Connecting Librarian

Today, 25th January, was Round 4 of the Library Day in the Life Project. The aim of the project is for librarian’s to document what they do in a day, for others to discover.  So here’s mine.

To give context, I am an Information Librarian working for the Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation – a public library service serving 300,000+ people in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.  We have 7 branch libraries and a mobile library.  My main area of responsibility is our online services, but I also work at our biggest branch.  I work half-time – Mondays, Thursdays and alternate Tuesdays.  Monday I work at HQ on online services – all day.

So here’s today.

8.30am – Arrived at work at our Regional HQ, which I do every Monday. Spent the next 30 minutes checking email, printing off articles for later reading, catching up on memos, bookmarking sites of interest, returning and renewing my loans and a brief moment catching up with the Finance Manager on the progress of our intranet development.

9.00am – Checked for updates to Drupal modules for our website and downloaded, then uploaded the only one required.  Also took the opportunity to delete old versions of modules that were no longer required, both locally and on our IPS’s server.

Discussed adding information about our mobile library’s forthcoming renovation to the website.

Posted a review received from one of our local teens via our website, to our teen review blog.  Added an image and a catalogue linking before publishing it and then refreshed the feed on our website so it would appear there too.

Updated a post on our Staff training blog, with information emailed me by the reviewing staff member. Made some minor additional changes to that post of my own as well.

9.30am – Posted information on our website in several places, about the Mobile Library renovations.

Being the day before a public holiday, we were very quiet at HQ as many staff took the opportunity to enjoy a long weekend. So I spent some time filling in urgent requests for stationery etc that were phoned in from the branches.

Worked on the agenda for our forthcoming Information Services team meeting that is on the week I return from leave.

10.00am – Lots more bits and pieces (did I mention that there were lots of people taking a long weekend).

Chatted briefly with my boss, who was seconded to help out at one  of our branches, which resulted in me taking on the answering of email questions for the day. Quickly cleared up a few procedural queries, started the process on a claims returned and sought further information on an inter-library loan request from a staff member at one of our local Councils.  Was quite pleased that I found the article he requested, even with minimal information and so was he when I emailed him both the full citation and a link to the full article not long afterwards.

11.00am – Morning tea done after successfully completing that information request, it was now onto a new blog post for our library news blog. Spent some time looking for inspiration and accidently came across links on our catalogue that I hadn’t noticed before. Ended up blogging about the public holiday tomorrow instead, as one of our libraries will be open to support the Book Sale that their Friends’ group is running.

11.30am – Did a backup of our email newsletter subscribers lists. Not very exciting, but very necessary. Then investigated further the new catalogue features and with the assistance of a colleague, figured out exactly how they worked and started thinking about how they could be taken advantage of by our users.  That’s another blog post in the making – but not today.

12.00noon – Received an information request from the mobile library on behalf of one of their users (via email). Rang the mobile to clarify the request and the context and within the half hour I had a emailed a list of websites and book titles to be passed onto to the user.

12.30pm – Lunchtime and I escaped the building for a short time. Normally I would go out to lunch with my HQ partners in crime, but they were either on leave or elsewhere.

1.30pm – Played with ideas and images for a new slide for our website’s events slideshow. Gave up on it afer a time – software kept crashing and I couldn’t find the inspiration to make the slide more than bland.  Will get back to it on Thursday.

2.00pm – Had a quick revisit of Event Brite. We are trialling it for online booking of library events, for a seminar we are holding in February. Chatted again with my boss to catch up on the day’s happenings and the week ahead.

Spent most of the rest of the time trying to work out how to get an imported Javascript working in Drupal. Lots of cutting, pasting, saving, trialling and repeating the process all over again. Got it working, but with lots of extraneous information, which when I remove it, kills the operation of the form. Its working for now, so will look at it again on Thursday.

4.00pm – Checked my Google alerts and Twitter searches for mentions of our libraries and service in those areas. Twitter mentions are growing slowly and we always get plenty of mentions on Google.

Began reviewing our brochures on online resources. Started considering how I could get the content of two to three brochures down into one.

Created three new book cover images and associated information to use in our books slide show on our library homepage.  Uploaded these and then deleted the three oldest ones – we have a 4 weekly cycle on these.

Filled it out with other bits and pieces (did I mention there were many people away) and then called it a day just after 5pm.

So that was my day – never realised how busy it was and how much territory I covered until I documented it.  Hope you find it interesting.

See you next Library Day in the Life Day!

Tesco Supermarket,Northampton UK

My local supermarket has just added an extension to its store and done some renovations to the rest of the store.  One of those renovations was to change the express checkout area, increasing it from 2 to 4 checkouts.  However, with the increase, came a change in how they were accessed.  The new system required you to line up at one of the open checkouts, which depending on time of day etc, was usually between 2 and 4.

