Library Participants

Helene Blowers posted a excellent revival of the “patron vs. customer” discussion on her LibraryBytes blog this week. She argued that both terms relate to an outdated “us and them” model of library service and she asks for a new term to fit the “us and us” culture we all want. I’ve never heard the debate put quite that way. (Leave it to Helene to get to the heart of an issue!) Her brief analysis got many people thinking and her readers’ comments were wonderful. Here are my two cents worth:

Thank you for “thinking about things too much”, Helene!” I’ve never liked customer but agree with you about the baggage even patron carries.

Suppose we use the term participant. It expresses the “us and us” concept but lacks the subordination of one “us” compared to the other. Isn’t participation the goal of a modern library? We strive to enrich our communities and welcome all participants — us and us alike.

Panera Fridays

Michael Stephens posted a photo yesterday mentioning that he holds his Wednesday office hours at Panera Bread. It reminded me of an effort I made last year to encourage some of our reference librarians to set up a weekly shift at Panera (or Starbucks or Safeway). It seems like such a simple idea to get the library out in the community — visible in a place our patrons are.

• Talk to the proprietor. I’m sure most would be happy to support a public library in such a simple way.
• Buy a sandwich and coffee/tea.
• Prop up a sign “Got a question? Get an answer! I’m a librarian.“
• Turn on your wireless laptop.

A librarian with access to the Internet and the library’s online collection of databases could surely answer most questions on the spot. Difficult puzzlers might be solved with a quick email or IM to the folks back at the branch. Answers could be sent to a portable printer or the patron’s email address.

Busy people might not think of the library in their daily routine. Let’s change that! A consistent reference shift (say, every Friday from 11-3) at a local wifi hotspot could make the friendly librarian at the next table much more visible than the big library building itself.

No one in our library has done this yet because, so I’ve been told, there’s not enough staff to spare and no overall vision for this to fit. (Sigh.) Does it need to be a big, planned project? Can’t we just try it and see how it’s received? Tell the staff you’re going to take a long lunch tomorrow … and do the field research while you’re at it.

My question to readers in LibraryLand: Is anyone doing a “Panera Friday”? Would anyone like to give it a try?

Fun with barcodes

We in the library biz use barcodes to track our collections all the time. We still make mistakes sometimes, but we wouldn’t be efficient without them. So I’m sympathetic to the folks at the postal services in two different countries who accidentally delivered our package to Dalmeny, Saskatchewan after it was sent from North Carolina. It was supposed to go to Puyallup, WA – 1,100 miles away from Dalmeny – but someone slapped the wrong barcode on the label. In this case it took a human eye to catch the human error, while the automation in between dutifully routed it across the border.

Learn More: Blogs and Blogging, pt 1

[This is one in a series of self-paced discovery exercises for library staff venturing into the social web.]

Like the social networking topic we discussed a few weeks ago, blogging is simply too big to take in all at once. So much has been written about blogs that I’m a tad hesitant to add my text to the pile. For the sake of inclusion within this series, however, here goes. We’ll start today and continue with Part 2 next week.

People have been keeping private journals for centuries. A diarist might have carried on an ongoing conversation with himself and used it as a record of his thoughts and feelings as those thoughts and feelings developed. Authors, meanwhile, have written public works in books and periodicals for mass-consumption. The cost of production (i.e., materials and distribution) limited publishing access to writers with exceptional knowledge, skill, or monetary resources.

The Internet and easy-to-use software have removed the barriers to publication and the cultural shift that followed the advent of the social web has changed the nature of the journal-writing. Both effects may now be seen in blogs. A blog, by simple definition, is a journal maintained on the Internet. It was originally called a web log, then later shortened to weblog and finally, blog.

Setting up a blog and publishing to the world is free. It also requires no competency tests or admissions process. That’s bad in the sense that there’s a lot gunk out there that would have been filtered out by learned editors in the past. But it’s good because there are many gems that those editors would have rejected, too. Knowledge and skill play significant roles in whether the blog is widely read, but the audience can decide that. Assuming a writer has something to say and knows how to say it well, a blog can be an effective vehicle with which to express a point of view to the world. This can be done immediately at virtually no cost.

