Trying to measure a library's success by its footfall is like...

... trying to count the number of people entering a country by only checking the airports, and ignoring those who come by sea or land. It's like trying to count book sales just based on what has been sold in the shops, and not online.

It's like trying to measure BBC viewing figures without taking iPlayer into account.

It's like trying to measure an album's success just by CD sales, without taking downloads into account.

It's like trying to measure a newspaper's success just by physical sales, and not by use of the website.

It's like trying to judge a supermarket's success without taking into account online shopping.

It's like ANY NUMBER OF THINGS WHERE THE CRITERIA ARE COMPLETELY INADEQUATE TO QUANTIFY SUCCESS OR OTHERWISE.

Let's settle this once and for all - as I've written before (PDF), and previous to that Ian Clark has written before, and any number of others have pointed out: library use has changed, people do stuff online now. People renew books online (around 40% of renewals happen online, according to my research - every single one of those is a visit to the library building saved), people reserve books online (around 18% of reservations happen online according to my research - every single one of those is a visit to the library building saved). And people access the library's resources online - e-books, e-journals, e-newspapers, databases, and so on and so forth. Take my local library, in York - in three years, online user activity (which is to say, searches of online library resources - not 'use of computers in the library') has gone up by 9,385%. That's over NINE THOUSAND PERCENT! So stop telling me that because less people visit the building, that means the library is being used less - it is a hopelessly anachronistic paradigm and no longer fit for purpose, damnit!

So thanks, BBC Breakfast, for your ill-considered piece this morning which did NOT take that into account (despite the best efforts of library campaigners who gave you their time), and was editorially led, rather than balanced.

Of course, this post is nothing more than an impotent rant that will be read only by Information Professionals who already know everything I've just said. Aaaaargh! How do we get this information beyond the echo chamber? How can we make people understand that footfall doesn't cut it as a measurement of success on its own any more?

In the meantime, if you wish to make your feelings known to the BBC about the report, you can do so via the BBC's feedback page. If we all do this it WILL make a difference.

-thewikiman

Now for some good news: we're BUILDING a library!

In a world where almost everything you hear about libraries is bad news, it's amazing to find out you can create some good news yourself. Just before Christmas @Jaffne pointed out on Twitter that you could buy India a library, via GoodGifts.org, for just £1,250.

Clearly that's a lot of money in some ways, but in others it seems a tiny amount - they build the library from scratch, kit it out with furniture, fill it with books and staff it for TWO YEARS with that money. Furthermore, you can get a donkey-drawn mobile library in Africa for just £100! Unbelievable. In each case, the libraries bring books to areas which previously had none.

Anyway, while I was marevelling about this with Jan Holmquist on Twitter, Andromeda Yelton pointed out that although she didn't have £1,250 lying around herself, perhaps Twitter would do collectively? It's a simple but brilliant idea - crowd-source enough money from librarians on Twitter, to fund a library for a charitable organisation.

As soon as we had time to put it all together, Andromeda, Jan and I, roping in Justin Hoenke for the ride, set up Buy India a Library. It's a PayPal donation based system, and so far people have been incredibly generous - we've raised nearly £500 and the campaign is only three days old! There is a lot of discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #buyalib - there is a twapperkeeper archive of the tweets here - and loads of people have clicked the donate button and given what they can.

Do you think you could help out? If everyone who reads this and my Twitter feed gave the price of a coffee to the cause, we'd have enough already. If you feel able to donate anything at all, please click the button - let's create some good news and open a library at a time of closures!

[PayPal button removed -the campaign has now closed]

It goes without saying, the PayPal accounts we're using (mine until I reach my withdrawal limit, then Andromeda's thereafter) are only being used for this campaign. Whether you're able to donate or not, it would be fantasticly helpful if you were able to spread the word about the campaign, either by linking to the main Project website on your blogroll, or telling friends and family about the campaign, or putting something in the staff bulletin drawing people's attention to it. We've set ourselves a pretty ambitious target, and we need all the help we can get! If you're able to tweet a link to this post, or Share it on Facebook, that would be amazing.

