Libraries are competing for the time of their local communities. They have to have a good knowledge of not only their current users, but also of whole community.

Commenced a period of substantial change, which moved it from a collection service to a dynamic community hub. The change process incorporated three key areas – new technologies, building design and staff work practices. All changes were in direct response to community needs and aspirations.

One such change was self-service system. Sydenham gave them the opportunity to trial RFID. They ended up moving their self-serve kiosks which initially were too far from staff assistance. With the new model of having the kiosks and staff assistance adjacent, they were able to increase self-serve loans from 40% to 95%.

Lessons learnt from this were used in the deconstruction of the desk at Deer Park Library. That space ended up being more flexible and has since 2008, been moved and rearranged several times.

In 2010, they developed a customer self-sort returns system – in conjunction with their RFID vendor. It took some time, but it works and it works in an area where 1/3 of the residents have low literacy. They also changed back end functions to help the flow – including more floating collections, express holds and increased loan limit (without telling the users). Around 65% of items go through customer self-sorted returns. They have consisently maintained 95% of loans and 65% of returns through self-service.

Greatest fear was job loss. That hasn’t happened – instead, they have increased hours and got additional staff hours to support those extra hours. Staff have moved from passive to active customer support service – they have to be encouraged and trained in this. They have also doubled the amount of programs they offer, many focused on lifelong learning. Many of these programs have been delivered with community partners and many have a focus on literacy, reading culture, social connectedness and employment.

Staff are heavily involved in developing programs, through a variety of teams and management groups, where discussions are open and staff are encouraged to contribute to future directions and decision making.

In 2005, they had 35 PCs library service wide. Now they have 75 and have the highest PC bookings for a public library service in Victoria. They have designed spaces to accommodate PC and games use. Youth were using them almost like an extended living room and doing so together.

For young people, the spectator space is just as important as the gaming space, so at Deer Park, they have made the space and the furniture to fit this need.

Learned that Flexible Design is required, because your users will be the ultimate designers, the IT department relationship is vital, continuous improvement through incremental budgets and small wins help build resilience.

The big bang: establishing the Victorian Government Library Service – Laurie Atkinson and Bernie Lewin

Government libraries in Victoria have expanded and contracted over the years, quite like our universe. At present, it has again contracted, from multiple government department libraries to a single library service working across 15 departments.

Why did it happen? To give greater access to resources, equitable service across government, reduce the cost of providing services, reduce the effort, delays and costs associated with departmental restructures, professional development for staff. Although government librarians were quite informally collaborative, it has now been formalised, with all library staff now working for the Department of Treasury and Finance, although based in the various government departments.

The Vision – shared service provider and clients linked to resource identification, resource procurement and collection management – which result in access to the right information at the best price, for library users.

It has been a huge journey, taking more than 10 independent library services, over 15 sites, managed by over 50 staff, serving a workforce of 50,000 and with a mission to build one high-powered streamlined information machine and do so within a couple of years. Time invested in developing a common lexicon made further integration much easier. Even the range of roles that librarians undertook in their departments was very broad.

They had to integrate 40 in-house catalogues and related databases across a huge range of software and platforms. Ranged from large to small services, running from InMagic and Lotus Notes to Symphony and many more.

The vision was one interface for 50,000 staff, which incorporated the catalogue, inter-library loans and enquiry management, which had to include both physical, electronic and subscriptions services and had comprehensive reporting. No single vendor could do it, so they ended up with Sirsi Dynix for the system with extra modules, including Serials Solutions and Ref Tracker. Achieved it in a ridiculous timeline, but only achieved with a funding extension.

Some of the difficulties included:

• departmental IT policies and setups made some changes more difficult and couldn’t always been foreseen

• funding cycles and resource access to a single government library service has had its challenges with licensing etc

• conflict with IE 6 needed for in-house software, but didn’t work well with SD discovery layer until one of the VGLS tweaked the style sheets

The implementation team was resourced internally, with backup staff were appointed temporarily to backfill them. Advantage that the team was totally involved in the change process. Libraries were clustered by subject area, then by process.

Staff communication was vital. Had regular management meetings and regular staff meetings which seemed to come too fast, but whose value was outstanding. Heavily used a wiki for staff communication and has a blog for news, calendar and wiki pages for whatever they needed. Incorporated a Q&A section – so that staff knew what they had to have done and by when.

Lessons learned: still learning, system integration is incomplete, a the bleeding edge of Whole of Government, the data is still a problem. Opportunities: scalable business model, stakeholder management. Integration is the way of the future.

Engaging student spaces: Library in the Deakin Online Learning Environment – Sharee Crocker

A Learning Management System is the most efficient way to get resources to students. Libraries need to be in that space, to help students get the resources they need.

Because of the plethora of resources that we offer and that are available on the web. Its all very confusing for students. Despite all their efforts, some students don’t attend library classes and are sometimes not embedded into courses. Even if they do attend a course, they may walk away still confused. They may not know about library guides, never ask or never come to the physical building.

How do they reach these students? LMS is used as a central teaching space and provides online learning anywhere any time. Library resources alongside unit specific learning materials – give seamless access to customised unit specific information and necessary to encourage searching beyond the web. If the extra information is one click way, they will use it. Its our responsibility to customise the user experience, designed to connect students in a familiar environment.

In 2010 – Deakin transitioned to Desire to Learn (D2L) LMS from Blackboard. Transition was a staged process over 12 months. Library began by embedding a permanent link to the top menu bar on D2L. Needed more. They then embedded the core library resources for each course, including databases, library guides and journal titles, into the D2L page for that course.

They also created a Library Showcase, which displayed all library resources. Anyone can see the page and if requested by faculty, a resource on this page can be imported into a course page, for easy access to those students.

A widget was created to further enhance access. Faculties were very supportive, so one was developed for each faculty, in conjunction with faculty staff and the LMS vendor. The content in each widget could include e-readings, library eresource guide, specific databases, ebooks, ejournals and external websites. Every widget also included a library catalogue search box. They started with 4 widgets in Trimester 1.However, 60 units going live in Trimester 2 meant a huge increase in the creation of customised course specific widgets.

