Libraries are about people - so where's the personality?

I think we can all accept that people have become very important in librarianship. It is the people who make the difference between the library and the internet, the people who add the value which makes libraries more than a warehouse full of books, it is the people who teach and educate and train users, it is the people whose visions inform the new directions libraries are taking.

At SLA2011, a lot of people said “There are loads of presentations, across loads of chapters and divisions – but it’s the people who that you really want to focus on. The value lies with the individuals.” The tweets emerging from ALA11 seemed to indicate the same things - @JustinLibrarian saying “What I learned at #ala11: sure, exhibits and panels are great, but the true power of the organization is in people” for example.

I think that while we can accept this as true, it doesn’t seem to have penetrated the deeper professional psyche as to what libraries are, and what they are for. When there are grants or external funding, they seldom get spent on people. When there are marketing campaigns, they rarely feature the people. (Library marketing books often talk about The Four Ps of marketing. Guess what - none of them are People.) When there are cuts, it’s often the people who go first.  It’s still the resources which are king in libraryland, and I’m not sure this will work as well in future.

At his spotlight session during SLA2011, Stephen Abram said the key thing about all the new tech changing the way we all work is not the technology itself, but about representing our role (as information professionals) within that technology. Which is to say, we’re the people who can make it work for our patrons and customers. We need to remind people more explicitly that the value lies with us - each particular 'us' that works at each specific library. Stephen later pointed out to me that automated process are increasingly common, so eventually we could keep libraries open but get rid of almost all staff - but they will find it a lot harder to do that to us if we can successfully  emphasise more clearly the role of the individuals. We know that our value lies in our expertise, but does our approach to marketing, funding, finances etc really reflect that? We're still promoting books and databases most of the time.

So if we position ourselves as experts in new trends and technologies per se (rather than just, for example, a guru in a certain area such as micro-blogging) then when the technology goes mainstream, people will know to come to us for help and further information. It’s not about saying “Hey the library is an expert in FourSquare!” – it’s about saying “The librarians know about new trends and technologies, come to us and we’ll guide you through it!” and then when FourSquare (or any other geolocational social media app, or anything else) goes mainstream, our patrons and customers already have as in mind as potential experts. Like so much of what I write about on here, it’s about positioning ourselves successfully within the wider global narrative.

A more personality driven approach to promoting librarians, as opposed to just libraries, is needed.

- thewikiman

Librarians are horizontal; libraries are vertical

I'm ensconced in the Special Libraries Association's massive annual conference in Philadelphia. It's fantastic. This is the first of probably a few posts picking up on key themes.

The Pulitzer prize winning author and controversial New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman opened the conference with his keynote on Sunday. Whatever you think of his politics, writing style, fee and so on, I'm really pleased that (as is always the case with SLA) a non-librarian was opening the event, and indeed a non-librarian will close it too. A key part of breaking out of the echo chamber is for us to go to non-library events, and to have non-librarians at ours.

Friedman is the author of  The World Is Flat, and he talked about how internet technology has flattened the world, brought companies and people together side by side, and interconnected them. This horizontal communication has, of course, revolutionised the way we work. He also talked about how vital the notion of 'upload' was - enabling people to participate in the web, not just consume it, and how much this increases involvement and excitement and commitment to the cause.

It strikes me that librarians are pretty good at this, for the most part. We live in this horizontal world, we are interconnected, we use web  2 tools to talk to each other, we upload. We are horizontal, and our wold is flat. Libraries, on the other hand, struggle with this a lot more. Libraries are vertical. Libraries' content is often hidden behind catalogues or databases which aren't fully interoperable with the rest of the web, which thwart the interconnectivity. Furthermore, we find it very difficult to encourage 'upload'. We are so used to protecting our collections, that the notion of giving people an active role and allowing them ownership is hard to come to terms with. We're trying, I think, but it's hard to empower people in the kinds of ways that makes them excited, passionate, and consequently advocates. People tell their friends about stuff they can claim ownership of, it's partly why there are so many web 2 success stories; we in libraries are still at the stage where we gasp at the idea of allowing tagging on our catalogues.

It's a tricky issue - but we have to address it sooner or later...

- thewikiman

Libraries using twitter: how do you approach the thorny issue of replies?

One of the problems with a lot of training aimed at libraries, is that it often comes from the very best - the gold standard bearers of the industry. Often these best of the best also have the most resources - so you go on a course about digitisation, and it's taught by people whose resources for digitisation so far exceed your own institution's that you don't really learn anything you can apply when you get back to your desk.

A similar thing happens with case studies in books - you want to get the best of the best so we can all learn from the leaders, but often they operate on a different level to the rest of us. In my marketing book I've tried to bridge this gap as far as possible, but it's tricky. (Incidentally, the publisher have put full details of the book up on their website. I also had the ridiculously exciting experience of typing my name into Amazon - not least because whilst the details of the book are correct, the picture is of 'Emergency Planning & Response!')