What I really like about this, apart from the obvious thing of Information Professionals making a huge difference and creating libraries where currently there are none, is that it is such a tangible process of charity giving. Rather than just adding money to a pot of existing money, we're coming together to literally BUY something specific, and real. Things will be created and pressed into service, books will be sourced and purchased - because of what we're doing here. Even if the campaign stopped right this second, four mobile libraries would be made, stocked up, and begin to move around Africa, bringing books to children who need them. Can you join in and support the project?

The Buy India a Library FAQ

If the information above is the main feature film, this bit is the DVD extras. For those who want to know more, here it is:

Which charity administers this?

The company through which we are buying these libraries is UK-based, and called GoodGifts.org. It is the brain-child of the Charities Advisory Trust, a registered charity with more than  25 years of experience. What's great about GoodGifts is that the money is guarenteed to be used for the specific purpose advertised - it doesn't go into a general pot of cash, it is used specifically for what the customer chooses. So, libraries will come into existence which were not in existence previously, thanks to your donation! GoodGifts charges a £4.95 handling fee on top of the cost of the gift - we will pay this fee, and the entirety of the money we raise will go directly to the charities involved.

More info on the charities that take over at that point (the Rural Literacy and Health Programme, and the Africa Educational Trust) below.

Where exactly will the money be spent?

Once we buy the libraries, they are provided by specialist charities. The library in India will come from the Rural Literacy and Health Programme (RLHP), set up in 1984. To quote the organisation's website, the RLHP "...operates in 56 slums and 25 villages in Mysore, Mandya & Chamarajanagar districts of Karnataka State in South India covering a population of 50,000."

The donkey drawn libraries are delivered by the African Educational Trust a UK registered charity formed more than 50 years ago, dedicated to support education in Africa. The mobile libraries are aimed at kids, and contain around 100 fiction, non-fiction and reference books - the libraries travel to schools in Somalia, Sudan and Uganda (all of which are low on supplies of books, due to being former war zones).

What happens if you raise less than £1,250?

If we raise less than the figure needed to buy a permanent library in India, we will buy multiples of mobile libraries in Africa (each costing £100) based on how much we get. If we don't get an exact X-hundred pound figure, we'll buy Book Grants (of £35 each) to make up the difference.

What happens if you raise more?

We buy more libraries! Ideally we'd like to raise £1,350 so we can buy a permanent library in India, AND a mobile library in Africa. If we make much more than that, we'll buy more mobile libraries and book grants with the difference.

Who are the people behind this campaign?

Just four Information Professionals who talk to each other on Twitter. Justin Hoenke and Andromeda Yelton are public librarians from the US, Jan Holmquist is a public librarian from Denmark, and I work in an academic library in the UK.

Why are you using a basic PayPal account for this?

We spent a looong time looking into the options here - we looked at places like www.justgiving.com but they don't support this specific charity in this specific way, and we looked at the options to upgrade our PayPal accounts to business ones but opened a whole world of problems - the net result of which were less money for the charity.

In the end we opted to use a basic PayPal account (mine [EDIT UPDATE - now Andromeda's]), which won't be used for anything else except this campaign. Once we reach the limits of that (one can only withdraw so much from a PayPal account in a year) we will switch to Andromeda's PayPal account. PayPal take a very small cut of the money, but not a prohibitive amount - for example if you give £20, we'll recieve £19.12.

Why spend money on libraries abroad when our own are in trouble?

This is a good question, a fair enough point, and one a few people have raised. Should librarians be spending their hard-earned library salaries on building libraries elsewhere while our own insitutions are closing around us? Here's my view:

- It only costs 100 pounds – 100 pounds! (that's about 155 dollars) – to set up a mobile library in Africa, to reach parts of the continent that have little or no access to books. It costs 1,250 pounds to build an entire permanent library in India, kit it out with furniture and books and staff for TWO years! Neither of those amounts would make much of a dent on the UK/US library situation, but would make a huge, tangible difference in the poorer parts of India / Africa.