However, with the need for 1200 widgets eventually, the view changed. Instead of course specific widgets, they moved to 85 discipline specific widgets, with a limit of 5 links – chosen by faculty. However, every course widget also includes a catalogue search box. Every student will have access to these.

Used dynamic linking that enabled the widget to recognise the course and then link to the appropriate e-resources. All widgets also link to at least one library resource guide.

Trove – free online search tool that brings together bibliographic records from libraries and archives. Best known for OCR, human corrected digitised newspapers.

Trove already has an interactive base – including lists, tagging, comments and more. Social media channel attached to it 18 months ago.

NLA has a Facebook page, Twitter channel and YouTube channel. NLA posts all of the content – using the corporate brand as the online identity. Use your brand to attract attention and followers – fits with a business model.

Difficulty in serving all our users in any depth, due to their diversity. Its both good and interesting, but can make it difficult for us to deliver content online which is appropriate for a large proportion of our users.

Social media is a free puppy – there is a cost – in generating content, monitoring and responding to users, archiving content, exploring new tools. NLA is investigating tools such as HootSuite to monitor their online social engagement.

More specialist channels, like British Library’s Magnificent Maps blog, Reel Culture, Dinosaur Tracking, From the Catbird Seat, Children’s Literature @ NYPL. Advantage of these is that you can focus in and users are more likely to tune in and engage with their content.

Unfortunately, we are not able to engage with all of our users, regardless of what we do. Our users and their interests are just too varied.

Results of their 12 month trial with social media. Had no resources to invest in social media, so there was no publicity or marketing of these presences. The first thing they did right was setting their aims for Trove’s social media:

To increase use of Trove

To increase the visiblility of Trove

To provide customer service to Trove

To solicit feedback about Trove, in order to improve the service

Getting it wrong was not thinking about which social media channels they should use. They thought they could re-purpose the content for use across different channels. They couldn’t do it easily.

Facebook didn’t work for them – there were some technical issues, but they weren’t able to resources many different feeds. Need to acknowledge that it is a far more interactive presence and requires more work than a broadcast medium like Twitter. So they moved away from Facebook quite quickly.

Twitter worked perfectly for them. Their aim of constantly exposing their content. Were able to use quirky humour. Thought it would be used differently than it was. Rather than linking to blog posts which contained multiple Trove links, they instead linked directly to digitised snippets. Side benefit was a huge growth in media interest in the content shared and in Trove itself.

Under-estimated how quickly and easy it was to communicate to and with their user base. When you treat your user with that sort of respect, you get a return of good will.

When you user has a win using your service, you are more likely to receive a complimentary tweet, than you are to get an email etc.

Twitter presence is not just about getting Twitter followers, but to get people to come into Trove itself.

There is a cost to not operating in this space. If we are not there, we are missing what people are saying about us and missing a chance to get your message out.

Tim Sherratt – Mining the treasures of Trove: new tools and technologies

1913 – the year that Canberra was officially founded. It was also the year before World War 1 began. Showed a word cloud based on articles from Trove which included the phrase “the future”. It included 11,000 articles. To make this job easy, Tim created a Python script which harvests the data in a form which you specify. Instead of 35,000 clicks, it was a handful.

Once the text files were returned, they were cleaned up. He was able to identify consistent OCR errors and bulk correct them. Once done, we combined them into one file and then put the file into Voyant (a text exploration tool). More refining to remove stop words, so that the more significant terms could come to the fore.

There are a number of tools besides Voyant, that enable you to explore text in interesting ways. Mallet will look at large amounts of text and identify themes (clusters). You have to do some work and decide what the clusters relate to. Natural Language Processing Toolkit (python resource) – enabled him to extract the next six words after a given phrase.

None of these are analyses on their own, they are starting points for future research. They are ways of peeking inside the dataset and helping to decide what approach to use. However, it can be rather slow.

How to speed up the process?

Used QueryHarvester which examined how many articles mentioned your search terms, as compared to the total articles for a year. He then used QueryPic to graph and create a html page which you can then add text to. It encourages exploration in a way that the Harvester alone does not. If you then click on the point on the graph, it then retrieves the first twenty articles from Trove. It gives another interface into the depths of Trove.

This channel is starting to be used by other people, including the Airminded blog. You can too – they are all available and free from Wraggelabs Emporium. Check his blog for more on what he is doing and how.

Why is he doing this? The nature of historical research is changing. In the past, we had scarce resources, but with digitisation, our trickle is becoming more like a flood. “nearly every day we are confronted with a new digital historical resources of almost unimaginable size” Dan Cohen (2008). Its even more true now.

Other tools are out there: Mapping Texts.

Researchers need “a methodology for the infinite archive” Bill Turkel (2006). Now that the historical resources are growing, we will be able to do so much more with the data we can harvest. We can start exploring in ways like never before.

Interfaces are just points of contact between us and the data. Interface development will happen everywhere and they will continue to be developed and alternatives created.

Check out the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities.

There are challenges around this material. One is the de-humanisation of data – the danger that we might forget what its about. We need to keep perspective, understand the human story behind the data.

Phillip Minchin – Stacks of fun: games, community, libraries, technology

Asked questions and used A4 coloured paper to get audience feedback. Consensus was that although most didn’t play games a lot, most considered them very important.

Books are very important and have a place in our lives, but are no longer enough.

Collections: lending is suitable for RPG book and for ones that don’t require registration. Also online subscription games. In-house is suitable for board and card games – is changing with advent of 3D printing and generic self-printing game pieces. Curation is suitable for rules-only games, free electronic games and PDF rule-sets. Subscription suitable (but not available) for: some online games, some ebook-based games. Unsuited to libraries, except as a venue: Collectable Card Games.

Gaming is much more common than most people realise. Part of the appeal of gambling is the gaming. There are a surprising number of games clubs around and they get big numbers. Conventions are big and friendly. Melbourne has a club called Cafe Games – something that libraries could be tapping into.

