» The Radical Patron – extreme thoughts on public libraries

Talking ’bout our library systems

RP — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:00:24 +0000

A few weeks ago, Library Journal published an essay I wrote highlighting systemic barriers to quality reference service. People from across the country responded and comments touched upon many aspects of library service delivery. I’m pleased the essay prompted an exchange that involved people within and (a few) outside the library community; went into detail about library services, operations and funding; and focused on the library as information resource — a function that hasn’t received much coverage in the past few years.

Here are selections from the comment stream (from the LJ site, except where noted):

Emilie Smart (via her blog): As the head of a reference division in a public library, I cringed as I read your post. And I live in fear that one day, a patron just like you will visit my staff and have a similar experience. But one point your post brought home to me was one I’ve been concerned about for awhile and am not sure how to address. Back in the day, when we used books (almost exclusively) to answer reference questions, we were answering more questions just like yours. The staff was familiar with that kind of question and was better armed to answer it — not because our resources were deeper then, but because the staff’s experience was. As I look over the questions we are asked today, I find very few that require the kind of knowledge of resources that yours did. In fact, I’m not sure how many of my staff would even know look for poetry explication sources to answer your question. I know that some of them would, but the younger/newer ones might not think of looking for an explication resource unless they had been lit majors. They may not even know the term to start looking for it. This isn’t entirely a matter of poor training — if it were, I wouldn’t be as worried about it. It’s a matter of using knowledge of resources plus acquiring more knowledge over time — and that’s just something that isn’t happening like it used to. I can train staff to use databases and books, but if they rarely have the need to use them after training, they lose what they learned. (Reference work ain’t like riding a bicycle.) I can also send out a tough weekly reference question as a training tool, but even that is only putting a tiny band-aid on an ever-growing sore. If our reference staffs don’t get constant reinforcement and regular challenges (the kind that can only be had by assisting patrons like you on a regular basis), they won’t grow into knowledgeable critical thinkers, and reference service will slowly atrophy into the the kind of service described in your post — a source of pleasant conversation and general information.
	Jean: Ms. Smart – thanks so much for your consideration of my essay. Your points are so well taken. I appreciate how out-of-the-ordinary the type of service I’m seeking is for the libraries in my area. Library work today strikes me as very challenging, particularly in the smaller public libraries that are staffed by a handful of individuals who must do everything from turning off the alarm systems in the morning to [name all traditional library services here], managing meeting rooms, programming, promotion, updating the website, and in the case of some directors also managing the facilities. There’s only so much that can be done given the way these libraries are currently conceived, structured and funded.
SJ: When libraries limit access to resources based on residing in a specific town or affiliation with a specific college, it is not because of “library culture and organization” rather it is due to the restrictions put on by the funders of these libraries. City taxes for example support local public libraries and the city sets the policy of who then is entitled to use the local services. Colleges are funded by districts or state governments and the these funding entities set who is entitled to free access. Let’s look at another example from the college sphere – tuition. If you live out of the district or state, you will pay a higher rate to take classes at those institutions. Likewise, a comparable example at the local level to public libraries is public schools. If you live in one city, you can’t send your children to public school in another.
	Jean: Hi SJ – I understand the library ecosystem reasonably well, and I’m suggesting we reconsider it. In my view, it’s an issue of vital national importance. The majority of funding mechanisms, jurisdiction, governance etc. were established at a time when information was scarce, people were significantly less educated and mobile. And of course we had no data technology. Particularly over the past 40 years, user needs have become more diverse and sophisticated, and libraries face competition from a range of for-profit and non-profit organizations. How can we expect them to evolve rapidly enough to stay viable if we place so many restrictions on them?
