Connecting Librarian

Ada Lovelace

March 24th means its Ada Lovelace Day and I am taking the opportunity to blog about a woman in technology in libraries that I have great admiration for.

Before I do, if you want to read more about Ada Lovelace Day, check out the website and all the other great entries that will appear there, recognising great women in science and technology. You can also check out my blog entry celebrating the day last year, where I honoured the amazing Helene Blowers.

This year, I have the great delight of acknowledging my friend, colleague, co-presenter (next week) and co-blogger (Libraries Interact), Kathryn Greenhill.

Kathryn is an amazing whirlwind of a person, but if you get caught in her circle, you are happy to be there.

Kathryn Greenhill

She is a dedicated, passionate, intelligent, thoughtful and forward thinking librarian and I wish there were a lot more librarians like her.

She was the first librarian in Australia to recognise the importance of virtual worlds and has been able to successfully expand from that and into other areas of technology. She is a sought after speaker right around Australia and when she speaks she always has something to say that is well worth listening to and following up on.

She is a past Auroran, won the VALA Travel Scholarship and traveled to the USA to study Open Source systems and is working on her Ph.D. Masters’ Thesis. She works in a new public library and is excitedly pursuing options for her local community as well as investigating and offering ideas for the broader Australian and world library communities.

And she has a family, to whom she is dedicated.

I really admire women who can do all this and more, love what they do, share what they love and do so without losing in their family life. For me, Kathryn tops the list.

So Happy Ada Lovelace Day to Kathryn and to all those women in science and technology – but particularly in library science and technology. From one practictioner to many others – your efforts, your passion and all your hard work are so very much appreciated.

We all know that our users don’t really care all that much about copyright. If they did, they wouldn’t be ripping CDs and DVDs or illegally downloading a wide variety of content in a wide variety of formats from the Internet.

We know it happens, but apart from the producers of such content and formats, libraries are amongst the last bastions of copyright protection.

photomastergreg, Uploaded on August 17, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

So I don’t know why I was suprised at the response of one of our users to – what to them anyway, seemed like a straightforward request.

She had been told of a small publication which covered a local history topic in which she was interested. She had contacted the small history group holding the publication and somewhere communication got crossed and she ended up on our doorpost, wanting to get a copy through our library.

Several problems with that request: it was an interstate publication, there was only one library who had holdings and it was not available for inter-library loan, being more pamphlet sized than book.

So user, understandably in a way, wanted it now and expected that it would be delivered soonest.  That’s where the problem started.  She wanted it now, so was expecting that we could just get an email copy and hand it over to her in minutes. Up popped copyright considerations. We couldn’t do that – it was in breach of copyright. But we couldn’t find a way to explain copyright and the implicaitons to her in a way that she either cared about or understood.

In the end, we helped her get her own email address and she contacted the library herself, to see what they could do for her directly.

So how do you explain to someone that doesn’t understand, that the thing they want is not on the internet and can’t be just scanned and sent without legal obligations being filled. Especially when for many things, they can just go on the internet and download it?

How can we explain them in ways that they can understand, that copyright is important and that everyone’s intellectual property needs to be protected in the way the creator wants?

Creative Commons - Some Right Reserved - Algunos Derechos Reservados

Or instead of trying to explain copyright, do we instead get everything licenced under a Creative Commons attribution and save everyone a lot of time and grief.  I have used Creative Commons images here and am doing so in my presentations. If you don’t know what it is, I strongly suggest you check it out!

Would love to hear your stories, your solutions and your thoughts about copyright and your users, I can’t be the only one having these experiences.

I was reading an article not so long ago – How Google is making us smarter – which in turn was almost looking to counter a previous article – Is Google making us stupid? You can check out either or both at your leisure, but the former got me thinking.

In How Google is making us smarter, the author Carl Zimmer talks about the extended mind. This concept was first raised in 1998 by two philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers (an Aussie).  In their essay “The Extended Mind” they posed the question “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” In it they posited that someone who keeps something in their memory and someone who keeps the information stored elsewhere, but at hand, (eg. on computer, in a notebook etc), are the same.  The external source that the individual uses to hold information is part of their extended mind.  Interesting viewpoint right?

