Connecting Librarian

In my current, short-term (sigh) role as Acting Information Services Librarian, I work closely with our Publicity Officer (our desks are adjacent in our own little corner at our library HQ). We were talking the other day and it was brought home to me how much work is done behind the scenes to make things easier for our users.

Case in point: The Library’s monthly newsletter.

Not even thinking about all the work that goes into the content creation, once that has happened, this is what our Publicity Officer does to get it to our users.

She creates the newsletter in In Design. She then creates a jpeg of it for our website. Then there is the Shockwave file for users to be able to read it like a magazine online. Then for those who don’t want to, or can’t read it like that, she creates single pages of the newsletter and saves it as a pdf.  Then lastly there is the HTML file for the subscribers, which is emailed out once everything has been tested to within an inch of its life. 

And that’s not including the work that goes into the print versions that are created for pick up at our libraries.

We do all this, so there is no barrier to users accessing our monthly newsletter.

I then thought about the process I go through for promoting library events. I create a slide for our website slideshow using PhotoShop Elements and then a page on our website, which incorporates this and all the rest of the information relating to the event. I then add the event to Eventbrite for our online bookings. Then it has to be in our Google Calendar, which we embed in our website as Calendar of Events, followed by another different (and much larger slide) for our digital photo frames. Then I update the SD card for the host branch and send it to them to changeover in their digital photo frame.

This is totally separate of course (but in conjunction with for consistencies sake), to the flyers, posters that our Publicity Officer produces, as well as the articles that are created for our own newsletter, as well as those of our two Councils (as appropriate). Then some are added to Facebook or included in our Library News blog as well. And again that is not taking into account, all the organisation of such events in the first place, as well as the running of and after event follow-up.

Why do we do all this? Because we want to use every means possible (and ethical) to promote events to users that may be of interest to them.

We have quite a busy schedule of one-off events, besides our regular events, so it ends up that we spend a lot of time doing this.

I’m not complaining though, I really enjoy the whole process, particularly creating the event slides – I think I may be a bit of a closet graphic artist (and a very late-starter).

And this is just one part of what libraries do to make things easier for our users. Its a lot of hard work, but it is worth it.

So it got me wondering what other lengths we go to, to make things easier for our users.  I would love to hear your stories.

Picking up from a wonderful post of the same title from the Blue Skunk Blog (http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2012/1/13/you-know-you-are-a-21st-century-librarian-when.html) and adjusting for working in public libraries.  Enjoy!

You know you are a 21st century public librarian when:

• you get excited about getting a real life reference question
• you lend more DVDs than books
• you hand out more keys to the toilet than answers
• you exercise your IT skills more than your reference skills
• you do more HTML than cataloguing
• you book more Wifi sessions than desktop Internet sessions
• your professional development works mainly through Twitter
• when answering a reference questions, you head to the Internet
• your copier is used for printing from the Internet and virtually never for copying from books
• you have nothing to do when the Internet goes down
• your touch typing skill is the best thing you learned at school
• your phone is used for music and the Internet, not so much for phone calls
• you get more requests for staplers than reading recommendations
• you are extremely familiar with the reset buttons on computers
• some library users protest a noisy library more than you do (they need shushing classes)
• you mention a character from the 20th century and the kids say ‘who?’ (in my case it was Charlie Chaplin)
• you still love your job, even through all the decades of change!

Would love to hear what else has changed for your sector in librarianship.

After a week chock full of wonderful conference joy at VALA, it was a further joy and a bit of a relief to be able to attend Library Camp Australia 2012, at the Unversity of Melbourne on February 12th. Here are my assorted notes from the course of the day.

 1st session – Jason Griffey – GADGETS

 165,000 attended the new consumer electronics show in Las Vegas in January. One of the large company booths at this is more than ½ the size of the exhibition space at ALA. Awesome that librarians are attending these conventions.

One laptop per child – equivalent XO tablet – runs Sugar Linux or Android – supposed to cost under $100. Sugar is designed to show you how to program as you use it. Designed to be used in disadvantaged areas, so has a hand crank, solar power connection and much more. Uses mesh networking.

Parrot AR Drone, which includes a video camera. Low battery power (about 15 mins), but battery power is improving. Expensive versions have GPS and are programmable, have sensors which do obstacle avoidance. The military ones can have recharge themselves by attaching to powerlines.

Lytro digital camera – $300. No controls. Lens looks like a flies eye – lots of facets. A picture takes multiple everything all at once. The computer does all the work afterwards. You can’t be a bad photographer with this camera. (plenoptic lens). People have used these to create video – but takes a hugh amount of computing power to do this. Makes imaging of pages easier.

 Nest smart thermostat. Created by an ex-Apple engineer. Whole front is touch screen and dial is controller. The aim is to never have to use them. Sensors pick up when there is people in the house. You adjust for the first few days and then it learns. Has wifi, so can control it from elsewhere.