Karen: I have had this experience, too, esp when travelling. My husband and I are staying in a hotel, eating at local restaurants, visiting local museums, and are told we can’t use the library (to check our email via internet) because we’re not local residents (but we’re paying the onerous hotel tax). This has happened in Philly and other towns up & down the east coast. Whereas in Monterey, CA, where I used to work, we let everyone have 30 mins on the computer twice/day. It’s a big tourist town, so internet use at the library is just another aspect of being friendly to tourists. No, Monterey is not a wealthy library system–like many places in CA, it’s in trouble.
	Jean: Hi Karen – experiences like the ones you and I have described are the reason I’ve said our national library funding models are unsustainable. Chances are residents in the communities you’ve vacationed in also experience barriers and friction, as I do in my home area. What a downward spiral. Because we’re still using funding, organizational and service models that limit service levels, people like us stop thinking of libraries as resources and find alternatives. As library services become less useful and relevant for us (and because our home budgets are as tight as our municipal ones), we find it harder to support libraries at budget time. And the pattern repeats the next year. We need to break this pattern – and FAST. I believe we can do it with our existing human, material and capital resources … and would love to get a national dialogue going about it.
Nicolette: I am truly sorry for the experience that you had. I do believe that some of the experiences that you cite are functions of budgetary shortfalls, which we as a profession are trying to learn to address gracefully. The barrages of questions about your affiliation may fall into this category. We are advised as a profession, in order to justify funding, resource purchases, and, sometimes, our continued existence, to attempt to get information on the patrons we are serving, since, in most cases today, any purchase rules out some other potential purchase. Unfortunately, if a resource we are purchasing is primarily used by people outside our funding population, those dollars may need to be reallocated to a resource that might serve our core group of patrons better.
	Jean: Hi Nicolette – I know there are many restrictions placed on you and other library staff, which is why I ended my essay with the conclusion “it’s more than the system can provide”. The thrust of my advocacy is to disrupt the narrative about library funding and value. It’s true that funding levels are insufficient to support our existing library systems, however my argument is that those systems (which worked so well for half a century) are now woefully inefficient and often incapable of providing high-quality information service. What I call for is discussion about how we can use our resources to provide more service more effectively. We have the talent, money and technology to do it. All we need to begin is a change in perspective.
Tricia: I wish someone could have referred you to Gale’s Literature Resource Center. If you had come to my library, I wouldn’t have given up until you left with what you came for. Good, solid literary criticism is one of the hardest things to find, and frankly I was surpised to find it in LRC after you said it was unavailable in Lit Crit Online.
	Jean: Hi Trish – guess what? My consortia just added this resource in December. It wasn’t available to me or the people who tried to help me at the time I made my inquiry. What I also figured out based on the feedback here (and the nudge to look harder) is that the database web pages at most of the public libraries in my area aren’t up to date – so I’m going to bypass them from now on and go directly to the consortia page. There may have been more resources available to me than I (or perhaps also folks working in the libraries) perceived at the time.
SusanE: … I am an academic librarian, and I will echo that when I worked at a large, state university, I would often ask if the patron was a student or not. It’s not because I didn’t want to help our public patrons, but knowing whether they were working on an assignment as a student or simply seeking information would change how I conducted the reference interview. … If you were a student working on an assignment, I would have shown you how to use our databases, sat down with you and provided some preliminary searches for the information. Ultimately, though, I feel that it is up to the student to find and disseminate the information they need. For public patrons, I would most likely do most of the searching myself, and would leave less of the dissemination of the information to them. Basically, I feel like it is my responsibility and goal to help the student learn how to find information on their own and my responsibility to find it for the public patron.