However, this new process was not accepted with delight by either staff or customers.  The majority of people were well aware of the potential unfairness of the situation, in that you could be served slower if you happened to choose the wrong queue.  It happened fairly quickly that customers started going to back to a single queue, ignoring the signage and stepping up to be served as a checkout operator became available.

Staff, on behalf of the customers and the numerous comment they had already received, approached management about the issue, asking them to change it to a single queue, for fairer service.  The response was that such a change would cause unacceptable blockages of aisle space. (I don’t know if they were ignoring or were unaware that 4 queues were doing the same sort of thing anyway).

That could have been the end of it, but it wasn’t.  I’m not privy to what happened behind closed doors, I just know what I gleaned from the girls behind the counter.  Anyway, those wonderful girls started taking a survey of customers, asking their opinion of the new setup and what their preference would be for the arrangement. From what I saw when they asked me the questions, the overwhelming response was that customers didn’t like the new setup and would prefer single queue access.

A few weeks later, I walk into the supermarket and there is now a barrier and guide, for one queue leading into the express checkout area.

Customer Service on Day 357

This hit me on so many levels. Firstly, the whole idea of fairness that both the staff and customers determined needed to be achieved.  Just reminded me that we live in a world with a vast majority of decent people and that moment I was happy to be a part of that larger community.

Second was that the supermarket staff knew their customers and were listening to what they were saying and tried to do something about it.  They took those concerns to management.  Unfortunately at that time, management weren’t listening.  So the staff went away and got the information they needed to support their claims for change.  I am both proud and amazed that someone would stand up for customer interests, which includes my own, like that. It may seem trivial, but it was important enough that staff took it to management, not once but twice.

Third was that management took note of this extra effort and the evidence they were given (even if it was on the second attempt) and took the action necessary to make both staff and customers happy.  I spoke to one staff after the change, who was both suprised, but also very pleased that they had listened and acted – very quickly once the decision was made.

So how does this translate to libraries?  Quite easily, as we are both about customer service.

Do we know our users well enough to know what they don’t like about our libraries or what they would like to happen in our libraries?  Is it more than just guessing at what we think they want? If we don’t know them well enough, why don’t we – we serve them every day?  Also if we don’t know, are we asking them and if not, why not?

If we know, are we telling our management and coming up with ideas for change?  If not, why not?  If we do tell and they don’t seem to be listening are we letting it go, giving lame excuses or are we going to find the information that will help change their minds? I know that there have been times that I have made those lame excuses, when instead I should be fighting for what I know our users want or don’t want. My local supermarket has taught me that it can work.

It can be trivial or it can be major.  But if we are not listening to our customers and what they want and doing what we can to provide it, then we are not really serving them, are we? I know I’ll be trying to do better in future and really keeping my ears and eyes open to what our users want, then communicating it to the people who can make the difference.

If you have any, I would love to hear your stories of where staff have won through to change things in your library, because it was what your users wanted.

Re-imagining library services: a new collaborative vision by Alan Smith – NSLA

NSLA comprises the Australian state, territory, national libraries and the national library of New Zealand. They are working to build the next stage of libraries for our users. The 4 key points and 10 projects are making way and getting librarians out of the way.

One library, transforming our culture and accessible content are the core of what they are trying to achieve. 5 year plan with a central office to help push it forward.

Do it now – SLV – opening up services
Access now – NLA and NLNZ – one library card
Virtual reference – SLV – next generation of online reference – not looking at the next version of Ask Now
Delivery – SLWA – being able to deliver content into peoples hands, wherever they are
Community created content – SLQ and NLNZ – communities of geographic and interest, being able to create their own digital libraries
Creating culture – SLSA – organising and storing
Collaborative collections – SLNSW and SLQ – trying to limit duplication and improve resource sharing – consortial arrangements
Flexible cataloguing – improving access to content – reengineering cataloguing
Scaling up digitisation – industrialise it, working on business case for significant national investment
Connecting and discovering content – NLA – improve coverage and quality of data, partnerships to improve discovery – a common catalogue interface and a national metadata store.

We would if we could but its not in the Budget… success stories in third-party funding for public library programs – Jack L Goodman Tutoring Australasia

Why public libraries need partnerships- maintaining relevance requires innovation, which needs resources – which means money. Public libraries have many users, tight budgets, have little state support and no commonwealth funding. But just in case……

Why are partnerships possible – Public libraries have a unique position in their communities where we leverage the corporate social responsibility trend. We can partner with businesses, education, not for profits, clubs and more.