So how does that relate to Librarians and evolution?  Librarians are phenomenal miners of information. We can find information on a vast array of topics and when we do, we somehow take note of the content itself or where it can be found.  Librarians have already taken the idea of the extended mind way beyond the boundary of where I am sure Clark and Chalmers imagined it would be.  How many times have friends and family been amazed at you knowing some amazing details, or being able to find out something in a very short time and with minimal difficulty. (I am notorious for finding the answers to retrospective questions – born curious and therefore a born reference librarian)

The article goes on further to comment about how humans are proving to be very good at merging mind and machine.  Look at how we drive cars – our perception of distance adjusts to the edge of the car, as it becomes an extension of ourselves.  Clark and Chalmers also argue that there is further evidence, in the form of study results that prove that our minds are constantly seeking to extend themselves.

If that is the case, then aren’t librarians at the forefront of that extension? And if that’s how humanity will continue to grow and develop, then as we are already out there on the cutting edge, doesn’t that make the librarian the next step for many on the evolutionary road?

Can you imagine it?  Evolution leads to a superhuman being – the librarian!  Gotta love the image.

Day 1 was great, but Day 2 was just as good.

Social media & Library Marketing

The strength of our libraries is our unique brand – which is the specific communities we each serve.  Mass marketing is no longer the key, it is now niche marketing. Even our top Australian TV shows only reach about 5% of the population.

The public visiting public libraries is a choice, not a requirement – really think about what that means.

Marketing is a requirement for libraries, but can be done in new and amazingly engaging ways through Web 2.0.  Examples included a Day in the life of Allen County – Allen County Public Library, Paint the town Read – PLCMC, Love New Jersey Libraries, Storypalooza – Gail Borden Public Library and many more.  We shouldn’t be worried about the sustainability of such programs, after all the technology is changing so fast. We should be more concerned about community needs – use short bursts to get our communities aware of their library.

Create an engagement calendar. Use regular events and holidays to create activities, using free online tools, such as image generators.

8 Steps to Marketing 2.0:

1. Educate – learn about social media
2. Experience – participate and join in the conversation
3. Envision – develop a 2.0 marketing plan
4. Engage – create social celebrations
5. Enable – help your library brand & content travel
6. Expand – play with multimedia
7. Explore – learn as you go & track success
8. Experiment, experiment, experiment

And to top it all off: “The best way to get your customers to market your brand is to allow them to promote (the library) by marketing themselves!”

2.0 Innovations: Passions to Practices

We need to be looking for reasons to change, not excuses for not changing.

Efficiency evolution – improving on what already exists – libraries are good at this. Evolutionary evolution – creating something new and distinctly better. Revolutionary evolution – radically changes business and culture.  Libraries are great at the first and have a long way to go before they are anywhere near implementing the others.

Four elements of innovation: creativity, strategy, implementation and profitability.  Innovation in libraries usually fails at the strategy – lack of buy-in being one of the unbreachable barriers reached there.

Innovative ideas come from focussing on quantity – not quality, collecting everything, getting out of the comfort zone and adding constraints to your thinking.

However, it can be not so much the ideas you need to focus on, but how to move those ideas through the organisation.

• Sell it – tie it to your mission and vision statements
• Create alliances – build relationships that will give you support
• Don’t ask for permission – either ask for forgiveness where the risk is all yours, or ask for support and share the risk
• Sell your vision personally – if you have to produce a report, follow it up personally – you can’t sell a vision on a piece of paper
• Find a champion – if not a supervisor, find a mentor – even if they are outside your line of authority

Implementation requires time, resources and scope. If there is a problem here, you need to revisit the strategy. The profitability comes with how the idea is enacted within your organisation.

Change is about leadership – shouldering it yourself. Change begins with me, leadership is taking the responsibility for moving things forward.

Well that’s it, apart from all the personal little notes I wrote myself about things to chase up for myself or for my library – and there are many of those!   All Helene’s slides are available from Slideshare and I recommend you check them out – they are well worth it.

Wow, how thrilled was I to be offered a place at this Masterclass being held in Melbourne, with Helene Blowers flying in from the US to share her amazing experiences and expertise. Add to that the added bonus of Kathryn Greenhill coming over from Perth to attend as well and it was a perfect way to spend 2 days of library based learning.