	Jean: SusanE: Not sure how representative I am of the non-student users you support, but can share that even though the need for a specific piece of info brings me to the library, I seek the learning experience in most cases (though not all). Sometimes I just want the fish and don’t want to be taught to fish, but most often it’s the latter. I see it as my responsibility to let the library staff know what level of service I’m looking for and try to communicate that as part of my inquiry.
Marcie: I realize that by saying “I found your answer on the Internet,” I am not helping my own cause in keeping public libraries open and funded. The “other side” so to speak can always say, “But isn’t everything on Google? Why do we need librarians?” But my response would be, “Sometimes people need a little assistance in searching the Internet. Google seems so simple and intuitive, but the results may not be quite what a person is expecting. And you can’t always find magazine and newspaper articles for free, like you often can with subscription databases.” (Although I’ve been trying to refrain from such library language and not call them “databases.”) I think this may be what happened to you with your Dylan Thomas poem. I’m sure you could have searched Google yourself–and probably found the right level of criticism–but you wanted a little assistance with your search. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the librarian was ill-equipped to help.
	Jean: Marcie – Thanks for weighing in again, I just love having conversations like these about contemporary information needs and the enormous value librarians can deliver. I tried Google first, using a variety of search terms, and stumbled upon 3 types of unsatisfactory sources: loads of reprints of the poem itself, countless advertisements to purchase a term paper and a few articles written by poorly identified sources describing what they think the poem is about. That’s when I turned to libraries – and how I would have loved expert help from someone like you who could share a search strategy or tactic to help me mine info on the open web. And speaking of open web, I’ve recently argued that libraries and librarians are doing themselves a disservice by limiting their scope to resources within their own institutions or consortia. Here’s a link to some specific ideas I’ve shared about broad unmet needs librarians are uniquely suited to fill: (http://www.radicalpatron.com/category/participatory-librarianship/).
Erika: As an academic librarian, I feel the need to explain what may be going on w/ the librarians you speak to. When a patron comes to the desk, if it isn’t clear, I’ll ask them whether they’re a Univ. patron or not (in more politic terms than that)–not b/c I want to censure or shame them for coming in, but because that affects the resources I can offer them. It’s not a problem to show them the things we subscribe to, but if they’re not a Univ. staff/student/faculty, then I can’t offer to get something through ILL for them. However, other universities have different policies. We’re a state institution, so we can allow anyone to walk into one of our libraries and use our online resources. This isn’t without its problem–the database vendors hate this, and are always trying to get us to limit access. B/c we get public funding, we have a leg to stand on. But a private college/univ. may not be able to allow that sort of access, even though they may want to.
	Jean: Hi Erika – I worked part-time at an academic library from 2002-2005 and understand some of the limitations. I’ve also done loads of backoffice volunteer work for public libraries and that has also helped me interpret my experiences. I’d argue that our existing library governance and management systems are hurting patrons and libraries themselves. A far better approach, I think, are more open systems like the “OneCard” program pioneered by the Whatcom County Library System in Washington State that provides seamless access to area academic and public libraries. They describe it as an initiative “spearheaded by Whatcom Libraries Collaborate, a group of library directors and deans dedicated to expanding library access for better stewardship of resources and greater community impact.” I’d love to think about how fruitful my reference experiences might be if I could easily leverage the resources of the 26 libraries in my immediate area.

