PVLD Director's Blog

Selling vs serving

One of the projects that took up a fair amount of my time a few weeks ago was serving as a Rater for applications to this year's Eureka Leadership Institute.  This involved reviewing and rating about 60 applications for the 30 available slots.  Applicants had to submit a resume, several reference letters, provide answers to four qualitative questions about leadership, and describe a project that they plan to undertake as part of the Eureka process.

One of the qualitative questions was along the lines of "What are the most pressing issues facing your library and your community and how can the library address them?"  and I was stunned by the number of people who wrote only about the issues facing their library (budget pressures, short staffing, lack of awareness of library services, etc.) with no reference to the needs and issues of the community they serve and/or responded that the most important thing the library can do is make sure more people are aware of and use its services...i.e. "selling" the library or, as I have seen it put, "converting the heathen".   

I don't know whether it is an indictment of the state of library education or a reflection of a "hunkering down" mentality within libraries, but it was very disappointing that so few applicants seemed to grasp that the path to success isn't convincing people how wonderful libraries are, but rather in identifying and addressing real community needs.

My experience of the Eureka applications is still fresh, so this blog post from Dan Blank about using social networking to build communities (via David Lee King)  really struck a cord, especially this:

You don’t sell to a community. You support a community. You provide for a community. You connect a community. You mediate a community. You balance a community. You sacrifice for a community.

One of the important roles libraries can play (in both the physical and virtual worlds) is helping build communities...but as Dan Blank notes that is very different from selling something. 

Sure, we need to make sure people are aware of our services and most libraries, PVLD included, invest a significant amount of time and effort in marketing our services and programs.  I get worried, though, when as a profession we seem to confuse marketing with developing a deep understanding of the communities we serve and their needs and aspirations, and then connecting what we do to those needs.

The world we live in

I think I published an earlier version of this a year or more ago....it's been updated and I still find it a fascinating snapshot, so I thought I'd pass it  along.  There are definitely plenty of things for PVLD to think about as we evolve our services and work to improve how we communicate with and engage our community....

Whatever happened to the book?

A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk to the Southwest Manuscripters about the future of books and reading.  I only wish I had come across this video of Mark Pesce from his The Human Network blog before I prepared my remarks.

In it he talks about how the act of reading is changing in the digital age, and asks the question "What is electronic about the electronic book?"  His answers fascinated and intrigued me...and scared me a bit too! 

If you are interested in books and reading, watching the entire video is a worthy investment of 35 minutes.  I suggest grabbing a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and a notepad and a pen, setting the video to "full screen" (just click on the little symbo with arrows radiating out to the edges of a square at the bottom right of the video screen), and then settling in for a real intellectual journey!

Now...tell me what you think!

21st Century Literacies

Thank you to Helene Blower of LibraryBytes for pointing me to this thought-provoking video of social media educator Howard Rheingold talking about 21st century literacies.  My past couple of blog posts talked about the challengethat people who don't have basic computer skills face in navigating our increasingly digital world.  Mr. Rheingold talks about how the challenge goes beyond skills to literacies, which he defines as the coupling of skills with using them in a meaningful way within a community.    

The video iteself is about 45 minutes long,  but for those who are interested in this subject it is a worthwhile investment of time.  In the library realm we have tended to focus on what we call "information literacy", and what Mr. Rheingold calls critical consumption or "crap detection", as the key 21st century literacy. This is certainly important, but I was intrigued by the other literacies identified in the video - 

• Attention - in a world of multitasking and myriad distractions, how do we make judgements about what to pay attention to?
• Participation - how do we use technology and social media to participate in the wider community
• Cooperation - how do we use technology and social media to engage others?
• Network awareness - how do we identify/build/participate in networks and recognize how our social media actions are transmitted via networks?

With regard to the "attention" literacy I was particularly struck by Mr. Rheingold's comment that the world of social media is "not a queue, it's a flow" - that unlike the world of email and other "point to point" messages which can be processed serially and need to be managed, the world of social media demands that we accept that we will not view or receive every message, and that we need to learn how to "sample" and perform a form of triage so that we get a feel for what is happening and respond to the important stuff without getting bogged down.  This is definitely an area where I am only semi-literate!

Mr. Rheingold questions whether the traditional educational environment is, or even can be, the place for developing these literacies...which of course made me wonder whether/if libraries could play a role.  Given that we struggle to be recognized even as a resource for the information literacy/critical consumption literacy that we see as core to our mission and have not yet come to grips with how to effectively help people build even basic computer skillsand comfort levels  I'm not sure how - but its something I want to spend some time thinking about.  It seems to me that starting with encouraging/helping our staff to gain these literacies is a starting point, though.