So now that the gushing is out of the way, its down to what I got out of it.  And although I am well up to my neck in all this stuff and have been for a few years, I still got plenty of it, with sincere thanks to Helene, Kathryn and the other wonderful participants in this Masterclass (a few of whom I am now in touch with on Facebook and Twitter – hi!)

Exploring the shift

The shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has been about the shift from Find – seeking information, to Connect – community.

As this connection becomes more widespread and internet access becomes ubiquitous, libraries will no longer be needed for access – what will we be about then?

The first digital divide was about access, the 2nd digital divide is about:

• the ability to do smart searches
• the ability to validate soft information (eg. Wikipedia)
• the ability to find information via hot channels (eg. Digg, Twitter etc)
• the ability to understand the current culture of informal languages (ie. text messaging)
• the ability to get information to travel to you
• the ability to create and re-mix content
• the knowledge that learning is a continual process rather than an achievement

Interestingly I realised that I could not say with total confidence that I could do all these things, but I also know that the vast majority of my professional colleagues definitely couldn’t, so there’s a big challenge for the future.

Helene showed us the Library Meme map: which I will definitely be looking at more closely in the light of our library website redevelopment.

Library 2.0 Meme Map

Patron 2.0 was discussed as enabling our users to contribute content to the library website – a situation that requires radical trust.  We currently allow commenting on our blogs, after approval of course.  Could we relax that further and how else could we and should we be opening our content to our users.  Can we so easily let go of the reins, especially when we are only just now getting the hang of them?

Moving from 1.0 to 2.0

Personal movement is straightforward.  Moving your organisation is more difficult. How do you do it?

1. Learn to listen – show management what people are saying about the library and the technology eg. Google Alerts – find out what the conversation is and respond to it.Pay attention to user generated content and comments.
2. Learn to spy on yourself – get RSS feeds of content you present.
3. Join the conversation – respond to what’s out there.
4. Manage your online reputation – there is a move from organisational to personal brand, with organisations have a personal front. The shift has to be to building the reputation of the individuals, which then reflects on the organisation.
5. Create a home base – a place from which to build your online reputation. A website, blog, Facebook profile, etc. Build it on your own name, engage your passion, start commenting, link & trackback, join other communities, create connections with yourself (between your online presences), continually engage with others. Its not a one off process, so you need to have a strategy.

Does your library’s mission statement translate into the online environment? If not, what has to change?

On a different tangent, I had to agree with Helene that users see the library’s website, not so much as a distinct virtual branch, but as an extension of their local library.  We experience this in our everyday virtual contact with ours users.  Which places an interesting perspective on getting management support for the library website and how to present it to our users, when each of their perspectives can be very different.

And thus ended day one.  For those who are interested in more, Helene has made her presentations available on Slideshare.  In the meantime, I hope to get my notes on Day 2 up soon, so stay tuned.

Big Stuff – Library Challenges – Stephen Abram – Sirsi-Dynix Institute

We need to tell good stories – tell each other about the good things that happen, not the bad, which is what we usually do.

Stephen said that our stuff is awesome, we are in good standing amongst the libraries of the world. We need to let go of the nostalgia. Change has been really slow relatively speaking, especially compared to the baby busters. Big changes coming, which will be fun if you like riding a roller coaster.

What are we going to do to get good results for our users – how can we negate the skewed results of search engine optimisation – where anyone can make sure their content, true or not, lists high in results.

Some people have 40 year careers. Ensure it is 40 years of incrementally better years, not just the same thing year after year. Choose to make the difference. You need to put your meat in the game = professionals commit.

Libraries matter – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants is just one example. Stephen gave a long list of examples where librarians are making a real difference, doing things that get people connected to the net and to the information they need, saving money, saving lives, saving our culture and our history and so much more. We need to tell our government about the competitive edge that libraries give Australia. Who do you think built Yahoo – librarians were pulled in to make it work.

What is the competitive advantage we have in our environment? The difference between us the internet is us – sensitive, intelligent, helpful – we are not a list. Put ourselves out there, with photo and social networking profile. Show who we are as well as what we can do.

