Connecting Librarian

Its Day 27 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and today’s post is inspired by a TED talk by Chip Conley – Measuring what makes life worthwhile (which is worthwhile checking out) and in particular the following quote he used in his talk:

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. ” Albert Einstein.

The world is so fixed on statistics, in libraries as well as in life.  We seem to be caught up in the cycle of needing numbers to justify everything, yet not being happy to be relying on only the numbers that those tangibles give us to justify what we do.

3D Bar Graph Meeting, uploaded to Flickr on December 25, 2007 by lumaxart

We report our numbers to our governing bodies, who use those numbers to report back to their stakeholders and to justify the money they spend on their libraries. Are they any happier with only having tangible numbers to work from?

I’m not saying that numbers are bad – they are valuable and do give a view of how our libraries are being used. As we have been using those numbers for so long, they are also giving us a picture of how libraries and their use are changing. But those numbers have never been able to give the whole picture.

How do we count the value of the interactions we have, such as those I described in my blog post, The importance of librarians.

I know I am far from the first person to ask these questions and I won’t be the last. But until we find a way to measure these things and to break away from the cycle we are locked into regarding the tangibles we count and report, nothing is going to change.

Libraries are valuable above and beyond that we can currently count. So I’ll throw these questions out to the universe – How do we count the intangibles in libraries? How do we report these to our governing bodies? How do we get everyone to accept these counts as legitimate expressions of what libraries do and how they contribute to our society?

I hope that the work that Chip Conley and others are doing with the GNH will be able to answer those questions and we will see some different counts coming out of our libraries and being accepted by our governing bodies,  in the not too distant future.

Who are the virtual visitors to the library and what are they doing? Dr Vivienne Waller

Working on research project with SLV – called the Searchers. Looking at purpose of public libraries in 21 century and implications of technology. Interested in current searching practices – looking at who goes where for what.

Back in 1995, Mercer found that most people would use their library to find something out. Pew Project 2007 found that the public library accounted for just over 10%. Internet was the overwhelming leader.

Top Australian reference sites were Wikipedia and then the Bureau of Meteorology, followed by various answer websites such as Ask.

Stats show that the top 20 websites account for nearly 60% of hits, but the long tail – the other 40% was made up of over 3,000 websites.

SLV – 1 million visits to the building, 22 million to the website (2006/07) (all SLV domains).

Research on SLV main website – www.slv.vic.gov.au, included research on the long tail. They used Hitwise data – could use Google Analytics for smaller websites. Hitwise data includes demographic data, 40% of ISPs send their data to Hitwise as well as recording their traffic.

More than average visitors to the SLV website come from educated singles, families maintaining the rural economy, young affluent singles and sharers in the city, wealthiest families in the exclusive suburbs. Under-represented are the most other categories.

Victoria accounts for about 63% of virtual visitors, NSW for 17% and other most states between 1 and 3%. The top 10 referrers included Google, Yahoo, Picture Australia, National Library and Wikipedia.

Top 10 sites only account for 51%, what are some of the other 49% sites? The categories of site in the long tail include search engines (40%), library (about 15%), with more from computer and internet sites (eg. social networking sites).

Where do they go afterwards? Much more came from search engines, but a lesser proportion return to them. Hope that means they found what they are looking for.

Results on searches that led to the slv website – top 10 searches, 22% – variations on state library of victoria. The other 78% of searches came from over 15,000 terms and fell mainly into the categories of history, place, reference, buidling and books/authors.

Did searchers find what they were looking for? Rough estimate using upstream and downstream traffic and images, suggests that 50% of people found what they wanted an moved onto other sites.

Important to take advantage of web log data, but some questions can only be answered by detailed survey and analysis.

Question: how can we tell if users have used the guides on our websites. Can tag those pages with the Google Analytics code – if all pages are tagged, can track their progress through your website. Can track where people are geographically as well.

Question: was there any work done on people using the databases. Currently doing work on who is using the catalogue – tricky to measure the databases, because that is not content hosted by SLV.

Question: could Hitwise data be used to help measure programs aimed at people who are underrepresented. Yes it could be in principal, but data must be paid for. If data is very localised, would be better to survey individuals.

Jo Stewart Rattray from Vectra Corp spoke on “Information Security”. All libraries have information assets we need to protect, would we know if our systems were under attack? An international study found that 70% of all attacks are internal, not necessarily intentional, can be accidental.

Information security is confidentiality, integrity and availability of info. 80% is about the info, 20% is the tech. It is a people issue and it is everyone’s responsibility. The two most valuable assets of an organisation are its information and its people and we don’t want tampering with either.

Hackers just want to get into the system to show their tech expertise, its pride. Cracker is doing it for malicious gain, destruction, financial gain. Freakers hack into phone systems, often to make free calls. Simple security will help protect, including unguessable passwords and logging machines out when not around.

Good information policies should be easily understood and distributed to all staff. Should include everyone’s rights, roles and responsibilities and be a part of pds.

Dr Gillian Hallam presented “Don’t ever stop: career long learning”, outlining results from a survey on the sustainability of the LIS workforce in Australia, as part of the Nexus project.

Online survey was conducted from mid September to the end of October 2006, with 2354 responses received. 85% had completed studies, 8% still in study. 79% professional, 17% paraprofessional. Age ranges for librarians only: 18-25 2.8%, 26-35 18.8%, 36-45 25.8%, 46-55 33.8% and 56+ 16.1% which was similar to the figures for all LIS staff. Interestingly, 40% of new graduates were career changers and 44% were over 40. New graduates had shorter stay in jobs, mid to late careers were long serving. With the percentage of middle and senior managers retiring in the next 9 years (32%), there are real concerns for succession planning.

The skill sets that will be lost will be middle and senior management such as organisational planning, budget, collections, reference, research and information services. Only 28% of staff have formal training often, 23% rarely. Informal training is much better, with 42% often and 15% rarely.

Of interest again was the 62% who believed they were overqualified for their current role, the 21% who were interested in further study, and the 42% who were ALIA members (of which 47% rarely or were never actively involved). However, ALIA professional members are twice as likely to be involved in training.

Mei Lin Gray and Warren Cheetham from Thuringowa Public Library spoke about their changing reference service in “From Table to Tablet”. Customers and staff were uncomfortable with the reference desk (and the photos showed good reason, lol), they were more likely to approach roving staff. Renovations in the library led to a smaller more modular circ desk and self serve loans, so they took the opportunity to revisit the info desk.

Changing to a desk, where librarian and patron could sit side by side, they trialled a tablet PC, fully networked via a wireless system, giving them access to all PC based software, the internet etc. Now they are able to revise their query on the go, without having to make trips back and forth to the desk. Disadvantage with the tablet was the small print size and some connectivity issues.

After 9 months, 2 staff are very comfortable and enthusiastic about the change, another has partial use of it and the last 3 staff are still desk centric.

Recommendations: – staged approach, use old and new for a time
- time to play away from the desk, so that staff get comfortable with it
- follow up training and sharing of stories.