Catalogue is a register of all items found in the library. (showed Wikipedia definition – long). Told us Charles Cutter”s definition – incorporates what there is and where can I find it.

Who is the catalogue for? Our users, but not sure if it was always that way. Have lots of content to assist users to find what they want. Its also for inventory control – tells us loans, physical location and helps with acquisitions.

What do we catalogue? Physical items, databases, aggregations, web sites and items owned but held elsewhere? And it has changed over time. Since 2004, the ANZ expenditure on e-resources has climbed from 15 to 30% of budgets.

Special collections, serial collections are all digital and are being catalogued.

User behaviour – what is the easiest place to start research according to students? – Google.

So what is the catalogue becoming? Is it to provide access to library materials or just a place to collect metadata. Most catalogue data now comes from national agencies, libraries, publishers and commercial entities.

The standards of cataloguing are changing. RDA, based on FRBR principles, to replace AACR. It will bring different format of same title together. eg. dvd, books, notes etc. Recently announced that ALA will begin the massive transition away from MARC.

Catalogues inventory control purpose isloans – between 2004 and 2010, loans ffell from 24.5 million to 15 million.

What might we do? Keep the catalogue, continue to buy records, layer the catalogue with discovery layers, maintain loan systems, work with library vendors to improve systems. In other words, we can keep up with the times, moving along gently.

OR

We could stop copy cataloguing, stop focusing on details, point to records rather than buying or storing them, embrace new standards (and be cheerful about it), incorporate virtual and physical shelves in the virtual and physical worlds. Become super efficient and flexible.

We don’t do so well at getting knowledge of our virtual resources to our physical shelves.

OR

Ditch the catalogue as a tool for users, ditch it as an inventory control system, incorporate records for in-house physical material into discovery systems, get a simple inventory control systems for the decreasing physical purchases, make loans REALLY simple (or don’t lend the physical out of the building!)

The Internet of everything: linking the print and online collections – David Feighan and Sue Healey

Showed the “Internet of things” on YouTube. (IBM Social Media)

The internet of things is going to be big, to the point where there will be many more things on the internet than actual people on the internet. NIC sees it as a major disruptive trend by 2025. Raises a lot of privacy concerns etc. China has also identified it as a key strategic emerging industries for them.

First two areas that physical collections and spaces have gone virtual, have been via RFID and QR codes on their rooms. But will students use them? Surveyed them and found that at Year 7, 45% had smart phones, but Year 10 it was 83% and ubiquitous in Years 11 and 12. They showed a QR code and as long as they could say how they were used, they were defined as knowing what they were. It was over 70%.

The library space is being used so they are using QR codes to connect them to the online resources. On shelves, they have A4 size shelf talkers, which are themed and have a QR code which links to their online resources.

www.qrstuff.com Allows you to link to websites, Facebook, YouTube video, Google Maps location and many, many more. There are other sites for QR code generation and doing a site on YouTube will give you many videos of how QR codes are being used.

Near future? Using RFID and geospatial tagging will your phone show you where the items is?

And then let you touch on to check it out? Its not happening because we want them, but is actually being driven by the retail and entertainment sectors. But these developments can also lend themselves to libraries.

As we re-purpose our space as learning commons, how do we get those space on the internet?

Linking objects and people within spaces and games (Parallel Kingdom).

Change or fade away: school libraries need to change – Bronwyn Foxall – Abbotsleigh

School libraries are not immune to the challenges facing all libraries. The only way forward is to discover what your own community wants.

Why are librarians important in schools? What do you do that is so important that the school would suffer if you weren’t there.

Library functions are changing – AV is going digital, reducing number of books, empty spaces due to PC removal and more.

Surveyed students and stakeholders to find out what they could do to revision what they are doing. Main reason why students came to the library, to study alone, to research, to find a book, to attend a class and then to study in a group. Use of computers will die due to laptops for every student.