Anyway - here's the video (if it doesn't display click here for a link)

(and if you want to dive a little deeper into how to become an effective "crap detector" I recommend this article)

 

More on bridging the digital divide

My two last blog posts about our increasingly digital world, and the challenge of serving both "digital natives" and people who may have limited ability and/or interest in carrying out their affairs digitally seems to have struck a chord judging by the thoughtful comments on the blog, the emails from colleagues both within and outside PVLD, and the verbal comments I have received.

I got a long and thoughtful email from Genesis Hansen of the Newport Beach Public Library (which in many ways is the California library most like PVLD) outlining the ways they have tried to meet the challenge of serving their less computer-savvy customers, including re-introducing "snail mail" notifications when they abandoned their telephone notification system.

Genesis concludes her email with the following -

"...Which brings me back to the idea that for many of our customers, it might be better to offer a service that is geared towards “let me help you accomplish a specific task” rather than “let me teach you how to do it yourself.” There’s a significant portion of our user base for whom the second option is just not a realistic goal. And I think you are right that this type of help or training doesn’t require an MLS – I don’t think that’s the best use of our resources. Our local senior center has a computer club, and I’m thinking of ways that we can connect them with some of our customers who need a lot of hand-holding – I think it’s actually really possible that we could make this work on a volunteer basis, where we provide the facilities and schedule the appointments, but the actual training is done by tech-savvy volunteers. It’s one possibility, anyway…

And on a lighter note, my 89-year-old grandfather is on Facebook – he hasn’t really taken to it the way he took to email, but I love his attitude and willingness to try new things. He plays around on his computer and gets himself stuck sometimes, but it doesn’t stop him from trying to learn. He and his golf buddies go online to set up their tee-times, send each other dirty jokes and track their stock portfolios. He’s found a way to use the computer and internet to enhance his life and make it easier to accomplish some things he’d be doing anyway, and I think that’s so cool!"

Over the weekend I also saw a couple of newspaper articles that made it clear that libraries are not the only organizations struggling with how to take advantage of the efficiencies and benefits of the digital era offers without alienating customers who are not comfortable in this new world.

Sunday's New York Times had this article about T-Mobile's aborted attempt to charge customers more to receive paper rather than online bills; while Monday's LA Times ran this story about a move by some grocery stores to stop accepting paper checks.  Both highlight the difficulties inherent in asking people to put their faith in digital processes.

Plenty of food for thought, although I keep coming back to the Sacramento Bee article about the 98-year old Facebook user and to Genesis' description of how her grandfather uses Facebook.  My own grandmother has been dead for nearly 10 years, but a few months before she died at age 80 she got her first computer and learned to use email.  She was delighted by this new way of keeping in touch with people, and I know she would have loved Facebook.

I also think about how digital technology has enriched my relationships.  Whether its getting glimpses into the lives of my nieces and nephew via their Facebook pages, hearing from Friends about what is new in their lives via Twitter, or playing games online with my sister in Canada I am connected to far-flung family and friends in ways that feel more like living near them than the letters bearing old news or phone calls that were limited by time zone differences and cost of my years in Canada and Australia.

I wonder if part of the solution to encouraging those who are reluctant to enter the digital realm is to help them discover these "soft" benefits.  it won't work for all, and I keep coming back to the idea that one-on-one coaching would be most effective, but it seems to me that being able to play games with distant grandkids, or as one of my friends does, play online bridge with far-flung siblings while videoconferencing on Skype (which she describes as being just like sitting around a table together) would be a real draw.

Keep those comments coming!

Web 2.0 and Social Media - Not Just a Fad!

Are "social media" like Twitter and Facebook a fad, or has the Internet ushered in a social and cultural revolution to rival the industrial revolution? 

Thank you to Stephen Abram for sharing this YouTube video that attempts to answer this question using data (with citations!)..watching with the sound off is recommended!

The video demonstrates how the Internet has grown much faster than media like radio and TV did.  What it doesn't address is how, unlike using a basic radio or television where the only skills required were turning on switches and changing channels or adjusting volume, the Internet requires a raft of skills from basic literacy to data entry to establishing and maintaing passwords to screen-based navigation.