Gaming is a great way to build community. His library is looking at using games to connect two disparate local communities – older affluent and poorer migrants. Games are a good way because they are non-threatening and fun.

Games in the library: for managing teens/rowdies, chess/scrabble clubs, informal/self-organised play, games club (like book clubs), gamers are our people – geeks and libraries are a natural fit – most are heavy library users already, games and community also a natural fit – Herodotus story – read it in full paper.

Benefits – welcoming space, increased inter-patron interaction, more visitors and longer stays.

Drawbacks – increased potential for patron disputes, more stuff to keep track of, noise level management.

Shared spaces – noise has to be OK and games have to be amenable to audiences or new participants. Dedicated spaces – soundproofed, but preferably visible, but need to manage curiousity.

Games days – for specific well-known games, trying new games, BYO games, open games. Tournaments – if the game is sold commercially, the makers may well support you. Self-organising events – BYO games or open gaming events might well spawn these.

 International Gaming Day @ Your Library – First Saturday of November – 3^rd. http://ngd.ala.org/

 Once upon a time………… there was a princess, the princess loved books, but the princess also loved computers – enamoured with the digital, loves media on all sorts of computers. Her media is everywhere and goes with her everywhere she goes. She doesn’t understand what “we don’t have it” means. She didn’t understand videotapes and the requirement to rewind before watching, it was broken technology to her.

 Our users expect our services to reflect the experiences they are getting from external services, such as Amazon and Netflix.

 No surprise that smart phones outnumber computers. It is a bit of a surprise that it is the same worldwide.

 Linux is less common, than even iOS, which is on the iPad. Australia has over 100% cell phone penetration and nearly ½ of the population have smart phones. The access this gives these people is transformative. In the US, penetration is over 100%, but smart phones is 35%. Mobile phones are the fastest spreading communication technology in the world.

 84% of Australian online adults who have mobile phones use them for more than voice. Not just SMS either.

He works at the University of Tennessee – Chattanooga – has 10,000 students. A good representation of a mid-sized school in the US. 82% of students access their resources online – the other 18% in person. Gate count – 428,032. Website – 1,973,612. Think about how many people are serving in your buildings and then how many are serving your website.

 They can measure on campus use. 18.25% using Macs, 39.32& using Windows devices and 39.31% using mobile devices. 2.89% using games consoles and the remaining mostly Linux. So what are the most common mobile operating systems. These includes 5 Nooks, 41 Kindles, 69 Kindle Fires, over 1000 Androids, 770 iPod Touches, 839 iPads and 2173 iPhones.

 Of the Australian smart phone users, over 50% are using iPhones.

 What are the campus users doing on their devices? 36.5% Netflix. 17.8% Flash video over Http. 11.2% Http – standard web traffic. 11.1% http – media stream. 65.4% – of all traffic is streaming video. How much is coming from the library? People aren’t coming to us for this stuff anymore.

They have this as Chattanooga has the fastest Internet in the US and its cheap. $300 per month for a Gig of bandwidth. This is coming everywhere though. Media streaming is just the beginning.

 What does a post PC world look like? Not just talking about mobile. Its about everything that connected to the Internet. The Internet of things that talk to each other is coming.

 In ten years, we went from iMac to iPhone, from 2000 to 2010. Moore’s Law gets us this – every 18 months get twice as fast and half as expensive. This is what 10 years of Moore’s Law looks like.

 We have single-purpose devices – the Kindle is a great example – it is great at reading books, but terrible at everything else. We have multi-purpose devices – such as the iPad or Kindle Fire. They become anything you want them to become. Harder to understand how we deliver content to these devices because they are infinitely flexible. 55.28 million iPads sold in the three years since its launch. In 2008, Apple sold more iPhones than in 2007. In 2009, 2010 and then again 2011, they sold more than in all previous years combined. In 2011, Apple has sold 315 million devices running iOS. This is the platform we need to pay attention to, because this is what they are buying.

 PC is an example of a mediated interface – you interact with it via a keyboard or a mouse. With a touch screen, there is a direct interaction. Touch is something that everyone understands as a means of interface. What have we done for our library that uses touch as the interface. Its the easy one.

Microsoft Surface Table 2 is out now and that’s another big change coming.

 Xbox Kinect is another change coming. It controls via gesture. People are building it into laptops and will be coming to tablets. It will be commonplace within the next three years. We should be paying attention to this.

 Voice control was envisioned by Apple in the late 1980s and is now happening with smart phones. Another area to be watching.

 Jawbone bracelet monitors your daily movement and links to your phone to provide a daily report. It is becoming more widespread because the cost of sensors is dropping, making it much easier. Twine is a small ambient sensor which started as a Kickstart project – it can be left somewhere to sense changes and then contact you. eg. Lets you know when washing machine stops, if your aquarium leaks, if someone raids the pantry – its a generic device. It could text you, tweet you, when your programmed event happens. We could have them on our shelves, to record when someone moves a book! They can be bought right now, but are probably 3-5 years away from being robust.

 “Predictions are hard – particularly when they are about the future” – Yogi Bera.

 Showed Arthur C Clarke video about the difficulties of predicting the future. If what he says sounds ridiculous, its more likely to be true.

 Showed video on flip scanning from University of Tokyo – just flip through the pages and it is digitised. Can scan a 200 page book in about one minute, uses lasers to de-skew and uses a usual camera and a infra-red camera. The professor in charge sees this eventually in mobile phones. What happens when a user can just walk in with their phone and walk out with everything we own. Samsung Transparent Smart Window – light transmissive, unless you want it to be. Coming out later this year – already in mass production. 3D printing – Maker Bot already has a depository online of things to print – can buy one for $1750 in the US. This is an awesome opportunity for libraries to get into, before they become affordable to the average consumer.

 “Rainbows end” by Vernor Vinge is a MUST read – he describes an academic library after the human race is rendered super-human.

 There are heads up displays in goggles and glasses already available. LEDs on contact lenses are already in development.

 We are experiencing temporary INCOHERENT RAGE – Please stand by!