Local studies

NZ has Keta. Want to get people to create their own data. Partnerships need to be developed to ensure the library is not alone in creating and curating it.

 How do we scrape the information that is already out there. Needs to have geocoding, hash tags and tags etc. Storify does it well, but you need to manually create. Pinterest is also being used for local studies – Smithsonian. Need to also accept that these tools may not be permanent, so we need to have it safe elsewhere. ABC Open is doing some great stuff and will do free staff training.

Libraries can do great leadership in using tagging, so content is at least findable. Part of digital literacy skills. But also about leaving things open so that other people can tag.

Create an exhibition, to demonstrate the potential to users. It gives them a framework and an inspiration. LibraryHack was good in that it had an ideas competition so that people who didn’t have the skills could participate.

Also important to highlight the different groups within the community. What are the different ways we can be collecting the stories.

We are all interested in simple permissions process – form. Just using ‘good enough’ technology. You don’t worry about lighting, sounds etc.

Cowbird – online tool for storytelling.

Today is tomorrow’s history. We need to keep that in mind.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EB9eRqEE6A_h5Vkmp29-iSwAdQbK_YCHY9BTtNk4Cxo/

Sydney public library creates a Flickr group for local festivals and collects photos from it – then sometimes gets permission to re-use.

New content should be released under Creative Commons licences. Also need to say when things are out of copyright and can be re-used.

NZ Public libraries – looked at what kids are doing at school and then engaging them with the library on local history connections. They then ran sessions on creating oral histories – aimed at connecting with the school work requirements – from a human point of view.

Australian National curriculum bringing about opportunities for libraries to engage with their local schools.

Library Camp 2012 Lightning Talks

 Ben – Embedded metadata in digital objects.

 What are libraries and museums doing? Not much. Librarians are committed to their end users and embedded metadata is an end user benefit. We are obsessed with our catalogue, but don’t add metadata to our digital objects. There is a whole stuff attached to the image when it is online, but need to make it downloadable with the object. Yes, its difficult and extremely challenging, but it is possible and it is invaluable.

http://regex.info/exif.cgi – tells you what metadata is in an image online.

Julia – Shameless self promotion.

 Don’t talk about ourselves enough in a positive light. Doing so brings you to amazing places. The thing to remember is to use your strengths – particularly make use of your PLN. Don’t hesitate, go for it, you never know what you will get out of it. Use your community and your interests. Find out more about what you want and then tweet, blog or write an article about it. You are worth the time and effort to do so. Above all, remember it is all up to you.

 Leonie – Money

 Public libraries often have great project ideas, bur not the money to do it. She won the Barrett Reid scholarship for studying young people spaces. Its worth putting in proposals to do a study tours, education courses or programs within your library. Great for PD. Also Churchill Scholarships, ALIA grants and awards, as well as grant applications. Your networks will help you to do the applications.

Amy – Amanda Palmer

 Knew Neil Gaiman was going to be in town, so emailed him and asked if he could come to the library. He said yes. Amanda Palmer emailed them to ask if she could perform at their library (they have a grand piano). Both artists blogged and posted etc about it and they were crammed to the rafters. The lesson – Ask. Its OK to try and fail. Social media was huge, particularly as they asked the artists only tweeted about the event just before it happened. It also helped to improve their social media followings, as those they promoted, promoted them back.

Sara – supporting education in combating social disadvantage.

Digital literacy is going to be big for libraries. To be digitally literate you have to have comprehension literacy and reading skills. Smith Family supports disadvantaged children in their education and a number of components in helping children to help each other improve their reading.

Jennifer – 3D printing

MakerBot 3D printing. You feed plastic through the top and layer by layer it makes up a shape, using glue guns. You can find plans on the web or make your own. You can make just about anything that can be made in plastic. Limit to 10x10x10 centimetres, although you can print in parts. You can also print in multiple colours. Built by engineers. Public libraries can have a role in this. Can get a demo at her library.

Carolyn – Innovation

Tom Peters has a series of videos on innovation on YouTube. Innovation is risky, but risk is not bad. Quite often it is good. It should not be avoided. You should identify it and then work out how to manage it. Innovation can be hard to recognise – its not always gadgets. The companies that we think of as innovative, don’t talk about being innovative. Their goals are focused and innovation is part of the toolset that helps them to achieve that. Innovation shouldn’t be a goal.

You can also check out summary notes on the Library Camp Oz blog (http://libcampoz12.blogspot.com.au/) and tweets on the Library Camp Oz Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/#!/LibCampOz).

Repositioning Brimbank Libraries for 21^st century service deliver – Chris Kelly & Jarrod Coyles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the difficulties included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Jobs 2010 – analogy to cars – we have had PCs for 30 years, but now our needs are being fulfilled by other devices – pads and smart phones for example.