DREAM BIG – start small, but dream big.

We dont know every little moment of truth that happens in the library. We can be the human touch for people. We may never know the difference we make to each individual.

Democracies persist because of libraries. Its not coincidence that libraries are often the first casualty of war. Librarians protect freedom of information, giving access to all, regardless of what our opinion of it is – we are truly bipartisan.

We have to learn the things that are making a difference, improving service to our users. If you dont want to learn, then get out of the profession.

We are a global profession, a bottomless network. Every librarian has hundreds of moments of truth, where we fight for our freedom, save lives, cure disease, challenge poverty and ignorance. Not dreaming 08, but dreaming big. Say yes every chance you get, encourage others and dont get discouraged. Those who say it cant be done, get out of the way of those who are already doing the impossible.

We are about books, we dont have to advertise that, what we do need to advertise is that we have people who can help you with just about anything. Show who we are and what we can do.

Web 2.0 is about things you can do and people you know. When you go online do you see people you know. You need to be where your users are, otherwise you are on a march to irrelevance.

Stuff will change faster now – by 2020, all content ever created will fit on an iPod. Video games outsell most content combined, ringtones are huge! Pocket size devices will dominate, the devices coming out are about having ubiquitous access on your person.

New? Semantic web, the cloud, no choice search engines, GIS oriented search, virtually unlimited fulltext books, streaming media and spoken word search, personalisation 3.0, microblogging, registries and so much more.

Normal now is RSS, blogs, YouTube, social networks tagging, wikis, SEO and GIS. If libraries arent involved in that, then they are behind. Resist the library culture of poverty, victimisation, risk aversion and passive resistance. We have to pass the chasm of early adopters and into the space of early majority. We have a technology lifecycle, we have to get on the curve early and stay there.

If we dont get into social networking, then we are going to miss it when they progress to the next stage – this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So what should libraries be paying attention to? The user-centred universe, be more open to users paths. A few things to do right away – the time is now! Need to play, pilot, trial, experiment. Mobile is important, confirm your presence, be where your users are, how your presence appear – personal,, professional; get good at the cloud (where users are going), play at e-books, get serious at literacy (dont use that term for users) and check out XML, get serious about e-learning, care about our cultures, just expand, know that most physical objects are dead, get real about influence, the next generation content.

Humans are our competitive edge. Be open to lifelong learning, our careers have seasons, need to have reciprocal mentoring – peers, be important, we can invent the future and make a difference. Just have some fun! Dream big!

Its been a while since I did a meme and I don’t have anything else ready to post yet, so why not.  This one has been doing the rounds a bit and has been interesting to read, with Kathryn Greenhill being the one who tipped me over to do this, with her Meme: What’s a librarian’s day like? So its all your fault Kathryn!

Background to my Thursdays – I work on virtual services in an office in the workroom of our largest branch, which is at Narre Warren.   I do a desk shift for an hour over lunch, between 1 and 2pm and again over dinner break between 5 and 6pm.  So here’s my Thursday, not totally typical, but not far off it either.

Arrive at 9.30am for a 10am start – as usual.  Clock in, start my computer, check with staff getting branch ready for opening at 10am, return my due books etc, etc.

Login to my email and to the information email for any email enquiries.  Spend the next half hour answering these queries and sorting out my own email.

Before morning tea do some quick website updates and check if staff still doing Learning 2.0 have posted anything on their blogs since Monday – nada.

Fred Camino

After morning tea, help out on desk so that other staff can have theirs.  Didn’t plan this, just went out to the shelves to check on a book I found on a catalogue search and stepped in to help.

Back to my desk where I listened to last weeks Uncontrolled Vocabulary podcast whilst I create an online book list of the 50 titles in the Books Alive 2008 campaign, with live links to our catalogue.  Update our social software logins list and post an entry from our CEO on developments in the new building for one of our branches on the library blog.  Test the links and upload the booklist.  Make a note of 2 blog posts to do in the next week.

Go on desk to cover the lunch shift.  Usual catching up with returns, clearing the courier delivery from some of our other branches and serving the people in front of us.

Lunch – shopping and eating.