Some blog writers (a.k.a. bloggers) are online journalists, tracking traditional news in a nontraditional medium, or specializing in subjects that had no previous forums. Many bloggers are online diarists, making public what past generations would have kept private. And some bloggers post only for themselves, their friends, or family. They don’t seek vast audiences; they merely share with each other. Most bloggers allow readers to comment. They encourage it, in fact. It fosters discussion about the topic and lets everyone swap ideas and opinions.

The result of all this is a rich cacophony of conversation ranging from insightful to useless, written with talents varying from gifted to abysmal, and reaching audiences from millions worldwide to perhaps no one. The blogosphere (i.e., the collection of all blogs) is online self-publishing writ large. Anyone can participate as long as they’re interested.

PARTS OF A BLOG

• Posts. The basic building blocks of a blog are the individual articles. They can very long — as long as the chapter of a book — or extremely brief. Some include links to other websites, photos, or video clips. Whatever their individual style, however, blog posts are usually displayed in reverse chronological order so that the newest posts appear at the top. Older entries get pushed down the page.
• Comments. Blogs almost always allow readers to add or view comments. This invites everyone to get involved in the topic.
• Tools. Often a blog has a collection of sidebar tools to aid the reader. These tools may include an archive of old postings, an author profile, and a “blog roll” of links to other blogs that the writer finds interesting.

Meaning for libraries

“Hmm,” the blogger murmurs while glancing at the length of this blog post and holding his fingers to his chin. “Let’s save this topic until Part 2.”

Learn more by participating

We’ll save the set-up and development of our own blogs for Part 2. Right now, let’s explore a bit. Visit a variety of blogs on two or three separate days this week (15-20 minutes each):

• Obviously you’re already reading LibraryStream. Now visit a few of the library-related blogs listed in my blogroll in the right-hand margin. Explore, scroll, and click. Get a feel for the content and style of the various blogs.
• Would you like to see more library blogs? There are many lists out there, including the blogrolls of other blogs. I encourage you to wander! I enjoy browsing Dave Pattern’s biblioblogosphere tag cloud for interesting new topics, too.
• Want to break free of the library world? Go to Technorati or Google’s blogsearch and search any topic that strikes your fancy. Blogs are written about almost any subject you can imagine. See what’s out there.
• Remember when I said that the blogosphere is “a rich cacophony of conversation ranging from insightful to useless, written with talents varying from gifted to abysmal”? I wasn’t kidding!

Now think about a blog YOU might create. Get your imagination humming. I’ll see you next week in Part 2.

The Library of Congress on Flickr

In the last two weeks, the Library of Congress quietly uploaded more than 3,000 photographs to its new Flickr page. The collection of images range from New York Christmas scenes to early twentieth century baseball. Pictures of Mexico, Texas, Chicago, ships, railroads, and landscapes are included, too. The Library selected the photos, in part, because they have no known copyright restrictions. Flickr members are invited to help add tags.

One photo that jumped out at me showed Joe Jackson in his first full major league season. He was fit, trim, and only 22 in 1911, but the future baseball great (and future black-listed White Sox) appeared older than his age would imply.

It’s wonderful to see libraries using Flickr to share portions of their picture archives with the public. The National Library of New Zealand was the first one I ran across last year. Several smaller libraries have scanned old community photos into Flickr. I hope many others join in 2008.

UPDATE: The ShiftedLibrarian mentioned PhotosNormandie in her blog today. That archive is also being uploaded to Flickr.

Childhood flyover

It always happens. Every time I open Google Earth to check something, I wander and end up in another part of the world. This evening I wound up “flying” over the little German town of Herbitzheim where my family lived when I was seven years old.

My dad was in the Air Force at the time and he found a rental in the Alsace countryside near the French border. Looking at it now, I’m amazed how little things seem to have changed since then. Our house, marked with the red arrow, is still surrounded by an orchard. (I remember throwing pears and apples … and stepping in rotted fruit.) The home of my sister’s friend Rosie is visible, too.