An example of this is with the Twitter case study, for the chapter on marketing with social media. There is a fantastic case study lined up, but the organisation in question has many, many times the number of followers that most libraries have. There's a lot to learn from them, but the way in which they handle @ replies is going to be different to most places, because the sheer volume of them mean it's impractical to respond to all of them. So...

It's time to crowd-source the book again!

I'd really like to hear from libraries who use Twitter, in particular their views on the following areas:

• Whether you read and reply to all @ replies. Do you take on those who are critical and defend the library, or try to find out more about their problems? Do you ignore those who are abusive? Do you ReTweet praise?
• The tone you use to do so. The balance between the 'personable-ness' of a platform such as Twitter versus the need to keep some professional distance is a difficult one to get right - how do you approach this?
• Whether you consult with colleagues before responding or if everyone takes responsibility independently, and how you decide who replies to what
• Whether you pick up other mentions of your library (using a search or alert) that don't actually mention your library's twitter account, and reply to them. (Is that proactive and good, or sinister and stalky..?)

. Ideally I'd like to get some debate in the Comments section, but equally feel free to get in touch via email. I'm just looking to get a feel for what people do, so don't worry I won't be quoting you in the book (or if I do want to I'll get in touch and ask your permission..).

So, thank you for your help.

- thewikiman

P.S Something I forgot to include earlier but Lynne's comment below has reminded me - how do you approach the issue of ReTweeting non-library (as in, not your library) content? Thanks!

Libraries and Alignment - it's vital, vital, vital

Seth Godin (remember him?) has just written a blog post about alignment. It's well worth a look.

Alignment is very important to libraries (the SLA are devoting lots of resources to this subject). In particular we need to spend more time ensuring we align our language with those of our stakeholders - and that may mean seperate language for our customers, and for those who hold our purse-strings. So we must promote our services to customers in terms they understand and relate to, and we must demonstrate our value to internal stakeholders by using their language, their terminology, and by focusing on factors they see as vital for measuring success as well as the ones we traditionally use.

(This is a tricky issue because, for example, if the big bosses still see footfall as a good measure of a library's use then we have to balance the need to align our idea of success, with the need to educate them as to why footfall as a metric for library use is hopelessly outdated and no longer fit for purpose.)

Seth's post is about the alignment of expectations and, particularly interestingly for me, the negative aspects users will put up with if those expectations are met. Here's a quote:

The Walmart relationship: I want the cheapest possible prices and Walmart wants to (actually works hard to) give me the cheapest possible prices. That's why there's little pushback about customer service or employee respect... the goals are aligned.

The Apple relationship: I want Apple to be cool. Apple wants to be cool. That's why there's little pushback on pricing or obsolence or disappointing developers.

The search engine relationship (when it's working): I want to find what I'm looking for. You want me to find what I'm looking for, regardless of the short-term income possibilities.

Compare these to the ultimately doomed relationships (if not doomed, then tense) in which goals don't align, relationships where the brand took advantage of an opening but then grows out of the initial deal and wants to change it:

The Dell relationship: I want a cheap, boring, reliable computer. You want to make more profit.

The hip designer relationship: I want the new thing no one else has yet. You want to be around for years.

The search engine relationship (when it doesn't work): I want to find what I'm looking for. You want to distract me and take money to send me places I actually don't want to go.

The typical media relationship: I want to see the shows, you want to interrupt with ads.

Alignment isn't something you say. It's something you do. Alignment is demonstrated when you make the tough calls, when you see if the thing that matters the most to you is also the thing that matters the most to the other person.

So - you can guess where I'm going with this. What is the library relationship now, what should it be, and what will users put up with (with very little 'pushback') if their expectations are met? Think of this as an open thread - I'd be really interested to hear your views in the comments.

- thewikiman

The time for libraries is NOW

The time for Libraries is NOW

View more presentations from Ned Potter

The time for information professionals is NOW, too.

The idea of this is to position the information professional as someone who will be increasingly important in an information-driven world, and to try and market the library in a more positive light. It's inspired by the Shift Happens deck, as so much of the jaw-dropping information which that presentation contains seems to strengthen The Case for the Librarian...

I can reupload an edited version of this to Slideshare at any time, so let me know if you have suggestions for further ideas about the value of us or our institutions, and I'll see if I can explore them with additional slides.

I've created these slides to act as library advocacy, so obviously I'd love them to be seen outside of the echo chamber - if you can think of any way for me to achieve this, let me know! The deck is available under a Creative Commons licence via Slideshare, so please feel free to embed it anywhere you see fit - I can honestly say I've never put so much work into a bunch of slides, so I'd love to see it in as many places as possible...

Update: They've got on to the hot on Twitter section of Slideshare's home page already, which is great! A mini #echolib escape - they are sure to be checked out by people who don't normally view library stuff. I'm not on Facebook, but if people can get it in to the Hot On Facebook section too that would be amazing. :)

Update II: okay, that worked! Thank you - it got Hot on Facebook and Twitter at the same time, ensuring loads of non-library people will have seen it. It's had over 3000 views in less than 36 hours - thanks for helping me promote it!

- thewikiman