PVLD Director's Blog

This very thoughtful talk by Sherry Turkle (thank you to Trent at The Simple Dollar for sharing) is well worth 20 minutes of your time. Once I got over my chagrin at how close to home many of Professor Turkle's points struck, I started to think about the role public libraries can (and already do) play in both being a place of real human connectedness and fostering the self-reflection that Professor Turkle asserts is so lacking in our world of technological hyper-connection. As we wrestle with what is our role in an increasingly digital world, we would probably be well-advised to keep this in mind.

Like Riding a Bike

PVLD operates on a July 1 - June 30 fiscal year, so about now is when we start seriously thinking about what we want to achieve next year and beyond and how those goals will affect our budget.  For many years this has meant reviewing and updating, and periodically re-writing, our Strategic Plan.

Back in November I wrote this post about my growing feeling that PVLD may have evolved to a point where a highly structured strategic planning process resulting in a formal Strategic Plan is not only un-necessary, but possibly counter-productive. 

As the end point of our most recent three-year Strategic Plan draws ever closer I have been reflecting on how dated it already seems,how little it really guided our decision-making, and how badly we missed the mark on most of the quantitative measures.  I don't think that is because it was a bad piece of work.  It was written by smart people guided by an excellent consultant based on our best knowledge at the time.  I think the problem is that the environment is so turbulent and the pace of change so great (and getting greater) that any attempt to set objectives and goals for anything other than the very near term future (measured in weeks and months, not years) is doomed.

 A couple of weeks ago I came across this excellent post on the "Obituary of the 5 Year Strategic Plan" by Lea Blair (via Michael Bungay Stanier's Box of Crayons) and loved her idea that what we really need to to is equip people to run our organization as if they were riding a bike:

"In order to ride a bike you do the following:
1. You pack what you think (best guess) you will need for your bike ride.
2. You know your destination – or at least what you want to see when you get there.
3. You start pedaling in that direction.
4. Most important…You have a short window of time to make a decision on how to successfully navigate what comes in front of you. Especially the surprises. And surprises are one thing we can count on in ever increasing number. Whether it is a child running in front of your bike, or a turn in the road that you didn’t expect, or an oncoming biker. Only at the time when you see the actual change can you make the best decision as to how to navigate your bike."

 Let us learn what we can about the future (and pack our bags well). And, if your rider – manager or executive, has the awareness and skills necessary to be able to make those quick navigation decisions with agility and flexibility, your company will wind up at its destination… no matter what changes and surprises happen along the way."

The challenge for libraries (and, I would venture to guess, for almost every type of organization) is that  the accelerating pace of change and the unkown but surely profound outcomes of the current technological revolution make it very hard (maybe impossible?) to envision our ultimate destination. 

I'm thinking that right now maybe the best we can do is hold on tight to the handlebars, pedal like crazy, and make navigation decisions based on some core touchstone principles like whether a given course of action enhances access to information or restricts it, or whether it makes the library more connected to the community or less so, or whether it meets the test of good stewardship of the public's money.

And maybe the most recent PVLD Strategic Plan will be the last...at least for this Library Director.

 

 

Will libraries go out of business...gradually?

As expected, this holiday season saw an explosion in the sale of tablet computers and e-readers.  According to this article from MSNBC (shared by our Facilities Manager Charles Crouse), during December Amazon.com sold over 1 million Kindles of various types each week, and during the week between Christmas and New Years Eve over 20 million Adroid and Apple IOS mobile devices were activated and over 1 billion mobile apps were downloaded. 

We are certainly seeing the effects of this in the library, as patrons come in with their new devices seeking help with everything from connecting to our WiFi network to downloading e-books.  As I wrote in my earlier post, the staff is doing its best to help - our "Getting Started With E-Books" guide is prominantly featured on our website, we have invested in a selection of devices for staff training, and we will soon begin to offer small group (2-3 people) hand-on training to the public by appointment.  We also continue to beef up our e-book collection, which now has over 1,000 titles.

I'm sure we will make it through this wave in decent shape, but I am less confident about our institutional ability to respond to the tectonic shifts that are generating these waves.

 My friend Derek Wolfgram posted this article ("Why Best Buy Is Going Out of Business...Gradually") from Forbes on Facebook this morning.  It's about Best Buy's failures during the holiday season just past and what they say about the company's ability to survive in the digital age but, as Derek pointed out, the issues identified are as relevent to libraries as they are to retailers:

"Moving online required new thinking, new management structures, and new strategies.  It would also require integrated front and back-end information systems.  Customers would expect inventory to be transparent between the web and the stores, and that specials and “exclusives” would be consistent across all channels.  Whatever attributes they associated with a retailer’s brand—whether price, quality, convenience, expertise, service—would need to be translated to the online experience and enhanced.

To compete successfully against new online retailers, traditional retailers would also need to find ways to transform the expensive liabilities of physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs into assets that complemented rather than competed with the online experience.

...Amazon neither invented nor appropriated its basic strategies from Best Buy or anyone else.  It simply does what consumers want.  Best Buy does what would be most convenient for the company for consumers to want but don’t, then crosses its fingers and prays."

Antiquated back-end inventory and database systems that do not integrate seamlessly with the online experience, expensive physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs, inability to carry sufficient inventory to fulfill customer expectations, systems that are based on what we think the customer should need....sounds eerily familiar.

I know libraries and librarians across the country and around the world, and certainly here at PVLD, are working hard to fundamentally change our operating models so that we can surf the waves of technological change rather than being crushed as they crash over our heads...but I do worry that the changes are not as fast, or as fundamental, as they need to be.