I can also see the triangular block in the center of town where we caught the school bus, the little grocery store where I bought my first gummi bears (Gummibären) for a few pfennigs, and the big sportsplatz down Mozartstraße where German kids watched my brothers and I hit baseballs on the soccer field.

I dug around for related ground photos and business names, too. (My gummi bear store is now known as Edeka Irmagard Rabung, by the way.) Finally, using the topography tool, I did what I always do in Google Earth: I slanted the satellite image to swoop down and fly around. The virtual 3D photo at left includes Rubenheim, the neighboring town in the distance where our landlord’s friendly groundskeeper Oswald lived.

I’ve been using Google Earth for two years, but I’m still blown away by the stuff technology allows us to do these days. Flying over my little childhood village this evening was a treat. Have you zoomed in on any of your old neighborhoods?

Learn More: Twitter

[This is one in a series of self-paced discovery exercises for library staff venturing into the social web.]

“It’s Monday? Again??”

That’s how I enthusiastically embraced the work week this morning in Twitter. Several friends saw the 20-character message because my random thought wandered out across the social web. The same thing happened when I was “kicking the day out of my shoes” and when I was “gardening – Olive Gardening.”

Many social sites let you express your thoughts and creativity, but none compresses that expression with the concise style of Twitter. The popular site asks you to share what you’re doing or thinking in 140 characters or less. That’s only about 20-25 words. You might call it a microblog.

Some people don’t get the concept; others love it. Big announcements — “I got the job!” (14 characters) – are possible, but most entries – “gotta go to another meeting” (27 characters) – don’t reveal much. Twitter’s value increases over time, however, as friends learn more about each other from the collected log of messages. Your followers might discover what excites you, what annoys you, and glimpse some of your life’s miscellany that would never make it into an email.

Users can send tweets (as Twitter messages are known) via mobile phones and pipe them into other applications, too. That makes the site even more appealing to folks who like to be in continuous “live” mode online. You can arrange meetings on the run and connect with friends wherever they are.

Critics say Twitter is a waste of time and produces endless blather. Let them say that! “At least it’s short blather” (27 characters).

Meaning for libraries

I can’t offer a long list of Twitter applications for libraries.  I’m not yet convinced it can attract or assist patrons much, but I’d certainly recommend experimentation.

A university library — dealing with a finite community of users — might find twittering more productive than a public library. A librarian with a network of patron followers might develop ways to share short service updates: “Lots of computers are available right now” (41 characters) or “Just got the new * in the mail” (29+ characters).

Library staff should be aware of Twitter, at least. Many of our patrons use the site in their private lives. Librarians use it, too, and any networking within the profession is good.

Learn more by participating

In the spirit of the site, I’ll keep this short.

• Open a Twitter account.
• Encourage a coworker or friend to join, too.
• Become followers of each other.
• Post a tweet a few times a day, every day this week.
• Whattya think? Is it fun? Might it be useful? Is it a waste?

My 56-character Twitter update: “Steve is prepared for the week now. Oh, wait a minute…”

Winter reading

No, that isn’t a woman reading to a child, but it sure looked like it when I came upon this snow-covered tree in the woods near Mt Rainier last week. The “woman” even has a ponytail.

Maybe it’s just a case of nature supporting literacy.

Learn More: Social Networks, pt 2

[This is one in a series of self-paced discovery exercises for library staff venturing into the social web.]

We’ll wrap up yesterday’s topic today by describing three popular social networkings sites.

1. Read the descriptions. (Please note: These are highly abbreviated. Each site has much more depth than I can possibly squeeze into two paragraphs.)
2. Pick a network you like and sign up. All sites mentioned here are free.
3. Enter some information. (See my caveat in the previous post.)
4. Be creative. Upload an avatar/buddy icon, photos, music, etc.
5. Make friends. If friends or family already have accounts, connect with them. If you’re doing this activity with coworkers, connect with each other.
6. Interact. Post on each other’s page or send emails.
7. Explore the site for other applications, features, and people you know.

