PVLD Director's Blog

Libraries and the Cognitive Surplus

I just spent an hour writing a post about this amazing video featuring Clay Shirky, and then lost it due to some mysterious glitch! Now I need to try to recreate my "brilliant" thoughts!

For some reason the video won't embed in my post, so here's the link to the DonorPower blog post where I found it.  Take a look...it's well worth the 15 minutes or so.

As I watched it I kept thinking about the implications for libraries.

Libraries originated as essentially repositories of content (think the great library at Alexandria or the monks preserving their manuscripts during the middle ages), and have evolved into institutions focused largely on content delivery.  Its interesting that some of our most "innovative" service models (and sources of heated debate) are largely about how we get better at delivering content. Think about the current debate about the limitations of the Dewey Decimal System, or the move towards "merchandising" our collections, or the often heated discussions about whether we should more heavily emphasize customer demand or professional judgement when selecting materials.  All are about more effectively connecting our customers with our collections....i.e. content delivery.

Now think about the world that Mr. Shirky describes in the video.  A world in which people expect to participate in the creation and sharing of content, not just to consume it.  A world in which an individual, using low cost technologies, can participate in the domain of content organization and delivery that has traditionally been the domain of libraries and well-capitalized businesses.  A world in which the 200 billion hours/year that has been spent watching television can be redirected to the creation and sharing of content.

I think this shift from passive consumption to participatory creation and sharing will render our current delivery-based library service models obsolete.  The challenge for librarians and library institutions is to transform ourselves so that we become active participants in this new world.

What does this mean?  Some thoughts -

Librarians need to shift from being organizers of and gatekeepers to information and content to designers of the systems that allow people to actively participate in the creation and sharing of content and the design of library services.

The boundary between the "library" and the community will become increasingly permeable.  Our staff will need to have the deep knowledge of the needs and aspirations of the communities we serve that only active engagement outside the four walls of the library can provide.  As a young library school graduate and job applicant I interviewed the other day put it - "We need to have the kind of community involvement that means that wherever we go in the community we meet people we know, and we need to develop services based on real understanding of community needs not what we pretend to know."

Our internal boundaries will also become more permeable as we rapidly reconfigure our organizations and services to adapt to changing community needs. 

Our library buildings will become just one service point in an array that spans the virtual world and the physical communities we serve.  Web-based services, cell-phone based services, widgets on the websites of others, "pop ups" at community events, micro-services at locations throughout the community (mini-collections? kiosks? book-dispensing machines?) will become the norm.

The library buildings themselves need to be redesigned to foster participation and engagement.  Service desks that have staff and customers working side by side to collaborate on solving the customer's problem? Replacement of the discreet and somewhat secretive suggestion box with white boards (physical or virtual) where customers can share their thoughts about library services and build on the ideas of others?  Spaces where staff and customers come together on a regular basis to discuss library and community issues?

Our catalogs need to move beyond inventory management systems to platforms for users to share information, make connections with people of similar interests,  and help one another find the resources that are most relevent for their needs in their particular contexts. (See my previous post on the Social Catalog and Bibliocommons)

We need to build deep and broad institutional knowledge of emerging technologies and business/service models and skill in the rapid deployment of new technologies and models.  Technology-based innovation can no longer be the sole responsibility of the IT staff.

We need to stop viewing volunteers as supplemental labor and find ways to engage the full array of talents, experiences, and knowledge that our volunteers bring to us (See Boomer Volunteers)

Most of all we need to build library cultures that encourage and respect the participation of our communities and organizational designs that foster experimentation and learning.

There is a huge store of intellectual capital waiting to be tapped - in our communities and within our institutions.  Let's tap it!

Those are some of my thoughts...what are yours?

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. 

Web 2.0 and the Read/Write Library

I came across a couple of interesting items on the subject of Web 2.0 and libraries during my blog-surfing over lunch today.

First, courtesy of Michael Sauers at the Travelin' Librarian blog, is this video produced by British innovation and creativity expert Charles Leadbeater and colleagues about "Web 2.0" and its implications.

It's a good description of the social web and how it is transforming society, and while the Annoyed Librarian might call it another piece of "twopointopian" propaganda, it does at least acknowledge that for all of the opportunities it provides the social web also raises as-yet-unanswered questions and possible concerns.