What makes a great library?

RP — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:00:41 +0000

It’s hard not to be wowed by the facilities at Anythink Libraries in Adams County, Colorado — but make no mistake — this would be a great library system even if it was located in a set of original Carnegie buildings.

Prompted by this month’s Library Journal cover story, I phoned Director Pam Sandlian Smith to better understand what makes this library exceptional. A key is her emphasis on the competencies and people needed to deliver outstanding service. When creating Anythink, a priority for Ms. Smith was to build a high-caliber management team and she recruited talent from within and outside the library world. Their priority was to analyze library work and then structure roles to support it. The team listed all the work and then organized it into buckets, she explained. Next, inspired by policies at Apple Computer, they crafted job descriptions that included competencies to reflect “the how as well as the what”. The competencies are vitally important, Smith said, for “they provide a language to discuss performance” whether it’s high or when it needs improvement.

Take a look at the job descriptions below; they’ll quickly convey what Anythink is about. Then consider your library. What are the focus and priorities of your work?

Library Assistant (Concierge)

You’re the essence of the customer’s experience at the library. You greet people with a smile and welcome them into our library. You enrich people’s lives through meaningful dialogue about our products and services. You earn trust by being knowledgeable about our products and making recommendations that connect with the customer. You help our library customers find the fuel and the spark to unlimited ideas and opportunities.

You warmly welcome customers into our library and ensure a great experience and a fond farewell.
Out on the floor and in the stacks, you provide an amazing library experience to each and every customer by helping them find the book they want or assisting them with self-checkout services.
You are an explorer of great conversations, talking to our library customers about the promotions, programs and services available at the library.
You take pride in our library, ensuring it is clean and tidy and the displays are refreshed and looking beautiful. View the full Concierge job description.

Librarian (Guide)

You create amazing experiences for our library customers. You are the person who connects the customer with information they seek. You develop and implement outstanding experience zone programs. You are a trainer and program coordinator at the branch. You are a natural leader, knowledgeable on all library operations and respected for your ability to have the customer leaving thrilled about the library.

You conduct presentations and workshops for our experience zones whether they be technology training, a children’s story time, a teen library program or a creative writing workshop.
You are a wizard at teaching our library customers how to use our online databases.
You make connections that enrich our library customer experience through developing online/paper bibliographies, adding content to the wikis, displays and creating transformational programming.
You do the right thing. Every decision you make and action you take is an opportunity to demonstrate our collective integrity. View the full Guide job description.

¹Images from Anythink’s You Say You Want A Revolution presentation.

Imagine scarcity – it can save public libraries

RP — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:00:22 +0000

What is scarce in what we do? And how do we leverage that to create new value?¹

Join me in imagining the future, when information comes to me.

Devices

Information comes via a device in my pocket, or the tablets lying around my house or in my backpack, large screens on my walls, and computers in my car. They’re all synchronized to provide a seamless flow, so I can start reading content on a tablet while sipping coffee in the morning and have it read aloud to me as I drive to work. If I start watching a movie on the big screen, I can finish while lying in bed with a smaller device. Information flow is bi-directional, so I can annotate, filter, forward and file content, or create new information using manual or voice controls.

As happened with electronic calculators and cell phones, cost for smart devices has become so low that they’re ubiquitious in the used market and given away as promotional items by businesses and as personal gifts by family and friends. In fact, disposing of them is a greater challenge than acquiring them.

Filters

My online interactions have become as sensitive as my physical ones, for sophisticated filters let me easily and continuously determine what content gets through and what gets set aside.^* I have a single online profile through which I filter and organize content. Recommendations for related information abounds based on rich metadata supplied by content providers, content assembled by trusted curators and active & passive indicators from friends — and I determine where and when I want them. My personal preference is to take recommendations in real time when I’m searching content and park them when I’m consuming it. When shopping, I make the decision on a case-by-case basis; sometimes I know exactly what I want and simply need to locate it and other times I’m looking for ideas and alternatives.

* On a historic note, businesses caught on pretty quickly that chasing superficial markers like Facebook fans, thumbs-up indicators or trivial broadcasts did not increase the bottom line, so they abandoned them. Mechanisms evolved to explicitly let people establish their product and marketing preferences, which proved much more effective.

Access

Access is also sophisticated and transparent. It’s managed through my profile and like my filters, it’s easy to adjust the combination of subscriptions and micropayments I use to pay for content. To manage my spending, I’ve set limits on the per item and monthly amounts I can purchase without explicit approval. My usage is updated in real time and clearly displayed in my profile, so I always have a good sense of my information costs.

In addition to paid content, an astounding amount of high-quality free content is available. I’m so glad academia recognized curation as a mechanism for advancement, for the work scholars have done is truly magnificent. It’s like each content search brings me to the best courses I remember taking in college. I’ve even discovered new interests by following the best curators who provide inviting and accessible introductions to new topics.