I've been thinking about this alot as PVLD is experiencing first hand the challenges some (mostly older) customers have navigating the process of setting up their user accounts in our new SOPAC online catalog.  Our Digital Services Manager, David Campbell, is providing a lot of one on one coaching through this process and as he does he is hearing that these people also have a lot of difficulty with online activities like buying books from Amazon, or booking travel online.  In his experience they need more than classes or written instructions, they need someone to hold their hand and guide them as they use these new tools.

It seems to me that this is both a challenge and an opportunity for libraries.  On the one hand, we need to keep developing services and products that engage those who are comfortable in the online world of the "social web", and at the same time we need to support those who are not. 

I jokingly told David this afternoon that in his individualized support for people struggling with the new system he is the equivalent of an old-fashioned travel agent.  Thinking about it further, it strikes me that this is not just a funny comment, but a service model that we need to explore further....

Twitter goes mainstream

When I first started using Twitter nearly two years ago it was a novelty and I was just playing around with it but within a fairly short time, as evidenced by these blog posts from January 2008 and June 2008, it became apparent that Twitter was more than just a fun way to let people know what you are up to.

Since then Twitter, along with Facebook, has become an integral part of PVLD's communication strategy - you can follow us at http://twitter.com/pvld to get news and information about upcoming programs...but it's also become an established part of American culture and life. 

Over the course of the summer, for example, a friend whose daughter had been badly injured in an accident used Twitter to keep everyone up to date on what was happening.  It was easy for her to use her cell phone to post updates from the hospital and later the rehab facility and then home, and a great way for all of us to monitor progress and send messages back to the family.

I had another reminder of the value of Twitter during the brushfires of the past week, when I was able to get up-to-the-minute status updates on the fire on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the other brushfires by following the Los Angeles County Fire Department on Twitter.  The updates came straight to my cell phone as text messages so I could monitor the situation without being tied to my desk.

This week I was doing my usual cruise through various library and technology blogs and happened across several interesting articles that reinforced my sense that Twitter has moved into the mainstream. 

 Here's a post from The Librarian in Black's blog about how Best Buy is using Twitter to provide technical advice along with product promotions (with some good tips for how libraries could use Twitter more effectively).

And here's one from the Read, Write, Web blog about how Twitter could help families stay in contact during an emergency - and how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is encouraing use of social networking tools like Twitter as an alternative means of communications.

And on a less serious but no less interesting note the Fast Company blog had this article on Twitter-inspired art.

It's obvious Twitter has moved well beyond the "here's what I'm eating for dinner stage"!

I'm off for an extended holiday weekend - I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Labor Day.   

Micro-volunteering

Here at PVLD we rely heavily on volunteers to supplement our staff.  Over 220 volunteers gave nearly 29,000 hours of their time last year...that's the equivalent of about 15 full-time employees or about a 30% addition to our full-time-equivalent paid staff! 

Most of our volunteer opportunities require people to make a substantial and regular time commitment and to come to one of the libraries, and most of our volunteers are either high school students who leave us when they head off to college, or retirees. 

At the same time, we know that societal trends and changing demographics mean that this model of location-based volunteering is under threat.  The contingent of older volunteers who are willing to make this kind of commitment is aging, and the Baby Boomers are increasingly looking for volunteer opportunities that can be done to fit in with their busy lives, on their schedule, and that capitalize on their skills and life interests.  Coming to the library every week to shelve the new magazines and newspapers or work in the library shop just isn't appealing to them.  Students are also increasingly busy and find it hard to commit to a regular schedule, although the fact that volunteering looks good on college applications is a powerful incentive.

That's why I was intrigued by this new online service that delivers what it calls "micro-volunteering" opportunities to people's mobile phones.  Essentially organizations can post volunteer opportunities that can be done remotely and when convenient for the "volunteer".  The Extraordinaries offers "on demand volunteerism" by mobile phone.  The opportunities posted on its home page are fascinating - documenting instances of government waste, posting stories that put a face on the immigration debate, contributing to an online map showing the locations of Automated Defibrillators around the world, adding tags (descriptors) to images in an online virtual arts library, reporting bird sightings to the Audubon Society, providing coaching and feedback to someone learning English....even the Library of Congress is using it to get people to help tag images in their digital image collection!

While this will never replace what volunteers do within our library walls, I can see some interesting applications for PVLD - for example adding tags and reviews to the items in our online catalog, testing website updates or databases and giving us feedback, posting information about the library or the Friends of the Library to various social networking sites (e.g. asking people to post PVLD/PFL information to their Facebook page or send it out on their Twitter accounts), adding tags to our local history photos and other digital photos, sending in testimonials/photos of themselves using the library for use in our marketing and fundraising efforts. 