I was just reflecting on the video when I got an email from Jackie Siminitus, "E-Rate Specialist and Library Advocate" of AT&T with a link to this very interesting post about how libraries in Chile are moving "from cataloging books to training users how to blog" from  the PBS Idealab blog.

In a world where all too often civilians (i.e. non-library people) think that the Internet is making libraries obsolete it was great to see a "non-library" blog recognize "...a larger trend taking place at libraries large and small from the southern tip of Chile to the Siberian tundra of Russia. Public libraries are no longer just points of reception; they are transforming into centers of transmission and communication, where local users take advantage of increasingly affordable digital cameras and free online tools to write and share their own local stories."

It was also inspiring to read that "nearly every library - from the southern tip of Patagonia to the northern border with Bolivia and Peru - will be equipped with wi-fi by the end of the year."  Wouldn't it be great to be able to say that about libraries in the U.S.?

Most inspiring of all was this video of Enzo Abbagliati of of Chile's national library network talking about how Chilean libraries are embracing the world of Web 3.0 (not 2.0!) as a catalyst for social change and to support participatory democracy:

Enzo Abbagliati from BiblioRedes

And his term "Catalysts for opportunity" is about the best description of what libraries and librarians can provide that I've heard!

Another bit of evidence that Web 2.0 et seq. is something to be embraced, not feared!

 

Digital Generation Gap

The other day I was talking on the phone to my 16 year old niece in Canada, who was telling me about her new haircut.  I said "Sounds cute - email me a picture" to which she responded "Just look on my Facebook page"  Duh!

The conversation reminded me of a couple of articles that I came across a few weeks ago about parenting in this digital age.  The first, from the New York Times, talks about how text messaging is changing how parents and kids communicate.  The second, from the Washington Post, is about the perils and pitfalls of parents becoming "Facebook friends" with their kids.

Both articles make some interesting points about privacy.  I'd never though of cell phones and text messaging as enabling kids to have more privacy, but as the New York Times article points out its a lot harder for your parents to know what you are up to if you are accessing the Internet from your cell phone, or sending a text message to a friend rather than talking on the phone where your parent can hear at least one side of the conversation.

I also thought the Washington Post quote from Steve Jones, University of Illinois Professor and digital communications expert was interesting -

"What they want to keep most private is not something they wish to keep from strangers, it's the things they want to keep from people that know them," he said. "It's 'I don't care what someone who doesn't know me finds out. But I do care about what someone I know intimately [does].' "

On the one hand, a technology gives parents a much greater ability to stay in touch with their kids, but on the other hand that same technology allows kids to conduct a much greater portion of their lives in ways that are hidden from their parents.

Part of growing up is expanding the parts of your life that you want to keep private from your parents, so there is nothing new in that.  What is new I think is the extent to which technology is enabling that process to happen earlier and faster than ever before.

The articles also made me think that PVLD's policy of requiring parental permission for minors to access the Internet via library computers is of greater symbolic than practical value.  Kids who want to use technology to "hide" stuff from their parents will find a way to do it whether they use library computers or not, and kids like my niece who have little to hide will let even their aunts and uncles be their Facebook friends.  I hope we aren't creating a false sense of security.       

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!

Parents on Facebook

As I was in the car last Friday I tuned into the local public affairs/call-in show hosted by Patt Morrison and happened to hear this great segment on parents using Facebook (note that you will need Realplayer to listen). 

It's an interesting discussion of how parents are using Facebook to stay in touch with their kids, and how kids are reacting.  It also has some great discussion about generational differences on issues like privacy.

One of the things that was most striking to me was that, while some parents were a little bemused by Facebook's popularity (one parent described it as "a bit silly"), there was none of the sense of fear bordering on hysteria that I think would have been an inevitable part of a discussion of social networking sites not very long ago and a much greater appreciation for the way in which Facebook facilitates staying in touch than I was expecting.

Then again, reflecting on how three generations of my family use Facebook to stay in touch maybe I shouldn't have been surprised!

Twitter for Libraries

People who follow this blog or visit my Facebook page may have noticed that I have been putting information out on Twitter .  A few weeks ago, during a period in which I was sending out "tweets" much more frequently than I have been doing more recently, my kid brother sent me a Facebook message asking "What is Twitter and why are you doing it?".  Good question!