Example – Fairfield City Library Service – first Your Tutor customer in 2003, begun with local club funding. Demand grew so it was incorporated into the Council budget into 2004. In 2007 they partnered with the UWS to broaden access beyond what the library could provide.

The UWS has a Community Engagement Strategy – which aims to build a relationship with councils and to support local students. Most universities have such a strategy. For Fairfield it meant expansion of the program, marketing support from UWS and deeper institutional ties with them.

Example – Mornington Peninsula – Babies love books too. MP saw a program in a similar area, partnered with the library, put in an application to the Telstra Foundation and got $20,000 over 3 years follow up funding from BHP and Hillview. Now its in the library budget.

Example – Connected City Library and Melbourne City Mission.
Targeted learning support for at risk of becoming homeless children.

Example – Mobile Library Wireless Broadband
Upper Murray Regional Library Service – 3 mobile libraries. Got funding from 2 State Libraries and the Federal Government.

These were the only publicly visible examples. Need more like them. Critical skills required to make this happen – a desire to innovate: there is risk, which isnt a welcome option – need to be creative; brainstorming, teams, ownership – commercial sensibility: leveraging the librarys assets, outlining who benefits and how.

Making it happen:
1. Choose an appropriate project
2. Assemble your team – identify an owner, provide support
3. Think strategically – what are your librarys strengths – your users, your facilities, your role, your relationships
4. Identify a short list of potential partners – including businesses, associations, clubs, sporting groups, universities
5. Prepare your pitch – background, your assets, clear description of the opportunity
6. Hold a launch event – give them public recognition, raise the library profile, generates interest in the project and good media coverage
7. Follow through – objective is a long term relationship, maintain communication channels, acquit regularly and thoroughly and share success stories.

Corporate social responsibility – growing trend which includes community engagement policies an establish deep and meaningful partnerships. Need to take advantage of this.

Think big – ask for more rather than less, dont be put off by initial responses, remember your strengths and the needs of your partners.

Libraries on the agenda – advocacy experiences from IFLA and Library Associations – Claudia Lux – IFLA President an Director General of the Berlin Library

IFLA i an independent, non-government not for profit organisation represent library staff, libraries and the communities we serve. IFLA supports membership in library associations, so ALIA members are therefore IFLA members. However, IFLA also has institutional members and personal and student associates.

Former ALIA Executive Director Jennefer Nicholson starts as IFLA Secretary General on September 5th. The previous president was Australian Alex Byrne.

IFLAs purpose is to promote libraries. Claudias agenda as president is Libraries on the Agenda. It aims to strenghten advocacy work internationally and to advocate for libraries sustainability.

IFLAs own advocacy activities include working with UNESCO (Library Manifestos), WIPO, MLAS (IFLA Management of Library Associations) and WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society).

WSIS Action Lines and Libraries is highlighting access to information and knowledge covering inclusion and cultural diversity; and ICT applications including local content, the ethical dimension of ICT and the Internet Governance Forum. These were issues that UNESCO had not considered.

IFLA has launched a Libraries Success Stories Database, in English, French, Spanish and more. Shows small stories from around the world. Claudia encouraged us to add our library success stories. Check it out at www.ifla.org

Politicians and libraries – they always consider us to be involved in culture and education. However, we also have a role to play in town planning, family policy, health, economy and administration. We are invisible in these areas, but we have to make ourselves visible and get money from these departments as we support the work they do.

Challenges:
Why does the world need libraries?
Why is the internet not able to replace libraries?
Why do libraries need the newest technology?
Why are books and other media in the library like bread and butter for the minds of people?

We need to have ready answers to these questions.

Goals of the advocacy initiative is to prepare clear and common arguments, show the libraries potential, market the impact of services use international success stories database, strengthen a new image and influence policy before it is set.

How to advocate – clarify your position – when do people speak up for us? Are Libraries our thing? – When do we speak up for ourselves? Coordinate your work, create a focal point include staff, colleagues, friends, civil initiatives and administration. keeping all partners informed and being consistent in the focal points. Have a clear message, focus on the main practical points, look for professional and emotional arguments, train how to advocate in practise, prepare background material including general information, statistics, best practise and a description of the future impact. Analyse who supports your goals and why, analyse the wider influence on a person or group, find which activities of support could they take on, make contacts and build a contact list etc.

Short menu of advocacy work – never talk badly about others, focus positively on your goals, present success stories, use statistics but believe in more, create pictures in the mind, be patient, be stubborn an always stay controlled.

Start now and promote knowlege on advocacy. When on stage, personality is the key talk clearly and concisely, ask questions, add humour, smile and thank.