After lunch, I help one of the librarians to post an entry on our teen blog.  Write a quick note on behalf of a colleague , all the while checking on and responding to email on 2 accounts.

Use an old version of Cam Studio to record, edit and create three screencasts on our library catalogue, on the topics of changing your PIN, changing your address and submitting a suggestion for purchase – the last on our series of what you can do online through the catalogue.   The last ones to do, all finished now.  Phew! Stop for a late afternoon tea.

After tea, upload the screencasts and add them to our catalogue help page.  Write a memo for staff, letting them know about these new resources and make a note to do a new blog post on them next week. (I don’t work Fridays).

Tidy up some loose ends, write some notes for this blog post and for other things I will chase up at home (because I always take work home – after all I love what I do!).  Head back to do the 5-6pm desk shift where I help more people, do more tidying, enter memberships and more.

6.05pm – clock out and head home.

So that’s a nearly typical Thursday for me.  Not always screencasts in the afternoon, but usually some type of project.  Its been screencasts for a month or so.  Thursdays are very different to my Mondays and alternate Tuesdays.  One day I might post about them too.

Gotta love this. Thanks to Michael at Travelin’ Librarian for the heads up!

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.

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a couple of months, probably since I started getting queries from other librarians about virtual services after doing my study tour. Its been further churning away in the back of my mind since not long before the VALA conference, as besides the showcase session I did there, I have another 3 presentations coming up on Libraries and Web 2.0 – one of them a day long workshop!

So how did I come to get these ‘gigs’ – what makes me the expert?

In my case its a combination of things. First off, I know a bit about Web 2.0 and libraries. After all, I have been reading about, immersing myself in it and blogging about it for over 2 years. Which is more than most people in libraries. So my expert status comes from having a degree more knowledge than my audience.

But there are many librarians who know more than me on this subject, so what else is there? Another important consideration is geography. Two of the upcoming presentations are in Melbourne, the city I live in. Always easier to get a local – cheaper too.

However, the workshop I am doing is in Sydney – so that limits geography a little. I say a little, because there are some great Library 2.0 experts in the US – I read their blogs regularly – but again there are limits to what people and organisations will spend, especially if expertise can be found more locally. (and Sydney is only an hour’s flight away).

So, I know a little more than my potential audience, I have geography on my side – the more local the better. Then there is another issue altogether. Availability. The Sydney thing again – I was not the first person asked. From what I can gather, I was at least the fifth person asked (if not further down the list than that). So even considering all that’s come before, you have to be willing and available to be that expert.

Now that’s a personal decision. I don’t know why the others asked before me didn’t take up the invitation – could be many reasons: time, priorities, not interested, etc, etc – it doesn’t matter really. The opportunity came to me and I decided to take it – which makes me the expert in this particular situation, regardless of how far down the list I was.

And how did my name come up to be asked (even down the list) – somebody was kind enough to recommend me. I don’t know who, but I thank them for this opportunity.

Its been an interesting journey already this year for me, as I have never considered myself to be a public speaker – in fact the only other presentation I did before all this was at a conference in 1999 and I was so nervous – got through it by will alone I’m sure. But I have done 2 presentations since my study tour, (and 1 before) with 3 still to go and I am getting more confident each time. Maybe its because I am older, know my stuff a bit better, know myself a lot better and have a real passion for the subject. Maybe I’m just a late bloomer.

Whatever it is, I think it finds its roots in something that Kathryn at Librarians Matter blogged on not long ago in “My raucous week of putting my meat in the game” – its about putting yourself out there. I have been blogging about these things for going on 3 years, have been initiating them in my library and have been encouraging others to look at them for their libraries. I haven’t been worried about putting my name to any of this, but neither have I been seeking anything, except the chance to share my experience.

So what makes an expert? Someone who has learnt more than most about a subject dear to them (its easier when you have a passion for it), in a good location, who’s available, recommended and putting themselves out there.

But an expert is not what I planned to be – all I planned to be was a librarian loving what she is doing – which happens to be Web 2.0 and Libraries. If people want to hear what I have to say – then I am happy to go and share that with them – not for my benefit, but for theirs. I have learnt a lot from other people’s experiences, so its only fair that others may be able to learn from mine.