For those who don't know, Twitter is what is known as a "microblogging" application.  It allows you to use either the Twitter website ( www.twitter.com ) or your cell phone to send out very brief (only a couple of lines long) messages, sometimes called "tweets".  You can elect to have these messages appear on Twitter's "public timeline" or use "widgets" (downloadable mini software applications) to have your Twitter posts automatically appear on your blog or Facebook account.  You can also "follow" other people who have a Twitter account and receive their Twitter messages either as messages in your Twitter account online or as text messages to your cell phone.  Likewise, people can "follow" you and automatically receive your tweets on their cell phones or in their Twitter accounts.  Finally (at least as far as my knowledge of Twitter is concerned...there's probably more you can do!) you can set up Twitter so that you are notified every time a tweet containing a certain word or phrase, like "library"  or "Palos Verdes" is issued by anyone.

That answers the question "What is Twitter" but not why I use it!

As an individual, I've been experimenting with Twitter as a way of adding brief updates to my blog and Facebook without having to actually log in to Typepad (my blogging software) or Facebook....and it updates both at once!

As a Library Director, I'm interested in exploring how we can use social networking technologies to offer library services or promote the library.  Back in October I wrote a post about my initial experience with Twitter and some early thoughts about how libraries could use it, and last week I was excited discover how the Brooklyn Museum is using Twitter to promote museum events and activities (sorry I can't remember whose blog pointed me to this one!)

Not only does this allow someone to join Twitter and "follow" the museum, staying up to date on its activities, but the "tiny URLs" (which Twitter creates automatically everytime you include a hyperlink in a tweet) link back to the museum's blog and website so you can get the full story if you want.   And because the tweets appear on the public timeline its another way of letting serendipity work its magic.  Who knows who will find their way to the museum via this path!

A very cool idea!  Now we just need to find the time to set up the PVLD Twitter account and telling people to "follow us"!

Getting to Library 2.0

I'm sitting in the Sacramento Airport on my way home from the California Library Association Legislative Committee meeting and taking advantage of a long wait for my flight home to check in on some of my favorite blogs. John Blyberg has a very interesting post on the perils of ignoring what he calls the "information ecology" in which he talks about the dangers of "arbitrarily introducing technology that isn't properly integrated into our overarching information framework".

He goes on to say "Of course, that means we have to have a working framework to begin with that compliments and adheres to our tradition of solid, proven librarianship. In other words, when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can't be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves." A good reminder for someone like me, who can get quite smitten by the latest technology toy!

John's comments about the risks of vendors adopting the language and some of the "web 2.0" tools and "mimicking the Web 2.0 widget–the deliverable" and then selling their products to libraries who are grasping for some way of "doing web 2.0/library 2.0" really resonated. One of the things I have enjoyed most about working with Beth Jefferson at Bibliocommons is how she and her team are working with libraries and library users to develop not just a software tool but a conceptual model for how the library catalog can offer real library users, most of whom are NOT fluent in the tools and language of Web 2.0, new and richer ways of interacting with the library collection and with one another. Library 2.0 is not just about adding user reviews to the catalog or a Meebo widget to the website its about taking the time to think deeply about what we (libraries) do and what we want to be and about to integrate new models, concepts, and technologies into that vision.

As John says so much better than I could - "The true pursuit of Library 2.0 involves a thorough recalibration of process, policy, physical spaces, staffing, and technology so that any hand-offs in the patron's library experience are truly seamless. We can learn a lot about collaboration and individual empowerment from Web 2.0, but we cannot be subsumed by it because we have a mission that eclipses "don't be evil" which is the closest thing to a conscience the Web will ever have."

John's post was sparked by a post by Kate Sheehan, who blogs at www.loosecannonlibrarian.net and will soon be joining John at the Darien Public Library. I hadn't known about Kate's blog, but it's now on my Bloglines list. Kate reports on a conversation with librarian/blogger Andrea Mercado (another new add to my Bloglines list!) and asks Are librarians culturally self-aware? in terms of their real understanding of the real cultures of social networks. The whole chain of comments on Kate's post makes some great points (no doubt because the commenters are some of the most thoughtful library bloggers around) but I particularly loved Andrea's comment that "User-centric design and use of social networking isn't just about *being* in Rome, but also doing as the Romans do, even if it's different from what we do."