Asked them what spaces they needed? Quiet study was the biggest demand, and then individual spaces. Open ended questions biggest response was a request for a cafe. More demand for specific spaces – quiet study rooms, group study rooms, individual study space. They were also asking for more books, even more than requests for e-books and magazines etc.

In response they removed shelves to create discussion spaces, created quiet study rooms and a multimedia space – all of which have delighted students.

Need to keep rethinking the library facilities, but also the services. Used a fun film and library vouchers to reach Year 12s, added a discovery layer and federated search to their catalogue, library blogs, run competitions around the library using QR codes and the students have responded well.

Some of the things they want to be able to do:

• new furniture styles for collaborative learning

• add a bit of whimsy

• put some bookcases on the balcony with tables and chairs (WD books)

• funky shelving spaces

• different lighting styles

In order to survive, school libraries must be engaged in a continual process of assessment and evaulation.

Lots of information challenges to e-science:

1. eScience is built on a lot of data – it is smart data, not just because you can play with it using computers, but because of forthcoming technologies like semantic publishing, and computable. It not only comes as numbers, but intelligent, computable, with metadata.

2. eScience is more than a lot of data – it covers the entire research and development chain, enables integrated resource development and analysis and envisions an integrative infrastructure. Its computable knowledge – can have visualised searches, intelligent tracking, tech trends analysis. Its knowledge driven scientific discovery, workflow and problem solving. The whole discovery process then becomes knowledge driven.

3. eScience is a different information world? Its strategic innovation, interdisciplinary and translational research, its cooperative research, its data intensive knowledge discovery. Now serving R & I decision-makers, lab & project leaders, front-line researchers and engineers. Now scientists go from data to information to intelligence to a solution is happening on the go. They need scholarly publications, research data, applied and market data, applied market and social information and more.

4. A new approach is required. Library solution is no longer the user solution. Library can only build its contribution on users solutions. Users solutions are not data or collections, but R& problem solving solutions. Library should aim for high impact services.

Libraries as smart power for e-Science:

1. Re-purpose the research library: trends tracking, potential testing and priority selection. Not just data, but visualisation and presentation. If we miss these opportunities, we miss this trust and miss the future. Focus on R&D’s new and hurting knowledge bottlenecks – help them to do research better, but with added value. Knowledge as a service – science as service, take steps to make the knowledge into a live tool – smart data.

2. Smart reading for R&D. First look at how people consumer information. No longer linear, static and lonely or reactive. Now weak vs strong information – weak is information you don’t know and don’t know its relevance. Power browsing – key messages rather than linear reading. Strategic reading – fast scanning to extract and accumulate for building context, frameworks and direction. Looked at who is reading what – the higher the position, the more strategic, innovation, interdisciplinary and translational research. Need to provide a lot of information analysis and tools to do this.

3. Integrative knowledge support for R&D> need discovery, customised, embedded, analysis and preservation provenance. Which matches the R&D workflow.

4. Knowledge based collaborative R&D; networked-based knowledge experiments,not just resources, but tools, experts and specialists. Need the facilities, the rights, ability to experiment.

5. Capitalising on complexity of meta-knowledge – we help by building knowledge as a service. Provide knowledge on knowledge, on collaborating, on processes, structures and interactions. Its now a verb as well as a noun. It is live. To do so, need to be strong, have special expertise and organisation. Libraries can do this, but are not ready to do so quite yet. Vendors are already offering this type of service.

Because most researchers and students live over 1000kms away from the National Science Library, they have built a system where the information is pushed out to the users (who are all connected online). They are shifting to a R&D support service, which incorporates an integrated discovery service. They are experimenting with clustering,GIS and visualisation technologies to gather and explore diverse data resources from many institutions and websites. Put much more emphasis on building user environments.RH

Planning a China IR alliance, with other research institutions and also with European partners. They are supporting OA publishing and are a member of arXiv.org. They plan to be a central force in OA resources and policies.

Have fourteen teams working on Research Intelligence Services. Do regular R&D tracking, R &D structure and evolution analysis – using purchased tools and others they have developed themselves, Mapping of sciences and R&D roadmapping, Tech trends analysis – now a big part of what they do. They are developing computer-assisted integrated analysis generation, including automatic profiles, customised analysis, etc.

