Connecting Librarian

Morgan at Exploded Library got me thinking about this more fully with his recent blog post “Living with myself as a law librarian“. He pondered his dilemma - “what happens if I am indirectly helping a client do things which conflict with my personal values?” He also ponders whether “these questions are a lot easier for people who work in public libraries or school or academic libraries”.  Check out the blog post to find out what he has discovered.

As a long serving public librarian, I think we have the same sorts of issues, but maybe with a slightly different view. I have concerns about teenage girls taking out items on astrology and witchcraft, but that is a personal issue which I have kept out of my professional work. New age and Feng Shui are not for me neither, but if that is what a user wants, I am professionally obliged to help them find it and I do. I would love to see people read more good fiction or non-fiction, but if they want graphic novels and paperback romances, I am happy to provide them with those - they are still reading.

I don’t like all of the books, DVDs, CDs, magazines etc that we purchase for our collections, but I can’t censor those collections based on my preferences, because not everyone likes the same things that I do. My job as a librarian is to try to meet our users’ needs, not mine. As a librarian colleague once joked, if it was up to her, she would just run a mobile library service with only paperback romances and Where’s Wally (Waldo for US readers) and the circulation stats would go through the roof! But on the otherhand, our membership would be reduced by 90%, but they would be awesome borrowers!

On the other side of the ethical question, we had a borrower this week, who almost accused us of stealing some money that had been left in a returned library book. When she realised and the book was traced, the money was not there. I was one of the staff members working on the day this allegedly happened and was surprised and indignant. Not only would neither I or any of the staff think of taking any money found in a book, but we would usually be so shocked that we had found it that we would announce it to all and sundry, so it would not be able to be kept secret. Most librarians I know are honest and committed to their work and the community they serve and doing such a thing would never cross their minds for a second.

Library staff can be highly ethical creatures and will do much to serve our users and to protect their interests (including potentially lost property, however insignificant to us). That doesn’t mean we are perfect, maybe its more a case of library work drawing those who are community minded, etc. That’s who we are, both personally and at work. I work with a fantastic group of people, both librarians and library officers and I have yet to discover in my 23 years in public libraries, of one instance where someone I know or work with has been unethical in any way.

So that’s my public librarian’s view of the ethical question. I would love to hear if your views as a public librarian are similar or not, or what sorts of ethical issues you have to deal with as a school, academic or special librarian.

Got thinking about this topic the other day at work. We are trialling self-serve holds, where the patron collects their own hold. We are trialling it, because our holds are getting out of control, since we changed our LMS with a consortia of now 12 library services and dropped our holds fee. So now our users have access to the collections of 12 public library services, through our holds facility and it doesn’t cost them anything. We are getting so many holds that we don’t have enough room at the desk to hold them and it was causing all sorts of issues.

Anyway, the trial has only started this week and the first I heard about how it was going, was the fact that they had already had a complaint. We do things that our patrons don’t want all the time. We introduced library fines years ago and have lending limits on our collections. Quite a few years ago we stopped stamping our items and starting giving people receipts for their loans and we had an uproar of complaints and people almost begging to be able to stamp items themselves, if nothing else. Many, many years later, we still have the odd complaint about receipts, but these days its usually because they lost their receipt and then incurred overdue fines for not returning their items on time.

We have gaming consoles in one of our branches and are launching it in 2 others this week. When our first branch went live, we had a raft of complaints, which I thought our library CEO handled very well. A lot of people didn’t like it, but that hasn’t stopped us from installing them in 2 other branches.

Why don’t our users want these things? Because they perceive that its not better for them, or as with the gaming consoles, can be detrimental. Sometimes its because it doesn’t fit the image of what a public library is or does (as with many of the gaming complaints). But at what point do we do things or stop doing them, despite people not liking it?

We introduced fines many years ago because our average loan period, which should have been about 2 1/2 weeks, with items having either a 1 week or 4 week loan, was averaging about 6 weeks. We introduced fines so that people would be inspired to return items in a more timely manner, thereby making them available to all our users in a fairer manner. The same reasoning of fairness applies to our limit of 1 renewal and our limits on DVD, CD and video loans.

So I have some questions: What is the percentage of dissatisatisfaction you accept, before you stop a service or restriction? ie. proportion of people that are unhappy with something - 50%? 80%? Is there a limit or do other factors come into play to balance against those proportions? I know printing receipts has markedly reduced the possibility of RSI from the stamping process. How long do you trial something that causes dissatisfaction? In other words, how long do you give your users to get used to it and the benefits (because hopefully it will ultimately benefit them in some way) it produces, before you give up it? For our loan limits, it was decades!

Would love to hear of your experiences of when you give your users what they don’t want.

It was my birthday the other day. Unfortunately I had a staff meeting and an appointment on that day which was my day off, as well as the regular school drop off, pickup and swimming lessons. So it wasn’t a day to relax. However, it was a day I learnt a bit about myself that I guess I have known, but never really realised and it was a day filled with many moments of happiness, many of which had some sort of electronic origin.

I’m a Gen Xer, a control freak (but not a perfectionist), task oriented and I love music. My work involves virtual services for my public library, which I just love. This is just some background to give context to the rest of this story.

My staff meeting was our Information Services team. The meeting is only quarterly, so I didn’t want to miss it and I do enjoy what we cover and the people I work with on this team. However, my biggest moment of joy in this meeting was sharing an achievement involving solving the issue of being able to search our catalogue from outside of our OPAC. Its been something that I have been working towards, on and off, since we got our new ILMS over 12 months ago and which came together in a very short time due to some timely and very helpful assistance from a colleague at another of our consortia libraries. (Thanks again Maryanne).