 We need to be thinking long term – Moore’s Law makes everything cheap eventually. They get so cheap that they end up being disposable. We need to be ready for when that happens.

 We need to be looking outside ourselves. Our issues are not unique and there are solutions out there that can work for us as well. Others are doing better than we are.

 We need to be thinking about mobile first and not fourth or fifth. “Adaptive web design” by Aaron Gustafson. Need better metrics and prepare for the data flood – its not about circulation or gate count. There are other things that are much more important.

 Roger’s adoption curve for adoption of new technology. Not all libraries need to be on the cutting edge. We need to be where our users are. If our patrons are late majority, we need to be early majority. Knowing where our users are, should drive where we our library is.

 Douglas Adams – anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things – unfortunately this is the group that most librarians are in – we need to change this.

 Clay Shirkey – tools dont get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

 Henry Ford – if I’d asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

 Steve Jobs – It isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want.

 The best way for us to predict the future is to create it. Libraries need to be involved in this. The future needs us.

 griffey@gmail.com

jasongriffey.net

 Questions:

 We are needed? Please elaborate.

Patrons bypass us for resources. But they don’t use the web well – they need us to help them to discover and assess appropriate online resources. We also have a local role – not just community centre, but cultural memory – about the objects for which the community cares.

 Experiences cause expectations. How do you manage your undergrads who are early adopters and academics who are laggards?

We serve populations as best we can by segmenting them. Different services for different users. “but those people are going to die” – plan for the future, which means not planning for those who won’t be around for it.

 Are staff ready and willing for the post PC world?

Fortunate to work in a change oriented library – even if have had times where people have been dragged kicking and screaming. However, if they won’t change, then maybe they need to be elsewhere. Cant let the contrarians keep us from the future.

 Breakdown of remote to on campus students?

About 1200 remote – but large growth in off campus users, which will continue.

 NBN impact besides video?

Communication, learning etc. Skype is a trivial example but most relevant. Streaming media ranges widely between learning through classes to watching cat videos on YouTube.

 Concern about social control issue and privacy?

Should get over it because its almost about to go ahead away. Privacy is something we need to frame differently – users should have control over it themselves. Dont yet have a culturally good way to express the changes brought about by ‘things like CCTV, biometrics, social networking and more – much of which will have to be controlled legally. Going to have a hard time with personal privacy over the next ten years.

 When our free broadband is no longer required – where does our careful training go?

Our careful training will be used elsewhere – collection development – human filtered is still better than machine filtered.

Will Donovan from Will Donovan and Mark Watson from Design Providence.

 Mobile and social media – what’s all the fuss?

 37 million iPhones sold in the last quarter in 2012. More than 15 billion apps downloaded – 11 billion for Android. 3 billion iPad apps downloaded. Android now has about 50-60% of market, Apple around 30%. End of last year, smart phone sales overtook PC sales – 488 million smart phones sold, compared to 415 PCs.

 Showed Socialnomics video – related to the book of the same name.

 Social media is not about technology, its about relationships, commerce, memories and much, much more. Over ½ of world population is under 30. Social media has overtaken porn as the number 1 Internet activity. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3^rd largest in the world. 50% of mobile traffic in the UK is for Facebook. 69% of parents are friends with their children in social media. $6 billion spent on virtual goods. Wikipedia in print would be 2.25 million pages long and take over a century to read.

www.socialnomics.com

 Social media trends 2012:

• Convergent emergence – mobile and billboards – bringing your services together and across platforms

• Cult of influence – Klout – what influence do you have online?

• Gamification nation – incentivising your users

• Social sharing – getting your reviews and publications out through social media

• Social television – Q&A (ABCTv) – panel involvement via Twitter

• Micro economy – Kickstarter – people funding other people to create new ideas

 Trends for libraries for 2012

• Mobile friendly websites

• Using YouTube for marketing and education

• Using social media to educate

• Google+ usage will increase, but Facebook will still rule

• Create mobile apps for various uses – not the website

• More services via mobile – due to database vendors

• Goodreads and Library Thing will be used by more libraries as tools, reviews and locating

• Adapt more open source programs

• Online gaming for marketing and education

• More use of Google apps

 86% of people are using their mobile devices whilst watching TV.

 Facebook has become bigger than porn, for the first time ever.

 Three trends that change business – Mobile, Social and Cloud Computing. (Forbes) Its personal and its ubiquitous. Its the new world of services.

 If your site is doing bad, maybe its just not engaging the right way.

Paper.li – social newspaper, for a topic or cause, curated and free flowing. Yammer – private social network (started like Twitter, more like Facebook now). Meetup – social network for groups that have events.

Design process:

Design is messy – no hard and fast way – “This is service design thinking”.

From research (uncertainty) to concept (patterns) and prototype (insights), through to design (clarity/focus).

Designers use inductive thinking – they make observations, find patterns, make tentative hypotheses and create theory – as the process to solve a problem or to create a service.

Discover (design, research, methods) – Define (personas, journeys, maps) – Develop (scenarios, role play, story board) – Deliver (document, concept. (Double diamond design process)

Discover – observe, question (surveys and interviews), map

Define – interpret, establish scope, needs, delineate problems

Develop – work though concepts to establish the appropriate action (journey mapping, story boarding etc)

Deliver – document and build

WORKSHOP – My group decided to work on an actual problem. One of our team has a great store of atmospheric and oceanographic data which is underutilised as it isn’t well known outside the university.  We determined that potential users included scientists, corporations, government, educators, students and researchers. These people all required quick and easy access to such data. Our solution to ‘spread’ the word was to create a Wikipedia article on the repository, which would include snippets of data from the database and a YouTube channel which would show videos of how the data was collected and used.  This would help make it more findable through web searches. We also determined to improve SEO on the website and to offer RSS feeds to the data, to make it more findable and more useful to those who could benefit from it. 

How we did this?