Also have embedded research support – they liase with their institutes, but not library or documente based. They are user centred. They are doing integrated resource development, helping their institutes to determine what information they need and how it should be organised.

Developing Knowledge platforms as an Academy wide initiative. By end of 2012, it will be live in 15 institutes, by 2012 in all 100 CASS institutes. This will include improved knowledge literacy, so that they not only know how to find the data.

Library will become an open innovation centre. From a library, to a knowledge co-laboratory? They are using the under-utilised library space for consultation, video conferencing, lectures, exhibitions, experiments, seminars and classes.

Challenges:

• technologies – types and integration

• staff – need a knowledge of R&D and tech, not just subject areas

• organisation – reversing pyramid structure – embedded knowledge specialists first

 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.

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!

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.

The quick answer is never.

Let me clarify. Any new service, equipment, initiative, procedure etc being started in a library has an implementation program. The implementation part has a finish date, but the new ‘whatever’ it is, shouldn’t.

For every new thing that comes into our libraries, there should be a monitoring and assessment program that is ongoing, either until the day it dies or is replaced, or otherwise forever. Not only does this help you to assess whether it’s being used and whether its an effective use of your staffing hours and resources, but only it gives you useful data for demonstrating your library’s worth.

On a side note, the same goes for professional development. It also does not end when you have finished your qualification. It goes on and on and on and on and on……

This question also has a second answer.  It is also no. But it should sometimes be yes.

If we had these ongoing monitoring programs (and in some instances, even when we do), we need to determine when the point is reached that running such a program/equipment/service is no longer justified, in whatever terms have been set. So when we start, we need to determine what will be considered a success and what will be required to write off the project as completed once and for all.

We are good at starting things in libraries, not always so good at finishing them. And there are many things we do that require no finishing, but do need to be demonstrated as having worth and ongoing assessment will give us that. In fact, we need to be shouting out about them from the rooftops, but that’s another issues altogether.

But there are things we do, that do need to end and we need to let them go.  That can be hard, so work out what it will need to look like for that to happen and we might just find it easier to do it when the time comes.

Thanks everyone for following patiently during the last 30 days of blogging. Looking back, I never thought I could have so much to say in this forum. Not all of it was good, I freely acknowledge.

Surprisingly, I find that there are a couple of things I had planned on, but didn’t blog about in this month, so there will be more to come, just not every day, (sigh of relief for everyone!) and probably not even this week.

But I thank you for joining me on this ride and for your comments, they are both truly appeciated.

Michelle

We can’t take our staff to the movies every time they have a success, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be celebrating our successes. Some sort of acknowledgement is great for morale and for confidence.

I have been known to celebrate success at work with cheesecake, which always goes down a treat. And it works wonders for morale.

Its easier to celebrate big successes and we should, but they only come along every now and then. We aren’t necessarily working on a big project every day. Do we need to celebrate the little ones too?

I believe we do, but not necessarily with cheesecake, lol. (and yes, I can hear the sighs of disappointment from here). There does need to be some acknowledgement, just to recognise the work put in, the  achievements made, the improvements completed, the new service introduced. Recognition of the small things can lead to inspiration, innovation and even just happy staff. And happy staff make for happy library users. Its a win all around.

So what do you do to celebrate the small successes? I occasionally bring in some chocolates or flowers for someone who has done something difficult or noteworthy, but more often than not, I just tell them. I know from a personal viewpoint that I do like to hear that I am doing or have done a good job – its just nice to get the confirmation and acknowledgement that your hard work is recognised and is having an impact. (and doing it at appraisal time is not enough).

How do you recognise the little successes at your library?  How about the big successes?

Rules are important. They aim to guarantee that the world doesn’t dissolve into chaos and that everyone has equal opportunity and treatment, that we are kept safe and our privacy protected and much more. But if rules are always followed without discretion, they we have gone too far the other way.