MySpace (217 million members). By far the most popular social networking site in the world, MySpace has a thriving community of people of all ages. Teenagers are there, of course, but the majority of users are over 35. Parents, celebrities, churches, companies, and non-profits round out the mix. The typical MySpace user fills out a profile “About Me” that describes likes and dislikes, favorite music, favorite movies, favorite books, etc. These become the snippets others read when they visit the page. A blog built into the page offers a chance to wax poetic or ramble about any subject of interest. Always an important part of the MySpace experience, musicians are given special pages within the network to offer audio clips for other members to sample or paste in their own pages. Many pages (if not most) also feature embedded videos and photos, giving MySpace a truly multimedia look. Users are also free to decorate their page with their choice of colors, background images, and flashy effects. This individual expression is a real strength to some people and a real turn-off to others.

MySpace members you can send messages to each other by leaving comments which anyone can read, or by sending private email. Instant messaging is also popular. While it is by no means a requirement, some people try very hard to increase their number of MySpace friends, encouraging and collecting hundreds or thousands of “friends” in a never-ending popularity contest. You might be content with just a few people you know personally. That’s fine. We each have a comfort level. Your friends’ buddy icons will appear on your page, leading you to their pages with a simple mouse-click. Find additional people using the search box. (Hint: Email address searches find people faster than name searches.)

Facebook (58 million members). Started in 2004, as a means for Harvard students to meet each other, Facebook expanded its membership to other universities, high school students, adults, and (recently) organizations. Facebook pages are less open to design tinkering but support a wide range of features and applications written for the Facebook development platform. Users can choose “apps” and rearrange the contents of their page as often as they’d like. If they have a Flickr page, photos can be streamed to Facebook. The same is true of blogs and other RSS feeds.

Like the MySpace Comment feature, a Facebook user’s Wall is open to the scribbling and viewing by anyone within his circle of friends. Private email is also possible. Applications provide an endless supply of “gifts”, quizzes, ratings, and other amusements to keep people busy for longer than anyone originally expects. Want to get a friend’s attention without writing an email? Facebook lets you “poke” them. It’s like a friendly ‘I’m thinking of you’ nudge. Want to share a quick thought or your current activity with everyone (or no one in particular)? Update your status. Many of these may sound silly to the uninitiated, but over time this myriad of communication formats provide glimpses of your friends you might otherwise miss.

LinkedIn (16 million members). Are MySpace and Facebook too busy for you? LinkedIn is at the other end of the spectrum, but still useful as a network. Launched in 2003 and targeting the business community, LinkedIn users network for career enhancements and commercial prospects. Whereas MySpace and Facebook profiles may remind you of a teen magazine quiz or a dating service questionnaire, a typical user profile on LinkedIn feels distinctly like a resume. Job title, industry, education, and location are crucial for connecting with others to land the next contract, get a better job, or simply keep a mutually beneficial professional relationship going.

LinkedIn has tools to find additional people in your industry and region. It also can tell you of other people in your company or school that are listed in its network. People you already know, after all, may be helpful in opening a door for you someday. Emails through the network are possible, but the chatty nature of MySpace and Facebook are nowhere to be seen. LinkedIn is almost all business.

A few other social networking sites

• Friendster (50 million members) was one of the original social sites and made a modest splash before MySpace arrived on the scene.
• Orkut (67 million members) is Google’s social network. It’s very popular in Brazil and India but hasn’t caused much excitement in the United States.
• Hi5 (60 million members) is another network quite popular (in Latin America and Asia) but not as much in the U.S.

Whichever site you choose, make it to your liking, make it your online address, and remember what I keep saying: It’s your web now.

Learn More: Social Networks, pt 1

[This is one in a series of self-paced discovery exercises for library staff venturing into the social web.]

This is a big topic, so we’ll start today and wrap it up tomorrow.