 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.

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s hoping that 2012 is better than 2011, regardless of whether it was good or bad.

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!

Very interesting word discretion. It gives me the image of someone tapping the side of their nose, saying nudge, nudge, wink, wink. But in the library world, its about giving the staff the opportunity to ‘bend’ the rules, where they deem there is a situation where they should be bent.

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 moving towards roving reference at our library. This is a very new concept for us, as we have always been tied to a desk. However, with the introduction of RFID, we have the potential to move out from our desk.  The potential is not yet fully realised, so until it is, we will start taking baby steps in this journey.

So what will roving reference look like at our library?

At the moment, it looks like it usually does – we are away from the desk, doing some admin type work, like shelving holds (they are self-serve), find items to fulfill holds or emptying trolleys to the appropriate collection areas. And as we do, people grab us as we go by and ask questions. And whenever we go to do a shelf check or help a user find a particular area in the library, we are always waylaid with further queries.

So what will be different? Hopefully, we will be able to spend more time with these people when they ask questions and not feel the need to complete it and get back to the crush that is our typical desk traffic, as soon as humanly possible. We will be more observant about library users around us and actively seek to help them where they are at – daunting as the prospect might seem.

And we will get our staff trained up a bit more so that its not just the librarians doing this. We will develop scenarios to give confidence to those who don’t like to stray from the desk and we will buddy up with these newly trained staff, to help them ‘get their feet wet’.

But we will do so only where it is not to the detriment of those we serve at our desk. They will remain our first priority, but our customer service will expand to those who don’t approach the desk. Customer service is one of strengths and we plan to capitalise on this opportunity and improve it – whether its deliberately seeking out those to help, or its incidental on our way to doing other things.

What does roving reference look like in your library?

There’s been a lot of talk about the future of libraries, but it is mostly coming from librarians and naysayers predicting the end of the book. I am looking forward to the results of research our library is conducting on the topic, which will include input from our library users.

But in the meantime, they are already having their say about what they want. With their hands and feet and voices.  Pretty much as they have always done, lol.

They are saying with their loans, that CDs are maybe now just starting to go out of lending fashion – with our loans starting to go down in the Rock and Pop genres (but not in the other genres). What’s next is yet to be determined. Finding a workable library model for music is a challenge in itself.

They are saying it with their queries and feedback forms about scanning. We don’t. Yet. We are getting new photocopiers shortly which will scan to USB as well as copy though.

They are saying with their feet, that they need space to study and work.  We are a single floor building – so no quiet study areas. We have usually been busy with studying students at exam time, but this year, as never before, its been all term round, for quiet study and group work. Wandering through the collections at various times, you would think it was empty, but you get to the seating areas and there are people as far as the eye can see – double and tripled up and even sitting at kids tables and on the floor, when there are no other options.

We also know that there are mature aged learners and business owners who use the library for the space and free wifi even more than the students do. And that we have run out of tables and chairs too often to ignore. Fortunately, we are getting more of those as well and eventually a new building which should accommodate the growing demand for quiet study space. In the meantime, we have more furniture coming, just need to figure out where it will go!

So although its important for us to think about what libraries will be, do and have in future and we need to ask our users this question as well as our staff, its even more important that we are listening to what they are telling us about their needs now in other ways – through their hands, feet and mouths.

How do you ensure that everyone you serve gets equal service, as well as good service?

This comes to mind as I was dealing with a library user the other day, who was also a former neighbour. We got to catching up (as you do), but the catch-up went longer than the transaction that was being conducted. Normally not a problem, but I was very aware that there was  a queue of people waiting to be served and that there were no other staff available to do so.

I know as a customer, the frustration of waiting in line to be served and having to wait longer because the staff member and customer are having a chat. So I am always aware of this, when I am on the other side of the counter.

But I also know that for many library users, the contact with staff is just as important, if not more so, than the transaction being conducted.  So how do you find the balance?

I have known staff who will give exemplary customer service to a library user, but in doing so, many others have to wait longer at their turn and ultimately have less customer service, as the demand far exceeds the supply. One person may walk away happy, but many others won’t.

Ideally we would love to be able to give this level of service to every library user, but it is far from being realistically possible.

Having to find this balance pretty much every hour of every day in the library, means that I have become quite expert at the wind up – making sure that the transaction is completed in a timely manner, but also to the satisfaction (as far as possible) to the user.

It has helped that now with RFID in place we sometimes have a staff member who can get out from behind the desk and to the queue, to see if there is any way they can be helped without having to wait at circulation. This has helped both our queue management and our customer service immensely, but is not always possible in peak times (which somehow seems like most of the time, lol).

Do you have any policies regarding this or any practices you have found particularly helpful in achieving this balance?