Scoping – define your challenge

Ideation and Concepting

Prototyping

Deliver

 Phase 1 – explore the problem, the challenges and the conventions that you are currently in

• what is the problem opportunity

• who are the users (personas)

• what are they trying to achieve (scenarios)

• concept/storyboard/journey

Phase 2 – wireframe – prototype

• test

• amend

• test again

• deliver

Rules of engagement

• yes and…. (build on what the other person said)

• defer judgement (don’t get caught in arguments, move on)

• go for quantity (share what you do)

• one conversation at a time

• encourage wild ideas

• build on the idea of others

• stay focused on the topic

• be visual

Open share what you know:

• what do you know about social media and mobile

• what tools have use used and pros and cons

Brainstorm the services and challenges now:

• what services do you offer

• who are your users/visitors and their needs

• Visitor + Need = Insight

Create a “How might we”problem statement

Many ways to approach new projects. It is important to collaborate. You don’t need to be an expert designer to innovate. Have a content strategy – be a content expert.

So here goes my work day.

12.00pm – Start work at 1pm so of course I arrived at work at 12.00pm, where I completed the staff timesheets for yesterday, whilst also catching up on what had been happening during the morning. Business as usual, except that it has been much busier than we had experienced of late. And of course, checked email.

12.30pm – Followed up on the resignation of a shelver – she had resigned on the weekend, so I followed up with the staff member who took the details and chased up with the personnel manager about what was required as follow-up. Signed off on a pile of leave applications and travel allowance forms. Followed up on completed and in process maintenance issues.

1.00 – 3.00pm – Frantically busy on desk. We were down a person due to staff training on our new discovery layer being launched next week and spent the first hour just trying to clear the backlog of returns etc, whilst serving the library users still pouring into the library. Once the backlog was cleared, spent the next hour just trying to catch up with clearing all the returns from the desk and back out into the library where users could gain access to them.

3.00pm – Uploaded helpsheets for our new discovery layer and created new links on our website, in preparation for next week’s hard launch and for our soft launch, which went live today. Also dealt with assorted staff needs and queries. And phone calls to various staff following up on assorted items.

3.45pm – Created some new book covers and information for our new books slideshow on our website. And more staff queries.

4.00pm – Added our recent library news blog post and the Gorilla Librarian (Monty Python) video to our Facebook page.

4.15pm – Did a tidy up of our website RSS feeds and deleted expired events slides.

4.20pm – Made some calls related to maintenance issues.

4.35pm – Emailed our library bloggers about changes to the new catalogue and the need to begin adding links to the new catalogue in their posts.

4.45pm – Catch up and clean up of email.

4.50pm – Started a blog post on our adult blog about Oscar Best Picture nominees which came from books. Saved it in draft form for completion another day.

5.00pm – Home for dinner.

6.00pm – 9.00pm – Back on desk for the evening – filled with loans, returns, memberships, internet assistance, copier/printer assistance, holds, console games bookings – setup – pack-up, tidy up around the library (amazing how messy some people are), as well as other numerous administrative tasks.

9.05pm – Home for another day.

Pretty normal day really. Nothing exciting in a way, but I love my job and I work in a wonderful library service with great people, so I wouldn’t change a thing.

I just finished reading a post by Andy Burkhardt at Information Tyrannosaur which got me pondering. I’m only new to Andy’s blog, but I highly recommend you check it out, if you haven’t already.  Entitled Creating Meaning for Library Users, it took some great ideas from a TED talk by Experience Designer Nathan Shedroff.

What caught my attention however, was his closing paragraph.

“We are not simply delivering access to e-books or databases. We are not only conducting reference interviews or doing information literacy. We are doing something much more important than that.”

He’s referring to all the things that libraries do for their users, that is meaningful to their users. The things that keep them coming back for more, that leave them satisfied each time they leave our buildings.

It’s not new. We all know the future of libraries is not just tied up in our collections or our roles as information intermediaries.

But what are those things we do, that address the ‘meaning’ that our users are seeking. And what are the things we want to do that we aren’t doing yet and why aren’t we?

At my library, we have had an amazing increase in the number of people wanting to use the space for study this year. Not necessarily the collection, but definitely the wi-fi, the tables and in a lot of instances, some quiet. Unfortunately, we are not too well set up for the latter, with every inch of floorspace being used and being a public library, more often than not, its far from quiet. Plans are being made to fix this, but it all takes time and money. In the meantime, we do what we can. So one of the things we would like to do, is to be able to provide that ‘quiet’ study space, whilst not becoming the ‘shhh’ police that we all abhor (and don’t have the time for).

I want our users to know and remember the services we have that suit their needs, so that they can access them when they need or want them. Unfortunately, we can only tell them about those services when they join and when they ask, otherwise we can’t make them remember. Its very frustrating too, I can tell you.

I want more people from our community to come in and discover the treasures that we offer, in facilities, programs, collections and more. Our communities are great supporters of libraries, but nowhere near enough of them are members.  Our marketing programs are great, but somehow people still don’t actually make it into our buildings or onto our websites, to learn more and make use of the great things we have on offer. If only there was a way to make a library card the latest hip trend, one that never goes out of fashion……

What do you want for your users? What can you do to make it happen? I don’t know what I can do to make my wishes reality, but I am going to work on finding out.

Happy New Year!

Its interesting to see what people are saying about them in the library landscape and elsewhere.  On the more supportive side:

•  QR Codes and Information Literacy

on the more sceptical side there is

• Why the QR code is failing
• QR Codes go to College

So what are we doing with them and why, if they are ‘going to fail’?

We have started with creating a QR Code for our website and our Facebook page. We put them up on our website and on signs in our branches advertising our online presences.  At the same time, we did introductions to QR Codes for our staff and an article in our monthly newsletter for library users.

We have no indication at this point how well they are being used, if at all, but if nothing else we have taken a step in the education process. I know from discussions with staff, that they appreciate having explained to them the black square boxes that they have seen appearing in marketing everywhere. Hopefully, its the same for our users. As librarians know, its the information literacy that is always the hardest part.

So far, we are happy with what we have done – it hasn’t taken much time or effort to produce.

