Connecting Librarian

I am pleased to say that at our library, we most often discover to our delight, that we have exceeded our users expectations. We have more, offer more, help more etc, than they expect – give good quality content and good customer service.

But I also have to admit, that we also get people who expect the earth.  They expect us to have the fastest internet connections on the earth and to know that they need this title NOW and have it waiting for them right this moment. They expect us to wait while they finish this urgent email/photocopy/research, even though the library closed 10 minutes ago and they have known this needed to be done for weeks.

We all know this story, it happens in our libraries in different ways all the time, with only the names and the places changed.

My response to the former is to preen a little – I love being able to surprise people with better than they expected.  I enjoy giving good customer service that catches people by surprise. And my response to the latter is usually, “what do they expect from a free service?”

That’s not to say that we don’t give it our all – we do. Our collections are keyed to our community, our internet is the best we can get and afford and more.  We have to match the community need with the privacy and other issues, so there is always a balancing act.

So I admit, I tend to write off the naysayers, acknowledging that at times we aren’t even going to be able to meet people’s expectations, let alone exceed them. But on thinking about this post, I realised that I could be missing an opportunity. One to investigate the unsatisfied expectation and see if there is a way, in amongst all our constraints, that we could improve in that area, so that the next person is satisfied, or even better, walks away happily impressed.

Continuous improvement, with our users pointing the way. That’s not to say we are going to be able to satisfy every expectation (no, you can’t get compensation because something happened that you didn’t like, but you agreed to when you accepted the conditions of use). But we might be able to discover something useful out of their complaints/observations and make things better for everyone, including staff. If that’s what can come out of it, I think its worth a bit more consideration than “what do they expect from a free service.” So that’s what I’ll try to give it.

Chad’s voice is Library Voice, check it out.

What this presentation is about is wikis, blogs, podcasts, screencasts, surveys, polls, and other tools.

Learning occurs everywhere, not just in the classroom. Librarians teach one shot instruction sessions, often attempting to squeeze too many learning objectives into the one session.

Pre-class preparation – alternatives to handouts which are often left behind – blogs and wikis. Chad uses these tools and sometimes teaches straight off the blog or wiki, especially for students at libraries that don’t have the same resources as the main library. ie. Biz Wiki. Can walk into any class and be ready to teach those students, because the resources are all there to access. The students just need the address, there is no handout to lose.

He got the professors to put the assignments onto the wiki and then Chad would link to the relevant resources under each question, rather than having all 80 students coming to see him the day before its due. Pre-class Prep tools, include Media or pbwiki and internally or externally hosted Word Press.

In Class Feedback tools can be proprietary and expensive, so better to use Polls and IM. In your locally hosted version of Word Press, there is a plug in – WP Polls that you can use to create internal polls. Can use the results, which are visible to the survey participants, to drive the discussion. Still have the problem of having the right questions. He did a live demo of how this worked on his blog – created a quick poll and blog entry. Can lock it down so each student can only respond once. Chad uses the meebo widget to allow them to ask questions in class, without having to put their hands up publicly. It can alleviate student boredom, allows students to have partial ownership of the class and helps develop instructor skills.

Post class tools. Survey linked from a blog post. phpESP, data lives on your server, more functions for the price, including great statistics. Alternatives include Survey Monkey, but free version is limited and the data doesn’t rest on your site.

Additional instruction maybe supplementary or complementary to the class. They are using podcasts in multiple languages for a library tour. From Sep 06 – Jan 07 it was downloaded 700 times – hence saving staff time. They used Audacity to create it – showed us how to do it, very simple. Once its posted to the blog or iTunes it automatically has an RSS feed.

Screencasting using Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ – not open source but its free. Allows you to do screen captures and record voice over it. You can scroll down the pages whilst your talking, click on links and so much more. Automatically saves it as a htm file, can upload it and more. Chad demoed it here and is is sooooo easy too! We could use it straight away and move to the paid software later.

Videos – record video with a camcorder, capture screen video with CamStudio – records AVI format (open source) – again he demoed it – again very easy to do. Can also convert it flash, but its still a linear recording process. camstudio.org

Audio and video can have a bit of a learning curve, initial experiences can be very time consuming, but he end product is well worth the investment, it adds a human element to what your are doing.

Typical follow up support includes IM, email and blog and wiki. Can also use del.icio.us with tags as to how the resources may be used. Also Facebook or MySpace, linked from the blog, wiki etc, where students can read the RSS feed from your blog, you can answer questions through your inbox etc.

Online FAQs and online scheduler. Knowledge Publisher is an open source FAQ generator, which includes comments and rating facilities. They can also ask a question through it and the answers can then be posted to the FAQ. PHP Scheduler where students can book time, at Ohio they are using it to book study rooms. Can also use it to book time to meet with librarians etc.

Closing thoughts:
- don’t be afraid to get under the hood
- learn from failures and successes
- try new things and get momentum to get buy in
- try looking at other tools with an eye for potential library uses