Another moment of joy during the day was when I was driving home from my appointment and one of my favourite songs came on the CD player. The volume went up on the music and whilst driving, I was bopping away in my car and singing my heart out (I’m not a bad singer…). I didn’t care what other drivers saw or thought, I was just enjoying the moment, which combined my joy of driving with my love of music. (don’t worry, I didn’t break any road rules or run anyone off the road)

After getting home, I chilled out for a short time, firstly online. I ended up with a small smile on my face for the rest of the day, because of all the lovely birthday wishes I received, both through email and through Facebook. Thanks to both my email and Facebook friends. It was a small thing, but I really did appreciate the few moments that you took to send me a quick greeting. After that I spent the last little time I had spare before getting going with kids and birthday dinner, to watch some of my favourite episodes of one of my favourite TV shows.

I spend lots of time in the electronic environment. Driving my car, working on virtual services, listening to music, spending time online whether in games, social networks, watching TV and more. And I really enjoy it. I always knew I spent a lot of time on computer, in my car and on TV, but didn’t really realise until that day how many moments of joy they provide me. It makes me think that I may be more digital native than I realised.

I have been thinking about this subject for weeks, longer probably and I’m not the only one. There’s been a lot of discussion about what social software people are using, people stopping blogging and some restarting and more. In the light of this, I thought it was about time I sorted out all the myriad of thoughts and ideas that are going around my head and totally confuse you about it too.

I have been exploring lots of social software online in the past 3 years or so and I think I am finally settling into a few selected ones that I am enjoying. The places I spend at least a little time everyday are Twitter (feel free to follow me - tango2), Facebook and a gaming site Gold Token, besides the several email addresses I monitor for myself, my work, hubby’s business and my church. I also believe in this blog still, although I am not posting as often, probably for a couple of reasons, which I will go into later.

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/11/

I tried Library 2.0 on Ning, but there’s only so much you can do online and I find that most of the people I want to be in contact with are on Facebook. I never registered for Linked In, never felt the need because of my Facebook connections. And Facebook has great word games, although I could do without the vampires, zombies, knights etc. I use IM mainly at work, but not much at home, probably because I don’t have many addresses yet, so that could change. I love del.icio.us, but at home I am using it more as ‘I want to know where these websites are when I need them’ account. At work however, I am having a ball, using it for our Olympic Games links. And don’t get me started on podcasts and RSS feeds (both of which I love).

I want to do more with my Library Thing account, maybe integrating it more with my blog, like I have with Twitter, the same with my Flickr account and I haven’t gotten into YouTube or any equivalent yet, except as a regular viewer. We’ll see what happens though. Still that’s a lot to be using and trying to keep up with on a regular basis.

I have a feed from my blog going into my Facebook and I have integrated my Twitter feed into my Facebook and my blog because I don’t want to be concentrated in one spot. I like the idea of being able to be seen and heard in a number of places. Exhibitionist maybe, or maybe just a librarian to the core, making it as easy as possible to find that information. Dispersing my twitter feeds means that have to open them up, which for some people is a legitimate privacy concern, but I can live with that. Again, I guess its the librarian in me that just wants as many access points as possible. On the otherhand, it means that I can’t discuss everything that I may want to (ie. the odd rant), as it would viewable by all, including those about whom I am ranting, but that’s the price you pay.

So why 2008 in the title? Because all this will change. Two years ago I just had the blog, email and a bit of IM. Delicious was something new on the radar for me then too. Its only in the last year that I have really got immersed in Twitter and Facebook. So who knows how the landscape and how I choose to use it, will change in the next year.

So I guess I’m saying, that I plan to be found online in these places: my blog, facebook, twitter, delicious, flickr, library thing (getting there anyway) and that’s enough for now. I like being in all those diverse places, but I also like my content coming together in one place, to give a big picture view, so that’s where this blog will still play a big part.

The blog as I said earlier has been quieter, for a number of reasons. Firstly, because I am spending time in the other places I have mentioned, secondly because I have been doing some presentations, writing papers and have just finished a couple of articles (waiting to hear if they will be published). Thirdly, the big changes that seemed to be happening and happening fast with Web 2.0, seem to be slowing down a bit. Comes from being on the cutting edge I guess, we are now just waiting for everyone else to catch up a bit before we move onto to the next big thing - or maybe we’re just waiting for the next big thing to appear? Or is it just me?

So how do I manage to keep up with all this. I don’t know really. But Clay Shirky, author of “Here comes everybody“, has some thoughts on that. I really recommend you take the time to watch this video, where he explains where the time comes from. Its worth the 15 minute investment (and I really must get the book and stick it on Library Thing).

Anyway, so now you know where to find me. And wherever you go looking for me, you can be guaranteed that you’ll be able to find out what I’m up to. Whether or not you want to, is entirely up to you!

Its Australian Library and Information Week and there are many events going on in libraries around the country (although its also Education Week, so that’s fun for the school libraries!).

One of those fun things is from Libraries Interact. We are pulling together articles for a Carnival of the Infosciences and need your assistance. This could be the last Carnival, so lets make it a great one.

We are looking for people to contribute recent (or near recent) blog posts, online articles etc - it can be yours or someone elses, it doesn’t matter. “This LIW is an Australian event, but submissions from all over are welcome. The theme of LIW is libraries are for everyone, so posts on that theme are particularly welcome.” (Libraries Interact)

As we are already well into Library Week, submissions would be appreciated as soon as possible. Submission details are available at Libraries Interact.

Image by busymommy Some rights reserved.

On a more personal note, I have been overwhelmingly busy of late with no inclination to blog, but I have a few blog posts in my head, which I will start bringing to fruition soon, so stay tuned.