Balanced Marketing in Library Land

Here are two posts worth reading, both from Jill Stover of Library Marketing.

Read this first : The big balancing act

Read this second : Finding balance in library marketing

Jill says in her second post,

People must balance the demands of their personal and professional lives; their desires and their available resources; their opportunities and their existing commitments; their selfish impulses and the greater good; and that’s just for starters. Librarians are no strangers to balance-seeking. We’ve traditionally sought to mediate opposing tensions such as the responsibility to make resources readily available and the duty to preserve materials for future generations. The search for balance is a hallmark of professional work, and it also raises some important questions about marketing libraries in contemporary society.

I like what Jill has to say, and a lot of what she has to say is both insightful and surprising.  Especially check out the table in the second post differentiating between patrons’ jobs and librarians’ jobs.

Wii the people

This post was written using a Nintendo Wii! (And it’s my first experience with the Opera browser.)

Laptop Librarians at Macon State

Medical librarian David Rothman has an interesting post in which he shares a video about academic librarians and roaming reference at Macon State College (which now sports a fully operational campus in my hometown).

Discovered via Michael Stephens of Tame the Web.

Day in the Life of SC Libraries

Michael Stephens has shared some great pictures from a photo contest to celebrate National Library Week in South Carolina.

Now this is what I call putting a human face on public libraries!

Bullies

I know that we all get “challenging” customers from time to time.  But has anyone (else)  encountered a customer who can only be described as a bully?

Here’s hoping that you haven’t — but please let me know if you have and how you dealt with it.

The state of our libraries, and beyond

There are three important things for today:

1.  The ALA has released its State of America’s Libraries report (discovered via the Library Link of the Day).

2.  Nicole Engard has a great post from the Computers in Libraries Conference, reporting from two related presentations on the future of the catalog (featuring Tim Spalding of LibraryThing and Roy Tennant of OCLC). From Roy’s presentation,

In the new world order, discovery will be disaggregated from the ILS (Google, Open WorldCat, meta search, others). This makess sense because users typically want to find anything they can on a topic. Now we have to explain that you have to look in different places for articles. People don’t like pain so they want to search in one spot and if they can’t then they won’t use your tool.

And for the record, I find the phrase “new world order” (to describe our ever-evolving information environment) interesting, to say the least.

3.  LibrarianInBlack also points to “Teens, Privacy, and Online Social Networks,” a study by the Pew / Internet & American Family Life Project. It turns out that our teens are way smarter than some of us think.

This ain’t Ragnarok (or at least it shouldn’t be)

I’ve been reading lately about employee retention, and it turns out that one of the most important (if not the most important) factor in retaining employees and reducing turnover is simply satisfaction with the regular duties of one’s job.

With that in mind, check out David Lee King’s post, “How can we change the unchangeable, or David’s rant.” David discusses the harsh reality that many library systems resist technological innovation, frustrating innovative techie librarians. And as David points out,

What happens to those discouraged techie staff? Probably one of two things:

1. They’ll realize that library customers want to participate online (which should be obvious - just take a peek at Amazon or eBay if you don’t believe me), but their library won’t be implementing online participation any time soon. So they’ll settle back, and either simply stop caring, or wait for the administrators to move on to other libraries or retire. Or worse yet (but great for libraries that actually WANT to innovate), they’ll…
2. Find a more innovative library, and move on. Some libraries (ie., Darien Library, McMaster University, and Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library are examples of this) are realizing that there’s a huge technology shift happening with online social tools and expectations, and will take steps to meet those changes. Some of those steps have turned into new, emerging jobs that are just waiting to be filled with an innovative thinker… who’s probably working at your library RIGHT NOW.

Discovered via LibrarianInBlack, who adds,

Think about how you (yes, you) could be blocking change and innovation in your library. Think about why you’re doing it. You may feel that you have very good reasons (budget issues may be one of those). But you may be doing things subconsciously or as a knee-jerk reaction without thinking. Just do some self-reflection here.

See also Michael Casey’s “If they go elsewhere, we lose.”

Faster than the speed of geek

Jennifer shares an interesting idea for career education: speed geeking. I’ll shamelessly quote what Jennifer quotes:

In speed geeking, small groups of students meet with one professional librarian (aka geek) at a time to gain insight into what it’s like to be a working librarian. You can ask questions about their job, patrons, professional development or get tips on library school. Whatever you’re curious about.

One of my colleagues shared a similar idea for public libraries, essentially offering teens a chance to see what it’s like “behind the counter” — show them some of the technology that we use, explain how it works, explain what we do for customers and why it’s important.

I like this kind of exposure, as it serves both the students / teens and the librarians well. The students / teens get to learn about librarianship as a profession, and the librarians can put a human face on the services and opportunities that we provide.

Libraries will continue always exist in some form or another. But we need young, sharp minds “behind the counter” so that we remain essential and relevant to people’s lives — and this challenge will become only more difficult in coming years, especially considering how rapidly the information environment is evolving. (Who ever knew that social networking sites would ever surpass pornography?)

Pimpin’ out Firefox

I take great comfort in the fact that my parents — who aren’t the most tech-savvy individuals — use Firefox. (And just to really bring the point home, my parents started using Firefox before I did.)

In a lot of ways, my Firefox isn’t reaching its fullest potential, but that’s really my fault. The only extensions that I have are Zotero and del.icio.us — and I know that there are at least a dozen other extensions that I would find useful. I’m working on that, so expect me to make my Firefox even better within a couple weeks or so.

Firefox is, in a lot of (good) ways, addictive. My parents won’t use any browser other than Firefox, and a friend of mine (who only started using Firefox within the past couple months) says he can never go back to using anything else. Even though we use IE 7 at work, I still get a little frustrated that it’s not Firefox — something just isn’t the same.

Ska Girlie has some great thoughts about how the Saint Joseph County Public Library uses Firefox with a handful of useful extensions. I like what what they’re doing, but I’m also curious about ways that Firefox could more directly improve our customers’ OPAC experiences. Maybe some kind of special extension or customized script?

Any other Firefox fans out there?

Discovered via librarian.net. Check out Jessamyn’s awesome “Pimp My Firefox” handout.

Library of Congress : The Blog

The Library of Congress now has a blog. This is cool for two reasons.

Reason number one, I think the LoC is a pretty awesome place. It’s a unique institution where libraries, history and public service truly intersect. To boot, I really admire the words of James Madison, engraved on the outside of one LC building:

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of liberty & learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?

And reason number two, it gives me a great excuse to show off this picture.

Here’s the short story for why this photograph exists: the Jefferson building (just behind the Capitol) had closed, and the Madison building (across the street) was closed to the public for the day. This thumbs-up in front of the “staff and congressional entrance” was the closest I could get to see any of the facilities (with the exception of the security gates and the sculpture just inside). On Facebook, this particular photo is captioned, “a librarian’s mecca.”

Hey, Library of Congress — check me out!

Discovered via Dan at One Big Library.  (And thanks to Lindsay for snapping the picture!)