- People have no real mechanism to give to libraries in the UK or US in the same way. Even if you had $5 you wanted to donate to a library, how could you? We don’t think we’re taking money AWAY from any libraries in our own countries – we believe we will catalyse spending that wouldn’t otherwise happen. That said, if we can start some kind of movement towards giving to libraries at home too, that would be amazing. Libraries for all!

- Libraries are closing all over the place. Let’s open one and have some good news for a change...

Let me know if you have any more questions about the project and here, once more, is the donate button.

[PayPal button removed -the campaign has now closed]

Thank you.

- Ned

Echolib / LISNPN / Advocacy: New Year's Round Up

A quick catch-up post for all the stuff I've not mentioned in previous posts but which has happened in the last couple of months.

The Echo Chamber

Lots of echolib stuff has been happening recently. The article I wrote a while ago for Library & Information Update has finished its embargo and so now can be made available - I've been displaying it on the Echo Chamber Netvibes page, but you can also download it in PDF format, here.

Continuing the Stealth Advocising theme from a few weeks back, I created a video version of my If you want to work in libraries... slide-deck. It has some funky hip-hoppy latin music in it that I wrote when I was about 17! Woof. Here it is - as ever, in the interests of spreading the messages far and wide, feel free to use this however you like, embed it wherever, etc etc.

The Slideshare version of this has now been viewed more than ten thousand times, so surely LOADS of those people must be outside the echo chamber, right..?

I also wrote an article for PostLib, the journal for retired librarians! I was really pleased to be asked to do this, I like to see the divide between senior and new professionals being bridged whereever possible. The resultant article is now available: Statistics, the Media and the Library Legacy (PDF) - and owes a big debt to Ian Clark [Thoughts of a Wannabe Librarian] who read it over for me and gave me his approval to use some of his ideas! It mentions the echo chamber in passing - but really the main thrust of it is to note that, if you take combined footfall and internet usage stats, public library use in the UK is actually UP over the last couple of years (quite considerably), contrary to popular reports.

Laura and I will present a new version of the Echo Chamber presentation in Cambridge in a couple of days, to an audience of 200 or so people - the biggest we've spoken to yet, so we're really excited about that.

LISNPN

There's also a couple of articles I wrote about LISNPN, the New Professionals Network, available elsewhere. They're both on CILIP platforms but both are freely available to all - Moving forward together opens Library  Information Gazette in digital form, and The LIS New Professionals Network takes you to CILIP's Information & Advice blog.

Look out for a BIG competition on LISNPN later this month, with a library-related-prize worth literally hundreds of pounds and well worth winning.

Library Routes Project

Remember Library Routes? It's still going! And there's plenty of great entries that have come in in recent months - there's now over 150 contributions from Information Professionals about how they got into librarianship, and their path through the profession. Check it out if you haven't already, or if you've not done so for a while. The project homepage has more than 25,000 views now, so maybe some of those will be from people outside the Echo Chamber too.

Gazette Profile

I was really pleased that Debby Raven featured me in the last but one edition of Gazette, following up on the Essential Careers Advice for New Professionals post. You can read the interview, again via the Digital Gazette magazine platform, here. Incidentally the permanent, to-be-added-to, and containing the wisdom of the people who've commented on the original, version of the Essential Careers Advice post is here on its own page of the blog - check it out and tell if there's anything that needs adding to it. What do you know now that you wish you'd known earlier?

All of these articles are available together on the Papers & Presentations page of my website.

And finally...

I created a hectoring advocacy poster a few weeks back - it's deliberately harsh and provocative, but I do think there is an underlying truth to it.

Phew!

- thewikiman

Blogs Still Work, and other stuff I learned in 2010

Here's a summary of some things I learned in 2010.