So, what might be scarce in my future? What could public libraries provide that I would value highly?

¹Kent Anderson, The Asymmetry of Waste in the Age of Abundance — A Reversal of Scarcity’s Balance, Scholarly Kitchen blog, 9/27/2010. Kent continues his exploration of scarcity in the publishing domain with today’s post, Anchoring Communities and Trust Markets — Advantages Shift to the Users.

** ADDITIONAL READING **
Kevin Kelly, Free Kindle This November, The Technium, 2/25/2011
Chris Taylor, Introducing Zite, the iPad’s Smartest Magazine Yet, Mashable, 3/09/2011
Jenn Webb, Getting your book in front of 160 million users, O’Reilly Radar, 4/15/2011

The future of information … libraries how will you respond?

RP — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:00:49 +0000

Today at Library Journal‘s virtual summit, eBooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point, I’ll address the question posed by our moderator: “If libraries build the perfect ebook collection, will the patrons come?” My response is one of the unspeakables I wrote about last week. In this instance, it’s the notion that “The Collection” goes away in an eContent world.

Slides from a recent presentation by Gautam Godhwani, CEO and Co-Founder of Simply Hired, help illustrate this point. They articulate a widely shared view that industry executives are building their strategies around: today you go to the information, tomorrow the information goes to you.

Information will be conveniently and affordably available and it will go to the user. We see glimpses of this now and companies around the world are designing and building better ways to do it every day.

Here’s the future of information, libraries how will you respond?

Libraries can help bring back authoritative sources

RP — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:00:10 +0000

It wasn’t so long ago that a young person’s formal introduction to research and authoritative sources was a teacher or librarian pointing to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the sum of human knowledge. Or the majority of American adults relied on Walter Cronkite to tell them “the way it was” for a given day. Or information about money came from the banker, disease from the doctor, war and education from the government.

These were the norms I was born into and since then a consensus developed that we used to invest authority in too few sources. It’s true—but my, how the pendulum has swung the other way! I’d argue that the prevailing norms have severely disrupted our ability to identify authoritative sources. The guidelines are still reasonable but the content has been subverted.

Standards for even our best journalism privilege speed over accuracy. A significant portion of the scientific and medical knowledge we create is subsidized, sponsored or ghostwritten by industry.¹ And digital technology has enabled the worst excesses of the academy, bloating scholarly publications with dross. It’s not all bad, of course, but there sure is a lot of garbage floating around the good material.

I’ve read many times that librarians know how to find the most authoritative sources. Based on my experience & observations, that claim is wearing thin. In the academic realm, I think it’s truer that librarians know how to use their databases and trust (perhaps too readily) that the information they contain is authoritative. Of public librarians, I’d say many, many are overwhelmed and not any more equipped to sort and sift information than an average intelligent patron.

It’s a law of nature that equilibrium will be reached. I see a great opportunity for libraries to influence and expedite this process. (What a rich topic this is, and how I’d love to collaborate with folks within the library community to craft a manifesto.) For now, I’ll offer some advice and questions for libraries that might help get the ball rolling.

Set a high standard for locating yourself and establishing your authority

Library bloggers: does your blog have an ‘About’ page and what does it say? Does it substantively list your education, experience and interests or does it say something like “techo-geek, dreamer, student of the universe…”?

Public libraries: does your website have an ‘About’ page that consisely describes the institution’s governance & funding, demographics and history? Does it include bios and photos of the library’s managment staff?

Library researchers, consultants and event organizers: how do you select and describe your experts? Are they the most authoritative sources on a given topic? And how do you present their credentials? Do you reference their accomplishments or create bios like this one from a recently published library association report? “[Name] is an inspiring and creative library leader. She knows every type of library, from the inside out. What makes [Name] special is the torch she carries to understand and speak about the future of libraries. After all, she is a card-carrying member of the Association of Professional Futurists.” Would you trust a medical report or financial prospectus based on a bio like this or would you look for something more substantive?