So far in this series, we’ve opened accounts on several niche social web sites, uploaded content (photos, book titles, bookmarks, etc.), and mingled a bit with other people. This week, we’ll look at a few giants of social networking: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. What do people do on social networks?

Post. A few hundred million people around the world house their online identities on these sites. Some people stick to the basics on their profiles, but others get comfortable and let their personalities shine through. Publishing (or posting) to the web can become a creative outlet. Users fill their pages with thoughts, interests, desires, photos, music, videos, and online discoveries. The pages they create often become the web addresses they most often give to friends and family.

Interact. The most amazing phenomenon social sites make possible, of course, surrounds the networking. You (and your page) become “friends” with another person (and her page). The software makes it easy to jump from your page to hers. Many sites even send you a “feed”– a kind of news ticker — that tells you what new things she has added to their page. Making a friend is just the start. You might collect more friends over time, building a network of family, friends, and acquaintances who can stay in touch quite easily. Each new connection is a like a direct link to a friend’s world that you may visit any time you’d like.

Communicate. Because it belongs to you, your page can become your message board. You can post photos and comments to your own page instead of sending email (and clunky attachments) to all of your friends and family. They can check in (at their convenience) and find out what you’re up to and what’s on your mind. You can say things publicly or privately, visit their pages (to see what they’re up to), and even meet your friend’s friends.

As a recent article in Slate explained, there is a trend toward communicating within networks instead of standard email. Email is incredibly convenient, but networking sites share so much more than an email could. They are multi-dimensional. An email from an acquaintance, for instance, might tell you only relevant facts. A social site, on the other hand, could reveal a common love of U2 music or scuba diving — things that could foster a better appreciation of each other but would have never otherwise come up.

Think of it this way: An email is like a short phone call. A social site is like sitting down in your friend’s front room and seeing all the pictures and knick-knacks they like to surround themselves with.

Caveat: I’m speaking glowingly of these sites because of their potential. You could easily misuse a social site as well. Those are the cases that end up in the news. Posting too much information might be unwise, unsafe, or embarrassing. Comfort levels vary from person to person. The rule I generally advocate: Don’t post anything you’d regret if your loved ones, your boss, or a creepy stranger stumbled upon your page.

Meaning for libraries

• Cultural awareness. This is, increasingly, how people interact. Understand it. Better yet, join in.
• Professionally. Librarians and library staff can use social networking sites to stay in touch with colleagues anywhere in the world. In fact, they can expand their social circle by connecting with fellow conference-goers and collaborators.
• Patron interaction. Many libraries have social network pages. If patrons spend so much time in these networks, it makes sense for libraries to be available to them there, too. Library social sites can tout services, share photos, advertise upcoming programs, and connect readers with bookclubs and authors. Perhaps more importantly, the informal nature of social sites may help the library appear more approachable and friendly. Make friends with your patrons. Have fun on the page. Speak casually. Leave the formal language on the official website.
• Personal librarians. In addition to a social networking page for the organziation, many librarians set up individual pages to become “that friend at the library”. Such an arrangement might give your patrons the comfort in knowing that they can simply pop over to their librarian’s page to ask a question or get help with something. It’s personal service. They’ll know someone who knows stuff. Cool.

Learn more by participating

• Watch Social Networking in Plain English, a short introductory video from the folks at Common Craft.
• That’s Part 1. In Part 2, we’ll look at three big social networks, pick one, and set up shop.

Patron T-shirt

What every library patron should have written on their T-shirt:

[This came to mind as I was thinking about having librarians as friends within social networks.]

Networking with the 20s and 30s

Is your library interacting with Gen Y adults? If not, why not? A recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study suggests they are the portion of the adult population most likely to visit a public library. They are also more tech savvy than any other group.

Here’s my suggestion: Use Facebook and MySpace to reach different age groups. During a recent email exchange with librarians talking about teens, I suggested that they aim their new Facebook page at an older demographic. Continue the flashy teen-related agenda on MySpace but change gears and go after the twenty- and thirty-somethings on Facebook. Don’t make the Facebook page a mere copy of MySpace.