In reading John, Kate, and Andrea this afternoon I was reminded of two personal experiences. The first dates back more than 15 years when my husband and I were working on a large information systems implementation in Australia. I was leading the team that was redesigning virtually every business process in the company based on the capabilities of the new software system, and my husband was working on the development of user training and documentation using a methodology called Information Mapping, which appeared deceptively simple but really was quite a detailed, labor intensive and rigorous way of presenting complex information. It was tempting for many people to make documents look like they had been "information mapped" without doing the hard analytical work, and the project team coined the term "pidgin mapping" to describe this phenomenon. Much of what we see in libraries seems to be "pidgin Library 2.0" – adopting technologies and tools without doing the hard work of integrating them into a thoughtful conceptual model and vision for the future.

The second experience is much more recent. The PVLD Board of Trustees recently had the opportunity to appoint a new Trustee. One of the (ultimately unsuccessful) applicants has made a career heading business development efforts for Internet companies. In his application he raised a concern with the PVLD strategic plan, one component of which he read as an effort by the library to compete with bookstores, coffee shops, etc. He and I met for coffee a few days ago to talk about how he might be able to help PVLD in other capacities, and he said to me something along the lines of "If the public library thinks it can win a competition with Borders or Starbucks you might as well give up now. That battle is lost. What you need to do identify what it is you do that no one else can do, and then find ways to apply new business models and technologies to do it even better. That might involve adopting some of what Borders or Starbucks do, and even partnering with them, but it's not about out-competing them."

How do we do that? We can develop and nurture a deep sense of what is unique about what we offer and what we do. We can immerse ourselves in new concepts, ideas and technologies so that we understand them at a gut level – to paraphrase Andrea we can "become Roman". Those of us who weren't born into the world of online communities and networks will never be natives, but we can be fully integrated immigrants. We can stop speaking "pidgin 2.0" and looking for "in a box" solutions and start doing the hard work of developing our own unique models. We can continue to conversations like the one that John, Kate, and Andrea have been having in their blogs – because from conversation comes learning. And maybe most importantly of all, we can get over our inferiority complex. This is a profession made up of smart, thoughtful, and articulate people. If we can't develop the awareness and knowledge to sustain and grow our libraries in this new and changing environment its hard to imagine who could.

 

 

The Library of Congress and Flickr

From the Library of Congress blog – the Library of Congress is partnering with Flickr to "help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity." [And thanks to David Weinberger over at Everything is Miscellaneous for sharing the link]

The Library of Congress blogging? Posting to Flickr? Tagging? How cool is that!

I love the idea of The Commons – using Flickr to share the world's public photo collections. We've already used Flickr for our 40families project site, and it would be great to get all of our local history photos into The Commons.

This quote from the end of the post is also great -

"From the Library's perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and—most importantly—wisdom. One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it."

To Matt Raymond and the folks at LoC – thanks for helping light the path through the social web.

Redefining Information Literacy

"Information Literacy" is a topic that we think/talk about quite a bit here at PVLD. We have an active program to take information literacy education into the schools, we have until recently participated in a group of librarians from all kinds of libraries with an interest in this topic, and some of the librarians and I have been guest contributors to a University of Illinois Library School class on the topic. We've tended to take a pretty narrow view of what is meant by the term, though - something along the lines of this definition from The American Library Association's (ALA) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, Final Report "To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (1989).

It's an ok definition, although I'm not sure it goes far enough in today's Web 2.0 world where individuals are increasingly able to create and publish information. As applied by most librarians it also has a kind of dry, academic feel – we tend to think of information literacy in terms of teaching students about "sources" and "research skills". That's why I loved this post on Sexy Librarians of the Future from "The Read Write Web" which offers a whole new spin on information literacy and the role of librarians. (And thanks to the folks at Library Garden for pointing me to this item!)

I especially loved the paraphrased comment attributed to Jon Udell of Microsoft -"the librarian of the future will help a growing number of citizen media producers to classify their online media and get it connected to other related content in ways that will increase its discoverability". I couldn't agree more with Read Write Web author Marshall Kirkpatrick – that is HOT!

The staff here at PVLD is getting pretty adept and learning and applying some of these Web 2.0 tools – as witnessed by our Meebo widget, various blogs, and soon-to-be unveiled new website. Now we need to figure how to help our customers gain these skills. Should be fun!