Unfortunately, some staff mistakenly believe its  just about bending the rules. Its also about the situation and the people involved.

It may be appropriate to do so where a recipient is deemed worthy, or a situation where not to do so would be detrimental. Sometimes its just good PR.

And there are some rules which are easier to bend than others.

But all this requires, not only good judgement on whether the rules should be bent, but also on whether they should be bent in that particular situation and for that particular person.

Too often, a rule has been bent for a library user and despite being told that it was a one off and that they must abide by them next time, every single time they come in, they try to bend them again with the whole – “but they let me do it last time!”  Saying this is a virtual guarantee to never having any leeway on any situation in the library every again!

Making that sort of judgement call can be very difficult and is probably why staff will often refer to more senior staff to confirm it is the right option (or not) to take. (it also helps that they won’t get the flack if there is any problems resulting from the decision).

There are some rules I will bend more easily than others and some that I refuse to bend for anyone. Again it comes back to a judgement call on both the rule and the people involved in the situation. You want to help people, but you don’t want to make things difficult for other library staff if it all backfires.

The good news is that no-one is damaged irretrievably if using staff discretion leads to a difficult situation. And sometimes it doesn’t matter which way you go, you lose. But if nothing else, our managers will always support us if we stick to the rules, so if unsure, we are told to do that.

Have you had an instances where staff discretion backfired on you?  Are there rules you would bend more easily and others you wouldn’t bend at all?

We are introducing pre-overdue notifications via email, so sent out an introductory notice to all our users with email addresses on their accounts, to let them know it was coming and to give them the option to opt out.

This is the bit where people don’t read.

We had so many people call or visit, because they thought that possibly something had gone dreadfully wrong with our records and they thought, we had overdue items against their records.

This raised a few interesting points:

• That if library users had properly read their email, they would have known that it was a notice to let them know the service was starting and this was their opportunity to opt out if they wished
• That we needed to be more blunt with the start of the message, to let them know this was for a forthcoming service – not an existing one and hence avoiding some concern and lots of phone calls and visits
• That it did result in phone calls and visits from library users who hadn’t been in for a while and who had not seen the pre-publicity we had already had in the library for weeks
• That it resulted in awareness again for those library users, who also now were able to add tech savvy and good customer service to their view of the library (once we explained it to them) and those who attended with their concerns often left the library with borrowed items
• That not many people opted out – more people will receive these pre-overdue notices now, than if we had made it opt-in instead

So what began as a notification at a new service and was, for some, translated as something else, has ended up being good PR for the library (if frustrating for library staff).

The irony is, that we had a gentleman come to the desk in the midst of all this chaos and in his broken English, request to sign up for the service.  The one person who struggled to read English, understood what was going on, when those whose language it is, didn’t.

Have you had a similar situation in your library? Did it work out well for you? How?

So I got to thinking about how we keep doing things that we have been doing for a while in our libraries, because that’s what we do, without necessarily thinking about whether its appropriate to do so anymore.  We get so set in our ways, that we don’t always think about whether our ways could be improved by changing, tweaking or removing all together.

So imagine my amazement, when I got back to work later in the afternoon and whilst talking about various things to some of my colleagues, I asked if there was a better way of dealing with a process we have in place ( the query triggered by a comment in passing from a library user) – which is currently putting blocks in the way of our users accessing our self-help services (such as self-check, renewals, holds etc) and one of my wise colleagues suggested we get rid of it altogether!

I was delighted! The suggestion was well received by other staff we polled, but it will have to go to the managers for consideration and approval, because its quite possible there are implications we haven’t thought of.

Which makes me wonder and will probably get me to looking a bit more closely, about what other things we are doing, which we may not have to do anymore. I will deliberately try to look at things through our library users’ eyes and maybe query our new library staff about their other library experiences more closely to discover what they are (and there will be more, I’m sure).

Have you had these moments of revelation? What happened?  Love to hear your stories, as they might give me some inspiration and direction.