“It need not exclude teens, but targeting Gen Y adults might help select more appropriate apps and give 20/30-somethings a place they feel more comfortable with.”

The initial response was hesitation: it would mean lost opportunities to publicize teen events. Besides, it was said, there aren’t many programs and events to highlight for 20/30’s anyway.

That was exactly my point! Let’s become more relevant to them though the social web.

While many 20s/30s are beyond the teen stuff, they aren’t always tied into any college networks or resources either. They are the people a public library might want to find and connect with using social networking. They need it! Job hunting, residence finding, reliable transportation, starting families, the new world of income tax, and money juggling are all issues to them. We have the resources.

I’m familiar with one library that has a marketing plan filled with programs geared toward kids, teens, and patrons over 55. There’s a huge gap there waiting to be explored. Dismal turnouts at past programs for adults usually discourages interest in considering them, but I’d be willing to bet social networking — available from home at personally convenient times — is the key to that group.

Let the library’s MySpace page cater to teens, but develop a Facebook presence that’s fun, attractive, and useful to that neglected decade of library patrons. Would any public library be willing to try it?

Perspective and Context

As much as I enjoy new technologies, I still appreciate the older stuff. If not for the creative energy of the people who came before us, we wouldn’t be as well off today. It’s like the old adage attributed to Isaac Newton: We see farther because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Joseph Janes’ column in the new issue of American Libraries (January/February, 200 prompted me along these lines today. He used the old National Union Catalog as an example. For twenty years, it was an invaluable resource. Does anyone use it now? I barely remember seeing it in the basement stacks when I was in college. It’s been replaced by WorldCat, a vast improvement. But each new tool builds on the concepts, if not the technology, of its predecessors.

In my online database classes I hold up an old green copy of the 1990 Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature before delving into the much more interactive sources available online today. It illustrates how far we’ve come in a very short time.

Janes offers two reasons to keep the old works in mind. I’d call them Perspective and Context.

• Perspective is the humbling reminder that “everything ends.” The latest tool always looks great, but don’t expect it to last forever. Even the Next Great Thing will end someday, too.
• Context. Here’s Janes speaking of the Union Catalog:

“Even though this behemoth had a comparatively brief run, it was useful and we learned from it and moved on. It represents a milestone on our path of innovation and development, which, in the end, is what matters.”

It’s context that motivates me to read history as often as I do. (I even enjoy the history of science – a discipline whose current theories almost always obliterate their predecessors.)

We have no idea where our current tools will lead us, but we may be certain that they  — like the behemoths of Library 1.0 — will become obsolete one day. “All tools end,” Janes says. “The path remains.” I think it’s the context that lets us know where to post the “You Are Here” signs on that path as we move forward with the Library 2.0 world.

Back from vacation

Hope you enjoyed the holidays. I went back to work today for the first time in two weeks and the place looked eerily familiar.

I’ll post a new “Learn More” installment early next week, but thought I’d restart LibraryStream now by joining in on a meme popular with other bloggers this week: a personal reading recap of 2007. Here’s my freshly compiled statistical list.

Books read in 2007: 62
Non-fiction: 53
Fiction: 5
Other (drama/graphic): 4
Male authors: 48
Female authors: 15
Most read months: January & February (9)
Least read month: June (2)
Book reviews published: 29

I’ve kept a personal reading list since 1993, and enjoy the list of titles far more than these dry numbers. Still, the numbers proved 2007 to be among my least-read years. That’s probably because so many other interests caught my attention. Photography, cycling, and social web projects ate away at precious reading time. I’m fascinated by far too many subjects to trim my non-fiction habit, so it was fiction that took the biggest hit when reading time got squeezed.

The low number of female authors on my reading list this year surprises me, too. It’s not normally that lopsided and probably has more to do with pure chance than anything else. The sex of the author means less to me than the topic and writing style.

In a previous post I showed you my shelf portrait of some of the books I appreciated last year. I won’t/can’t pick a favorite.