Question: how do we advocate to present the work we do behind the scenes, the exciting/cutting edge we do? No one answer to this, we have to behave different, we have to go to our budgeters, be prepared with recognition and then bring the good things the library does. Find good things about the library that will speak to them.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I have been reading some great memes and reviews of people’s 2007 in various library blogs and was going to do the same for my first post.  However, my Christmas and New Year were nothing to write home about and I find myself more and more looking to the future in a wide variety of areas, so decided to do the same here.

I have been working in public libraries since I graduated from university in 1985 (just need a Bachelor’s degree in Australia to work as a librarian).  Of my 22 years in libraries, I have worked full-time for 13 and now half-time for 9 since I had my children.  Now that my youngest is about to start school, I am thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my career, which until the last year or so was on cruise control.

I spoke to my Library Director seeking advice about working towards my future and he asked me to consider what I wanted to  do.  I have some thoughts about where I would like to go, but the one thing I am sure of is that it will involve leadership in some form.

I have been a leader of some sort throughout my career.  I have not always lead well as some of my past co-workers could well testify, but I have learnt well.  I am not officially a manager at this stage of my career, but have been so long with my library and in a wide variety of roles, including managerial, that I take on an unofficial leadership role and am sought for advice, opinions, assistance on a regular basis.  Not that I do anything to undermine the existing leadership.

So I got to thinking about what I should do to develop my leadership skills, which got me thinking more about leadership.  What is it?  What skills make a good leader and what extras make them great? Having said that, I think that it would be awesome beyond all belief to be considered a good leader, I have no illusions about being great.

Then, whilst watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a favourite of my kids and I, my daughter asked me if Leonardo was the leader because he was the eldest brother.  A natural assumption from my 8 year old.  However, he is leader because of other abilities, including recognising and utilising the skills of his brothers.  As his brother Michelangelo pointed out, he also had the hardest job because Raphael could leave the thinking to Leonardo, Donatello was free to dream and Michelangelo was free to clown because their big brother Leonardo took on all that responsibility.  If you know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you will understand.  Wow, wisdom on leadership from a kid’s cartoon!

I have also learnt much from my friends in the blogosphere, musing about their leadership experiences.  They are far too many to list here, but to you all I give thanks – you have given me a great start.

So what have I been learning about leadership from all these musings?  Here’s the very shortest beginnings of what I know will be an ever growing list, from which I hope to keep learning.

A good leader:

• knows people
• is able to follow
• is able to take the lead when required
• is able to motivate those being lead
• is able to lead without being obvious about it most of the time
• never asks staff to do something they wouldn’t do
• sees the big picture
• is able to dream
• gets the job done
• brings the best out of the people they lead
• can utilise the people they have for the best results for everyone
• is responsible
• takes pride in their team
• gives credit where credit is due
• is always learning
• adapts to change
• is able to inspire people
• takes risks
• is committed (or ought to be )
• also serves
• has integrity

And why do I need to know this?  Because I plan to be working in libraries for another 30 years or so and can’t and won’t stay at this level for the rest of those days.  For me to progress further, leadership is one of the skill sets I will need to develop further.  I have a good foundation, built on pain, experience and the patience and teaching of many good staff and managers – all to whom I give my sincere apologies for my mistakes and my heartfelt thanks for the lessons they taught me – many without knowing they were doing so.

And knowing the pain that can be and is involved in leadership, why would I want to go down that path?  Because of the great satisfaction that also comes out of doing it and doing it well.  It truly is a joy to lead a team who works well, beyond expectations and enjoys doing so.  That’s not easy to come by, takes a lot of hard work but is so worth it in the end, when you see the awesome results that can be achieved.

And so I look to you now too, to add to my short list.  What leadership skills or abilities do you see as being key to a good or great leader.  I am sure that you have also had some inspirational leaders in your lives, what lessons did they teach you about doing it right?  Can it be done right?  Can it be learnt or is it inherent?  Please contribute your thoughts in a comment and we will see how this list develops.

I was surprised, but not so surprised to realise that I hadn’t blogged for over a month. That was for two reasons I suppose – one was that I have just been so busy and secondly I didn’t have the heart to post. Then tonight, I was just sitting at my computer, having had a day of overbooked commitments for the first time in over a week and I was ready again. I actually have a lot in my mind that I will get around to blogging about, but this topic is pre-eminent at the moment, so here goes….

This cartoon is one of a series from Unshelved, using the PC/Mac ad premise. They are well worth checking out, as is the series in general. Good for a laugh and sometimes very close to home as well.