1. It's not what you know, or even who you know - it's the fact that you're willing to step up and share the knowledge

I've said before, the great thing about all the technology floating around the net right now is that it enables you to do stuff for yourself. Why wait for someone else to come up with the same idea, or to act on yours? You don't need any seniority, or even any money - just ideas and a will to put the time into making them happen.

On a similar note, you don't have to be particularly expert on something to talk about it, or write about it, or create it. You just have to stick your head above the parapit and be visible and a bit determined.

2. Blogs still work

2010 has been great and much of the good stuff seems to revolve around having a blog. The blog is like the sun and all the other opportunities that come up are like the planets - they get their light from the blog. The blog is like the conduit, or the gate-way, for cool stuff.

Since I started blogging a year and a half ago, I've read many articles claiming blogs are dead or dying. Those accused of man-slaughtering the medium include micro-blogging particularly, and also more visual stuff like Tumblr and video-blogging. I can see the arguments FOR those media, but I don't neccessarily think those same points are arguments AGAINST traditional blogs. Blogs allow context, space to let ideas develop, and they allow you to give a fuller account of yourself.

More than that though, for me this blog is the route of the opportunities that have come my way. People only know to ask you to do things like write articles or books, or present at events, if they know who you are, what you're doing, and what your views are. A blog is a great way to ensure this is the case, and to synthesise and anchor all your social media presences.

3. Make one thing happen for yourself, and five things will happen TO you with pretty much no effort on your part whatsoever...

I'm amazed at how many opportunities come to you once you've made a few for yourself. Once you set the boulder rolling down the hill, it gathers momentum on its own.

4. There is no divide between new professionals and senior professionals, not really

I've heard a lot of talk of such a divide, but in my experience we all work together pretty well. Of course, they are people (in both camps) who are difficult to deal with and don't want to work with the other camp, but that's just down to the personalities of individuals.

We really do need to be able to work together to change, move forward and indeed protect this profession of ours.

5. In the social media age, we all grow up in public - may as well get used to it, and embrace the journey

I am not fully formed as a professional. I make mistakes, I make errors of judgement, I do things I look back on with embarassment. I learn all the time. I approach things differently now to how I did in Janurary. I worry. I feel vulnerability that I try not to show. Like most people, I fret when I shouldn't. There's still part of me that puts gaining a follower on Twitter down to pure happenstance, and puts losing one down to some grave error in the way I've conducted myself.

Part of me would like to show more vulnerability but at the same time, someone who comes across as confident tends to get more stuff done. I want people to listen to me - I believe in my ideas, whatever periodic crises of confidence I may have about my approach or myself or the way I'm perceieved. So I try as far as possible to come across as fully formed.

That said, if you embrace social media fully than inevitably people get to know a lot about your process as well as your results. And actually I quite like that. I like how human we all know each other to be, because we reveal this online. I actually feel like the people who went through all their journies before social media arrived have missed out, in a way.

6. Babies are ace!

No review of 2010 for me would be complete without reference to far and away the most significant thing that happened to me, and has ever happened to me. Emily Alexandra Potter is, quite literally, the best thing ever. I never knew babies were so much FUN!

10 online tools I've found useful in 2010

10 online tools I’ve used in 2010

View more presentations from Ned Potter.

Other stuff I'm still using from last year includes wordpress.org, the KING of blogging platforms! And Slideshare of course, I'm using that more and more. Photofunia I still occasionally use if I want to put a photo into some kind of interesting context with the minimum of fuss. Flickr creative commons for images. iGoogle is still the starting point for my web use - I find being able to log into any PC in the world and find the same home-page, with all my bookmarks etc, very helpful. Pbworks wikis are ace - you can set one up for anything, even if it's just to have your own 'in the cloud' storage space. And finally Twitter - it's just over a year since my first ever Tweet, and it's arguably the single most valuable tool I use, I think. It's great for a million and one reasons - if you're an Information Professional not currently on there, I too used to be a big skeptic but trust me, it's worth it.

This is the final pre-Christmas blog post, so, have a good one! :)

- thewikiman