The next step is to create new shelf talkers to advertise our online resources in the appropriate on-shelf collections, so its very simple and straightforward to create a QR code to take users straight to the resource.

I can understand the scepticism about QR Codes, after all, it takes knowledge and software to use them. The fact that it is being used widely in advertising, will help its adoption. It doesn’t hurt us either, that the library is using something which could in time, be considered cool.

If it doesn’t gain that widespread adoption, its no great loss. It hasn’t taken much time and its been quickly absorbed into things we would normally do anyway. If it succeeds, then we will look at expanding its use into other areas – and there are many.  Some of these include:

•  QR Codes – Library Success Wiki
• Learn more about QR Codes – UTS Library
• QR codes in the library – an investigative and fun orientation program (14 June) – Sally
• QR codes and libraries – what’s all the fuss about? – SLNSW
• QR Codes – University of Wollongong

It’s very gratifying seeing lots of libraries trying these out and will be interesting to see where they go, both in libraries and in the general world.

Is your library using or planning to use QR Codes? Why/why not? I would love to hear your experiences of how they are being used or why they’re not.

So what did we decide were beyond the basics?  To start with, a comprehensive knowledge of your collection. Is the item being requested, something that your library would hold? I know that we don’t collect tertiary textbooks, so save both myself and the library user time when I can say that straight away. Having said that, there have been times when I was sure we wouldn’t have something, but the enquirer pushed and I searched and we did have it. So being aware that I am not omnipotent about everything our library has, I usually take a moment to do at least a quick search just to confirm. That search can also help me to determine if we have something else, which although not asked for, could be useful.

What’s the difference, if I’m going to search anyway? If I am reasonably sure we won’t have something, my search will be relatively quick and cursory (but thorough). If I think we may have something, I’ll spend more time trying to find it.

Leading on from that, is knowing where to refer people to when you can’t help them with their inquiry. On one day at our library, I referred different library users to a university library, local historical society, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the local community information centre and their local Council.  That day combined two sets of knowledge, that come with experience.

The first is particularly important in public libraries, that being local knowledge. Who are the information/service providers in your area, where are things located etc. If you don’t know, you should at least need to know where you can find out – eg. Council Community Directories are an invaluable source, or who on your staff  to ask, as they have that knowledge.

The second comes with experience. One of the questions asked that day related to data about a particular health condition and its prevalence in Australia. Having worked with Australian Bureau of Statistics data for many years, I was able to match the enquirer with this resource, for which he was extremely grateful.  Our experience, both within libraries and outside them, is invaluable in our roles as information seekers on our own behalf, or for others.

It also helps to have a bit of general knowledge about absolutely everything!  I know it seems like a bit much, but if you have a general idea that C is a computer programming language and not just a letter of the alphabet or that flashing is to do with building and not just a criminal offence, it can make finding the information your enquirer seeks, much quicker and more accurate. And if you don’t know or are vague about what they are talking about, do a quick background search for context (Wikipedia is often great for this), so that you are least looking in the right area when you do go searching.

Unfortunately, the enquirer does not always know what they are seeking, or know how to best articulate it.  So although the basic reference interview is requisite, a few more savvy questions that get down to the nitty gritty (with skills again picked up from experience – both life and library), can make all the difference in getting to a successful result.

And finally, refine, recheck and refine, recheck. Really ask the questions about whether the enquiry has been satisfied. Or at least, use your people skills to figure out if they have had enough of you and would you please go away, lol.

Freak out, geek out or seek out: trends, transformations & change in libraries – David Lee King

New book coming out next year – Face to Face – connecting with users online.

Was at NLS #5, lots of energy and enthusiasm. Saw lots of good ideas there.  Also had lots of staff telling him that they take their ideas back to their libraries and get told NO. Got told a few times that their IT guys are Evil!

Mentioned Grove Library and Community Centre – doing sustainability type things underground. Have movable, comfortable furniture. Don’t have a ref desk, but have staff workstations located around the library as the staff are circulating. They moved shelving and furniture to make room for the community.

Can be a bad place to be freaking out – not good for anybody. Should we be geeking out – as soon as it hits market? No, should be testing out for our users. We need to be seeking out.

Personal technology has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. In libraries, we have online resources, new technologies, new collections and new user expectations, online resources. Gone the way of the past: floppy disks, typewriters, film cameras and watches seem to be on the way out, at least for some.

One big change is we now have competition. Thirty years ago, the only place to get answers or borrow books was the library. Book stores have gotten big and offer many of the same services – they do storytimes, read books, enjoy coffee. Breaks down in the reference question department. If you want something fast – Amazon. They are a big competitor for us.

Not so much competition, but a change that has messed with libraries, is that newspapers are disappearing from print. In US, 120 newspapers have already changed from print to digital. On the Newspaper extinction timeline – it is expected that Australia will no longer have any print newspapers by 2022.

In US, they have rent DVDs from a vending machines on the street. But they don’t have the older titles. Competition for us. E-books, are the same. Overdrive now offers Kindle compatible ebooks now for libraries which maybe helps ease the pressure if we offer it.

Tablets, notebooks and laptops are taking over from desktops. Google has taken over from the ready reference collection. The positive is that it frees us up to answer the deeper questions, that’s if they know to come to us to ask. And then there’s the smart phone – which does everything!  Including making phone calls!

Tech changes in libraries – in the past included fiction, electricity, phone reference, copiers and then in the 1970′s we got our online catalogues and in the 1980′s the PC took off, the 1990′s the internet appears and in 2004 it was Web 2.0. The three biggest destination sights now are Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which were created in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Emerging web has changed dramatically and has nothing to do with technology – it is about connecting people. It is real time, decentralised (can visit library on the web, without going to the website), its multimedia (line between newspaper and TV websites are blurring). Every company is a media company – we write articles, create content, pushing out our wares. Emerging web is very mobile – the web is in my pocket – but it should also be that the library is in my pocket. Mobile websites for libraries are a valuable tool – want it to be useful for people who want to do a task quickly – renew, ask a question etc. Emerging web is social, its two way, public with global reach, so need to be careful about what you say – if you can’t say it in person, don’t say it online.