Right now The Extraordinaries is still in beta, and is only available for the Iphone.  I've downloaded the Iphone app and will be following its progress...and maybe even trying out some of the listed opportunities.  I'd also love to hear any ideas you have for how PVLD could leverage this new tool!

Twitter and the transformation of communication

This TED video of Clay Shirky talking about "How Social Media Can Make History" has been floating around the blogosphere for little while now.  I just had a chance to watch it, and found it to be one of the most succinct and compelling descriptions yet of how the Internet is transforming not only traditional media but how people communicate and how organizations and institutions need to respond. 

The entire video provides food for thought, but I was particulaly taken by his description of a new world of what he calls media, and I would call information, that is produced locally (i.e. everywhere), by amateurs, extremely quickly (essentially in real time) and in abundance...and where it's distribution is not one to one, or even one to many, but many to many in a rich network of messages and conversations. 

Mr. Shirky's talk is in large part about how this change in the very nature of information and communication is making old models of institutional control of individuals irrelevent and driving new models of organization based on convening and supporting groups and conversations. He uses China's attemtps to control access to the Internet use as an example of the former (particularly relevent given news in the last day or so that China has suspended access to Twitter and Facebook to prevent the dissemination of information about ethnic riots in Xinjiang province) and Barack Obama's presidential campaign as an example of the latter.

He doesn't mention librarians or libraries at all, but I couldn't help thinking about what all of this means for a profession and institutions that originated to collect, organize, and disseminate information/media in a world that was the inverse of that being created by the Internet - i.e. where information/media were produced centrally, by "professionals", disseminated slowly, transmitted "one way" to a person or group, and scarce/expensive.  This model is at the very heart of the professional library disciplines of cataloging, collection development, and reference and I have to wonder how they will change in this new world.

My own view (as previously stated on this blog!) is that the role of the librarian will need to move from collecting, organizing (controlling?), and disseminating information to  fostering connections between people and to a large extent letting the information take care of itself.  We're already seeing this role emerge in the growing importance of library "programming" (speakers, events, and activities) programs in general, and at least here at PVLD we are particularly seeing an interest people in ongoing clubs (like PVLD's book groups, story times, history discussion group, chess clubs, etc.) and "series" type programs such as the concerts organized by librarian Ashely Burdick or the Cine-Monde movie series - which provide not only entertainment and learning opportunities, but foster intreaction. conversation, and relationships. Interestingly in our case these ongoing programs are increasingly supported and even led by volunteers and to an extent self-organizing.

I can see a future in which less an less of a librarian's time is spent on the traditional activities of collection management (which increasingly can increasingly be automated based on actual usage data and techniques such as standing orders) and reference (which becomes less important in a world where information and the tools to find it are ubiquitous and people feel capable of finding what they need on their own) and more time is spent as Mr. Shirky puts is "Creating an environment for convening and supporting groups".

And since the video doesn't always display correctly - here's the link! http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

Transforming Reading

On Friday our Digital Library Services Manager, David Campbell, told me about this article by Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in the latest issue of Wired Magazine.  It's a great description of how technology is allowing reading to be transformed from a largely individual act to a social one, which in turn has the potential not to diminish the importance and value of reading but to enhance it.

I need to check out some of the websites Mr. Thompson references, but the idea that technology will unleash the sharing of annotations, commentary and opinions not just on books or written works as a whole, but on excerpts or snippets - and thereby greatly facilitate people's ability to discover things they might want to read - is intriguing.

I am also intrigued by the idea that technology could create a class of what Mr. Thompson calls "professional readers"and I would term "citizen reviewers"...people who share their views on what they read and build a followership based on the quality of their insights and the alignment of their interests with those of other readers and not because they happen to be published in the newspaper or Library Journal.  Of course this is already happening already through blogs and Tweets and Facebook postings and user reviews on Amazon.com and in library catalogs...but the development of sites like BookGlutton have the potential to take it to a whole new level by enabling not only annotations and comments, but real time exhanges of ideas and opinions.

On a professional level I can see how these changes will also be another force for change in the practice of librarianship.  The days when we can base decisions about what to add to the collection based on whether an item was "professionally reviewed" are clearly numbered, and our efforts to develop "social catalogs" need to be stepped up exponentially if we are to offer the same opportunities to share the experience of reading that a commercial site like BookGlutton offers.

On a personal level I just hope the BookGlutton IPhone app isn't too far away!