about this change is that users now are not only able to consume information while it’s still “soft”, they also have a way to participate in its creation and validation too! If that’s not earth-shattering-exciting to an information professional, then I can’t imagine what is!

I agree with Helene that it is a wonderfully exciting time to be an information professional  and that the benefits of the new forms of information outweigh the risks... and we're going to continue to have some great discussions at PVLD about how Web 2.0 and the way it is changing the very nature of information can help us transform our services.  But what do YOU think?  Do you agree with Mr. Keen that news and information creation should remain in the hands of "experts"?  Comments welcome!

More on Rethinking Reference

With all of the Starbucks devotees on staff this should be a no-brainer for us! We can meet our Strategic Plan objective of taking our services out into the community, and get our caffeine fix at the same time!  Any takers?  I'll even buy the coffee!

... the “Librarian With a Latte” program from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. What’s with Ann Arbor and library goodness, anyways?

With a laptop and a wireless connection, he sets aside time to sit at a table at a popular Ann Arbor coffee shop and invites students to drop by for help. Dozens of students showed up for one of his recent sessions.

“‘Going to where students are seems to be a theme in social-networking discussions, and they mean virtually,” he says. “It’s equally important to go where they are physically.” The coffee-shop sessions help establish relationships with students that become online interactions later.

Reshaping Reference

I spent this morning attending a panel discussion on "Reshaping Reference" at the Pasadena Public Library.  The panel was made up of State Librarian Susan Hildreth, Pasadena Public Library (PPL) Director Jan Sanders, and Metropolitan Cooperative Library System Executive Director Rosario Garza.  All of the panelists has some thought-provoking insights into how reference services need to adapt to "web 2.0" technologies and changing customer expectations. 

I was particularly interested to hear Jan speak about the things PPL is doing since my first professional public library job was in the Reference Department there.  Some of the points Jan made:

• The first staff member a customer interacts with should be able to perform "triage" - answering basic questions and getting "expert" help for more difficult questions.
• The most important selection criteria when hiring someone is customer service skills - followed by problem-solving skills, listening skills, and advocacy skills.
• All employees should be trained in the basics about the library - how it is governed, where the money comes from, and the philosophy and customer service approach of that particular library
• PPL is using a new "Voice Over Internet Protocol" (VoIP) phone system with portable headsets to enable staff members to be "on call" so that they don't have two dedicate two employees to a service desk
• The heart of "reference" is moderating the interaction between a questioner and the information being sought.  It is not tied to a "reference desk" and in many cases does not require a professional librarian (note that PPL was using trained paraprofessionals on the reference desk when I worked there 20 years ago).

Jan also had one of those "wish I'd thought of that" ideas that I think we can use at PVLD - she wants to have a link from the city's business license registration/information page to a "pathfinder" that would link to library resources for small businesses. 

Rosario Garza also had some interesting examples of forward-looking services from other libraries:

• Oxnard Public Library has a "first level reference" desk at the entrance to its adult collections.  Staff at this desk answer directional and basic "do you have this book" questions, and call out a librarian to answer more complex questions (another version of triage)
• Exeter Public Library in Rhode Island has an institutional subscription to Netflix.  If a customer requests a DVD the library doesn't own it is ordered from Netflix.  The customer picks it up at the library and returns it to the library.
• Exeter also uses the Meebo instant messaging aggregator on its home page to encourage people to IM the library
• Denver Public Library has created a virtual branch for teens, called EVolver, on MySpace

Later, over lunch, I enjoyed talking with PPL Adult Services Manager (at PPL that includes both Circulation and Reference!) Susan Poster about other interesting models they are using.  Susan and I started work at PPL on the same day in 1986!  One of the interesting things Susan is implementing is a pool of paraprofessional employees that can be flexibly deployed as needed.  She used the example of a busy Sunday, when these paraprofessionals can move between the Circulation Desk and the Reference Desk as needed....or two the Children's Department or the branches....

A bonus was that as I often find the opportunity to think about these kinds of things away from the distractions of the office helped me identify some things that we really need to do at PVLD - for example getting the meeting room reservation process automated and away from the reference desk, investigating portable phone devices for our VoIP system, and having our Adult Services librarians spend time at the Annex. 

I also realized that the path we are on to have staff at a first level reference "greeter" desk is the wrong approach.  We don't need to add another service desk - this creates an extra step for customers and a staffing/logistical problem for us.  A better solution is the one PPL is using - train all staff to perform first level reference/triage so whoever the customer talks to they get outstanding service.

The Future of Reference

Today one of our PVLD employees, Betty Engle, forwarded me the following message which she received from Amazon.com:

You're Invited!

As a valued Amazon customer, you've been specially picked to get an early look at a new website Amazon has just launched called Askville. Askville is a place where you can ask any question on any topic and get real answers from real people. It?s a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know. You can learn something new everyday or help and meet others using your knowledge. It's new, and best of all, it's free!

To start go to:

http://askville.amazon.com/askville/Landing.do?avctx=parbooks

Thanks,
- The Askville Team

It looks to me like Amazon is trying to do for "reference" what Wikipedia has done for the encyclopedia - tap into the collective knowledge of users and use the so-called "social web" to create what is in effect a replacement for the traditional reference services provided by librarians. 

As professional librarians we know that this has the risk that the information is biased, just plain wrong, or a clever way to generate sales for Amazon.  Do "civilians" (thanks Joan Frye Williams for this great term for non-librarians!) know this?  Do they care?

What is the role of the professional librarian in a world where just about everyone Googles, where Wikipedia is viewed as a great source of information, and where people are willing to trust information provided by people they don't even know?  It surely can't be sitting at the Reference Desk answering the declining number of questions from people who have the time and ability to come to the library - questions that are mostly of the "can you look up this book for me" or "I need to reserve a study room" variety.

Simple solutions such as "virtual reference" are not the answer if the abysmal usage statistics experienced in California libraries are any example.

We need to be using our Master's degrees to design the systems and programs to deliver library services that will be used and valued by customers - and to make them as easy and convenient to use as Google or Askville.  We have the ability and skills to compete in this new marketplace - but we won't succeed if we are weighted down with yesterday's orthodoxies about what the "real work" of a librarian is....