David is Digital Branch Manager, he has a department – IT and a concept – Digital branch. He is a community manager, he scans the horizon, he is executive editor, long range planner, manager, evangelist and he answers the tough questions.

His 3 realities:
1. all services will be physical and digital – not so easy to achieve eg. storytimes
2. we’ll use the web to build unique stuff
3. to some, the digital branch will be their only branch – can place holds and pay to have them mailed out

Content – digital branch has to have things for people to see, do, read etc when they visit. They have catalogue searches on their website as well as their Facebook page. You can subscribe to their blogs by RSS or email. Blogs have photos and info about their blog contributors, so you can focus on the content you enjoy most. Photos they have on Flickr and YouTube are also reposted on their website in their blogs etc.

Community – how do you do community in a digital branch? They have instant messaging reference (using Meebo) and get an answer (if the library is open) – on both their website and embedded in their catalogue. Need to have a front door – that’s dramatic, but every page on the website is a front door, as well as Google, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter are also front doors. We have many digital borders.

Conversation – lots of discussions going on, between staff and users and between users. Conversations on the digital branch include the instant messaging widget, email reference, comments on the blogs (good and bad – which provides opinions and can help you continue the conversation), Facebook comments, Flickr comments, Twitter. Will follow their customers that follow them on Twitter, because they want to focus on their local community. Will celebrate achievements – they sent out a T-shirt to their 1000th follower.

Can have vanity searches for your library, town, postcodes and things like reading etc. Find out what the community is talking about. It gives you an opportunity to step in if you see they’re talking about you, but not talking to you.

Tackle change – ideas to get started thinking about it. A lot of libraries are not seen as relevant in our communities. They go to everyone else, before they come to us and only if they remember. We need to be first. How?
Model the way – you better be doing it first if you expect your staff to be doing it, everyone needs to be on the bus (Jim Collins book – “Good to great” – if you don’t have the right people on the bus, get the wrong ones off and get the right ones on) .

Our websites, our buildings, our services need to be as easy as a light switch to use – so that they don’t have to think about what’s going on – libraries have to stay out of their users way, unless they want to deal with you
Know your patrons – know what they are doing in your buildings, on your PCs, on your website – it can help you with designs and redesigns. It also helps you to know who doesn’t use your library. Find out where your non-users are and then market to them.
Online services have to reflect physical – no “will answer your email within two business days” on your online reference.

If we don’t change, we will die and some libraries in the US are already closing.

As print books slowly disappear and ebooks come to the fore, we will still need libraries, we will still have jobs – our patrons will lead us to where they want us to go.

Finding time – “what do you want me to drop, so that I can do that”. Its not about that, its about changing focus – what is the priority of your library and concentrate on that first, then if there’s time left, you can do other staff. If you can’t, the other stuff will fall to wayside and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Its about the user ultimately and they are online – so we need to be there.

Question: Improvement in catalogue, that negates the need to have instant messaging in catalogue. They are getting a new OPAC, which will meet that. There are overlays, and plugins that can be used to improve catalogue response.

Tablets and roving reference experience. Staff are answering a lot of questions when they are roving around, working well.

New website – can we get immediate content on there. Yes, it is possible, consult with your website provider (small library – Council IT).

Sustainability – what are you doing? Measure use against work input. Have service – personalised reading lists – fill in a form and a librarian will compile a personalised reading list for you, to meet your needs. Wasn’t getting a lot of use, so they re-jigged the form and marketed it and already the response has been good. If it doesn’t improve, they will stop the service.

What is the one next big thing?  Fun – thinks he will be wrong. Google + – just gone public in the last few days. No organisational pages yet, but that will come. Very different to both Twitter and Facebook, so there is definite potential there. Very closely tied to Google Apps, which is potentially a huge change – brings together Facebook, Microsoft and wiki-like content.

His current book: Designing the digital experience.  Website: www.davidleeking.com

Putting IT back in reality – Hamish Curry, Application and Online Learning Manager – State Library of Victoria

Mash-up idea – take photos and put them on top of each, as you rub the them on your  iPhone, you rub down through the years and see the space/place as it was going backwards through time.

Contact: hcurry@slv.vic.gov.au @hamishcurry  slideshare.net/hcurry

Statements heard from people he has spoken to about the SLV: ebooks must be killing libraries, this digital stuff must be making your job hard, guess no-one wants to go the library any more, bet your numbers are down.

Reality – the worst game ever! IT can help augment the experience. Smart phones, tablets are helping to do this. Extend the experience – after this you will look further, online of course. Enhance the engagement – you may tweet your own thoughts and ideas which enhances things.

What breaks assumptions over expectations? How can we get people to come in physically or online, to see for themselves. Seeing is believing, but you have to not only market, but be able to back it up in reality, to participate. They have to also have a social connection, not with the building, but with the people in the building – with people in the library who they believe are more honest and authentic.

Instead, you can offer surprises – offer them something they don’t expect. You need to do things that make your users curious. Give them a chance to discover – so that they end up owning it – even if we miss out on getting the credit. Let them make connections, both to people and to the place.  Learn – check out Happy Planet Index: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/ – number five is learning. So very important to ensure people keep learning. All this will keep people coming back.

Do something unexpected and make it cool, both in the physical and online environments. (I geek the library).

Always offer silence, trustworthiness, answers, quality and Wi-Fi. Quality, means finding the balance between doing it right and do it quickly.

From the community section on SLV website – helps embed them back in with their users.

Digital is not so scary – we are still trying to make the worlds information accessible in our pockets – but has moved from a miniature library in a matchbox, to online – the only difference is that we use mobile devices to access it and the content has been outsourced.

Technology has really shaped learning and literacy. We can talk to anyone at any time. We can work together from anywhere at any time. We can connect with people anywhere, any time. The curriculum has had to change too, but teachers are struggling to keep up with these phenomenal changes, so that they can lead young minds. They are getting on board and librarians have to do so too.