 

The E-Book Wave

For the first 7 of my nearly 8 years at PVLD the most common question I got out in the community was "We have the Internet, why do we need libraries?"  This past year, the question has changed.  It's now one of several variations of "Why do we need libraries if we can get nearly every book we want on our Kindle?"

My response usually touches on the digital divide and the role libraries play in bridging it, the aesthetic value of print, and the fact that libraries also offer e-books and they are free...but I have to confess that my words usually sound weak even to me.

The truth is that, especially as we face the first holiday season in which the price point of decent e-readers is low enough to make them an extremely popular gift, it feels a bit like iwhen I am heading into the ocean for a swim and look up to see a giant wave about to break on top of me.

This time the wave is a technological one, but I suspect that the only safe response is going to be the same - dive as deep as you can, , let the wave tumble you around without fighting it, and hope you can keep your balance once you are able to get your feet on solid ground and your head above water.

The signs of profound change are everywhere, and as articles and blog posts like these make clear, they are disrupting the entire writing/publishing/content distribution ecosystem:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/how-many-christmases-until-we-see-a-whole-new-industry notes that the % reduction in sales at bricks and mortar bookstores is doubling every year -from a 1% decline in '09 to a 2% decline in '10 to an estimated 4-5% decline in '11....and probably 10% or more in '12

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/39210/  identifies the rise of consumer e-books as one of the 5 disruptive technologies of 2011

 http://ebookfriendly.com/2011/12/15/3-out-of-top-10-best-selling-kindle-books-of-2011-are-self-published/ points out that 3 of the top 10 bestselling Kindle books are self-published

http://copyrightandtechnology.com/2011/12/04/a-bleak-future-for-public-libraries-and-e-books/ provides insight into just how vulnerable public libraries are to some of the new e-book distribution models arising in the public sector

Just the fact t that these links reflect just a sampling of articles and blog posts that have been published in December alone is scary enough, but when I read the contents all I can think is that libraries are in no way prepared for the wave that is about to hit.

I'm pretty sure that the PVLD staff is not alone in heading into the holiday season knowing that as fast as we've tried to grow it our e-book collection can't meet current demand much less what we expect once all of those Kindle's are unwrapped; Overdrive, our e-book lending system, is not easy to use (especially when contrasted to just downloading an e-book from Amazon); and our staff is struggling to learn the quirks of all of the devices and is not as well-equipped as we would like to help patrons learn how to use them.

We're putting some plans in place to help us cope with the post-holiday wave, and we'll make it through the near term rough surf...but I'm honetly not sure how we, and all public libraries, will adapt to the fundamental changes rocking our world.  The one thing I do know, is that getting out of the water is not the answer... 

(Thank you California State Library for sharing the above links)

 

 

Library Books on the Kindle

Over the past year or so the thing I have most frequently asked by community members is "Can I download library books to my Kindle" which is why I was very pleased when our Ebook vendor, Overdrive, announced a few weeks ago that our library patrons would now be able to download most of our e-book collection to their Kindles.

While our patrons are thrilled, some in our profession have been quick to point out some of the possible pitfalls of having Amazon as a commercial partner...one prime example being this video rant by Librarian In Black Sarah Houghton Jann.

I have to say, though, that while I wish libraries had access to cheaper, more user-friendly, and platform independent options for offering e-books I simply don't share many of Sarah's concerns. I guess you can count me as one of the librarians who she describes as making a "greedy attempt to get content into our users hands."

I was going to write a post articulating why I don't think Sarah's anger is truly justified, but discovered that Andy Woodworth of the Agnostic, Maybe blog had written it better than I ever could...in two posts:

Library Books on the Kindle, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Amazon and

Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed

Andy's posts are a pragmatic argument that the sky is not falling just because we are giving people what they have been asking for. They are both great reads, and the second one raises a truly interesting point about whether Amazon is actually collecting confidential library records...one that both Amazon/Overdrive and the library community needs to resolve.

In the second post Andy makes the point that many of the things generating outrage on the part of some of our colleagues are analagous to many long-standing library practices and commercial arrangements but it is his statement in the first post that really matched what I have been wanting to say:

"While it may not be the ideal, it cannot be denied that bringing Amazon (and its 40% of the eReader market share) on board with library lending doesn’t raise the profile of libraries with it. Rather than simply buying every book, Kindle users now have the option of borrowing it through their local library. It’s not perfect, but even in giving that capability it puts libraries back into the minds of people who might not otherwise be library users. For them, it’s another selling point; for us, it’s another visit to our website where we advertise our programs, services, and materials. It’s an exposure opportunity that didn’t previously exist."

If the choice is being greedy to put content in the hands of community members, and in the process expanding access and maybe exposing more people to the library and what we offer, or being fearful of the shadow of possible risks to professional principles that may in fact be falling victim to changing social mores no matter what librarians do....count me among the greedy.

Steve Jobs's Chopsticks

Since the announcement of Steve Jobs' death yesterday the Internet has abounded with tributes, a good many featuring his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.  The speech is great, but this article by Peter Robinson (via Execupundit) gave me an even clearer insight into what made Steve Jobs unique. The closing line of the article says it all:

"He alone insisted on beauty"

What a legacy.  R.I.P. Steve

You've got mail

How things change!  Thanks to to Mark Phillips of Queer Ideas (a terrific blog on fundraising by the way) for sharing this.  We were living overseas when email first became common, and i can remember eagerly awaiting the "ping" of a new message.  How times change!