That’s one thing that got me thinking about library websites. We are about to redo our library website. Its been 3 years since the last restructure and we haven’t done much with it. Not saying its static or anything – we have added new content, deleted old stuff, kept things current etc and we have even added 2 blogs in that time – a general behind the scenes blog and recently a local history blog as well as adding Google Maps for our branch locations and bookmobile sites. We even have a Flickr account with a small collection of photos from one of our branches – due mainly to its recent renovation and relaunch. That puts us a bit ahead of the curve in our state, as there are only 4 public library services (out of 45) that are blogging at present.

I’m not happy though, because I want more.

I want our website to be more than an online brochure and I would love it if the treasure that is available there was used more. Our catalogue is getting great use since our change of library system earlier this year and more importantly the elimination of reserve charges. Our catalogue is shared with a consortia of 9 public library services, so not only can our patrons place holds on our items for free, but for almost anything from any of the 8 other library services in the consortia also.

Most of our patrons come to our website to get to our catalogue. Totally understandable, its our stock in trade. Even with the improvements in our catalogue through having a new system, with the blogs, the google maps and more, we still have a mainly brochure type website. If we are to engage our users and attract new users, who may only visit us virtually, we need to do more.

And they are there to engage. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has been releasing statistics from the 2006 census. In our last census in 2001, our 2 local council areas had home PC ownership at about 21%, which was significantly below the state average. This census the question changed to home internet access and both our council areas were pretty much on the state average of 62%! And that is just home access, not access through school, work, the library or other locations. I am pretty sure that the percentage of our population with any sort of internet access that they use regularly is a lot higher than 62%.

We do have plans however. We plan to have a website which integrates the catalogue into the front end, not as a link to a separate location. We want more blogs. We plan to offer more RSS feeds, not only from our blogs, but also to new titles added to the catalogue etc. We want to post polls to get more feedback from our users. We need more Flickr photos and I am playing with what potentially could be our first podcast.

I would love to get the Library Thing tags on our catalogue, do podcasts and vodcasts of in-house seminars and maybe go out and do things too. And there’s a lot of potential in SMS or IM services also. Then there’s profiles on Facebook and/or MySpace, videos on YouTube, etc, etc. I could also go on about patron tagging and reviews etc, but this post is already long enough as it is.

But I feel like these things are all add ons to what is still essentially at its core, an online brochure at present. Whether our new website form will change that, I don’t yet know. I know we need the static information about branches and services, but is there another way we could be doing it? Can we change what a library website is at its core? If we can, how do we that and what does it look like when we do?

And who does it? I am only one person, working part-time. At present its me and my manager who do the website and there is never enough time in the day to keep current, let alone get ahead. Even two of us can’t make all this happen.

However, on this point I am happy to report that help is at hand. As a result of the State Library of Victoria coordinating the Victorian Public Libraries Learning 2.0 program for public library staff statewide, we have taken several steps in what I think is the right direction for our virtual services. Our local history librarian is now blogging local history and is doing a great job – after only a few weeks she has an armload of posts, with dozens more in reserve. A couple of our other staff are going to show a YouTube video as part of a teen Christmas wrap workshop they are running. Both great ideas and just the tip of the iceberg. We have more staff enthused and ready to go – waiting I guess for us to tell them how. (I must really get onto to that and soon…)

We had 44 staff enrolled in the program, which has just officially finished, with a third having completed it. If we are coming out with these ideas already, how many more might we expect, as others complete it in their own time, or as we get the other 42 staff to do it sometime in the next year.

So when I started this post, I was feeling a little frustrated, but now that I have had my rant and seen the positives that are happening, I am feeling a bit better. My biggest concern now is how to make our plans come to fruition. However, if we can get more of our staff as enthused as just a few of ones who have completed the program are, start tapping into their enthusiasm, ideas and skills more – we might just have enough people to be able to pull it off. This and more.

So thanks for sitting through my rant. If you or your staff haven’t done the Learning 2.0 program, I highly recommend it. Its hard work and can be time consuming, but its inspiring, challenging and fun! If you have any solutions for my brochure dilemma, I’d love to hear them. If you think I’m full of it, impatient etc – please let me know that too (but nicely). I won’t necessarily agree with you, after all, we have to have dreams and we have to aim high, but I would be interested in the feedback. Anyway, I’m back and have a lot to say it seems (just from the length of this post).

If you would like to read more on library web presences, besides the Unshelved cartoons, the following posts contributed to my thought processes – I recommend you check them out.
Technology Storm – Michael Casey and Michael Stephens (Library Journal)
Website or presence? – Kathryn Greenhill (Librarians Matter)
Ignoring our digital community – David Lee King

Stay tuned – I’m keen to waffle on more on other topics and won’t take a month to do so next time.