Information has changed, but even though trusted sources are always the best, they are not the first two results on a Google search, where people think they are trusted sources. There is so much learning now available on the web, not just content, but ways of providing learning – eg. Video conferencing. Information scarcity has changed to information complexity. Clay Shirky – “Its not information overload. Its filter failure.” This is what librarians are great at and we need to be able teach everyone.

Khan Academy – www.khanacademy.org – 2500 videos to teach you just about everything. Some good, some bad.

We are answer rich, but question poor. (Susan Greenfield – “Quest for identity in the 21st century.”) Hamish has great admiration for reference librarians who deal with people who have done the search but cant navigate what they found, or find the answer they seek.

University of Sydney has created a great range of engaging resources to help people to search and filter. SLV has done the same with ERGO (http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/). Designed for students, but stats showing that teachers are finding it very valuable.

Hoddle Waddle (http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/explore/student-teacher-resources/hoddle-waddle-education-kit) – program to help students navigate 50 sites in the CBD in a day. Not taken up initially, but once they made most of the content Freemium, bookings have improved and all the resources are being much better used. Teachers are now presenting on the program at conferences. They are now considering offering it as a public program, for cultural visitors to use it. Improvements in progress including mobile contributions using Broadcastr. ARIS is another app which does something similar. As augmented reality becomes more mainstream, there will be even more opportunities to put IT back into reality.

Change involving technology, needs not only the tech, but also a cultural change.

Interaction with inanimate. SLV playing with QR codes – used it in a gallery to see how people
use it. There are also Google Goggles, i-nigma, Red Laser, Photosynth – a 360 degree mapping app.

Risk: Partners and programs – risk is not a dirty word, being risk adverse – makes you slow and inflexible – wont do anything because we could get it wrong, it requires trust of the organisation in their staff, motivation, relationship – always remembering that shift will happen.

If you don’t step in and do it, someone else will – and they not present what you think should be.

Some tools to do this: RSS, Twitter, Google +, Facebook, Yammer. Half of SLV is now on Yammer, after starting with 5 a year ago.

Networks are always changing – online mimics what nature does – new networks develop and old ones die and drop away.

“Use the force, Luke”. – Obi Wan Kenobi. We need to harness the world around us. We want to be able to pull people on site and push them online. Don’t create your own social space, go to where your users are already. Need to occupy multiple spaces to access different audiences.

Sometimes you need to prepackage content and bring it to the fore, to make it easier for people to access and to bring our collections alive.

“The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance.” (Peter Senge – “Fifth discipline”) SLV programs: TedX Melbourne and now happening around the world, but it pulls people in and engaging with you, Personal Learning Network with SLAV teaching teachers and teacher librarians about the online world.

Its not so much I Communication T, but change as the C in ICT. We need libraries to be FUN – not just the physical, but the online as well. Need to know what the drivers are, have to be prepared to play and technology has a role. (Night at the Mitchell Library video).

Video games are changing how things work. They have play, replay and experimentation, they involve risk and reward, they can be integrated experiences and augmented experiences. The only difference between chess and video games is a shift in format – the skills and experience are very similar.

International initiatives – Find the Library at NYPL, National Gaming Day in US Libraries, Freeplay at SLV.

Merge and mirror programs – a fusion between what they experience in one space and are further enhanced in another. Transmedia – can stand alone (eg. Facebook), but can also be linked to draw people to other spaces. Hacks and Library Apps can also be used to enhance experiences.

Data is becoming sexy as people are presenting it differently. eg. Infographics, Library Hack, Open Government Data.
“But problem solving , however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results. ” (Peter Drucker – “The Effective Executive”)

“When people in motion, meet a library in motion, anything is possible” – Director Stockholm Public Library.

Our library has five blogs, four of which are hosted by Blogger. To make the most of this content, to ensure that people are seeing it when they don’t know about the blogs (and many don’t, regardless of how much we promote them), we feed each of them to our library homepage. (the fifth is already there)

We were wondering how effective this was and started doing some statistical analysis. Up until recently, we only counted visits to the actual blogs at  Blogger and to our news blog on Drupal.  The statistics were better for some than for others, but one of our blogs was quite low and it was getting a bit discouraging, when you considered the effort that went into creating both the blog and the regular content that goes into it.

So I took another look at the blog content and how it was being used in various locations.  Between readers of the actual blogs (counted using Google Analytics), subscribers (using Feedburner) and then reads of the blog posts on our website (counted using Drupal Statistics), we found that our blog content was being read by anything up to 300% more than just at the blogs alone!  Quite eye-opening really.

And this doesn’t count the people who just scan read the summary of each post as it appears on the library’s homepage. The Drupal only counts a read when the post title is clicked on and the reader goes to the full-text of the posts (which is also on the website).

So we have this great content, being utilised in numerous locations and getting a much wider audience, with little effort from library staff, due to the joy of RSS feeds. (gotta love em).

Then back in August, Brian Herzog posted on his blog Swiss Army Librarian – Visualising the flow of my library’s information online and I pounced on that idea.  His flowchart came after their Facebook page launch and so I created one for our library, to help convince our management that we should launch our Facebook page.  Their reasonable concern was that it would be too staff-intensive for too little return. The flowchart was designed to show that staff time would be minimal and after some guidelines on management of the page were created, we got the go ahead to launch.

Here’s the flowchart I created:

We could have automated the process further, by posting the feed from our library news blog straight to Facebook, but decided against it. Instead, we post that content to our Wall, in a bit more of a casual voice, which gives us the opportunity to engage more personally with our Facebook page and our fans.

The flowchart has also given us some areas to consider improving in and things to consider if we ever expand our online presences to include sites like Twitter, Google Plus and others. (after all, who knows what the next big online thing will be!)

Can we use this concept for other information flows?  I am thinking of doing one for my personal presences, seeing where I can maybe get a more consistent message out on my various networks.  But that’s a task for another day.

How does your library’s online information flow work?  Would love to hear any ideas you have that might help us change or improve ours.

And thanks Brian for the awesome idea!