Refer only the most authoritative sources

Library bloggers: are the technology primers, reviews and predictions you author the most authoritative sources on the topic, or can you identify and contextualize others? Do your blogroll and blog posts point to the best info sources or do you ‘keep things in the family’ by referring primarily to other library blogs and associations? Do you properly cite references in your writing?

Public libraries: have you researched the sources listed on your website’s pathfinder pages to find the best and most authoritative resources? Does the page include a “one-sheet” with a description of the process and criteria you used to make the assessment? Do you continually update the source list?

Library researchers, consultants and event organizers: do you reach out to the most authoritative sources to address your topic or rely heavily on folks within the library community whether or not they’re the leading experts?

¹Interview With a Ghost (Writer) describes how this takes place in the medical literature.

How it feels to voice the unspeakable

RP — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:00:07 +0000

On September 29th, I’ll be a panelist at Library Journal‘s virtual summit, eBooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point.

My participation so far suggests it will be a provocative, content-rich program offered in a new way, at a rock-bottom price—which is so important with the need for communication within the library profession so high and training/travel budgets so low. The proceedings will be recorded and available to registrants for a few months, so for the cost of a hardcover book, ($30 for individual, $60 for site access) libraries will get tons of information in a format they can refer back to after the event.

But … moving on to the unspeakable …

My job puts me at the heart of many information technology developments,¹ though before receiving LJ’s summit invitation I hadn’t thought all that much about eBooks and libraries. (Perhaps it felt too much like work.) After researching and reflecting awhile, my conclusion is that libraries will not enjoy the same success with eBooks as they’ve had with print books; it’s an entirely different domain with entirely different dynamics.

Library Journal staff and our panel have done some advance work before the conference and it’s given me a taste of what it will feel like to deliver this assessment. So far it has felt really crappy. Had me totally bummed out the other day, in fact. I coped by reminding myself I could be wrong. I also slipped into resignation, thinking “whatever is going to happen will happen no matter what I say or do“. Sitting with these difficult feelings and observing the way my mind subconsciously sought consolation gave me empathy for all the people whose livelihoods and professional/social networks depend on the existing library ecosystem.

Our library dilemma is really, really hard for everyone carrying water, in whatever way we carry it. As my advocacy work has spread beyond my local area, I’ve been thinking more about my role in all this. Perhaps the water I carry is to voice things others cannot say. Perhaps it’s to articulate the many ways (here and here, for example) that libraries matter. It may also be to offer ideas and catalyze discussions about how our libraries can play as vital a role in this age of info abundance as they did in the years when information was scarce.

So yeah, I was a pretty gloomy patron last Friday. Fortunately, a good night’s sleep helped refresh my perspective and reorient me toward opportunties for our public libraries. Tomorrow I’ll offer another example of a 21st century library service the public needs and would support while Google, Amazon, Apple and other well-organized stakeholders duke it out in the eBook domain. Hope you check back for it.

¹I’ve held various roles in the technology field since its widespread emergence in the late 1970s. For the past four years I’ve been employed as a technical project manager by a prominent publisher. Most of my time these days is spent as the PM and SysAdmin for a physician community website, though I’m also working on iPhone and iPad initiatives as well. The cool thing about my job is that I’m in the middle of everything from conception, to prototyping & implementation through to support. I work with product development, technologists, operations, marketing and sales, and the executives who demand tangible contributions to the mission and the margin. I also sometimes work directly with customers, which is really illuminating.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

RP — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:00:37 +0000

Click to Listen¹
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
By Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

¹The audio source was not attributed well, though I believe it is the author reading in Dylan Thomas:The Caedmon CD Collection

The decline of independent pharmacies

RP — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 11:00:09 +0000

Independent pharmacies helped form the landscape of my youth and early adulthood. Each community had one, usually near the center of town. In addition to health products, most offered a good selection of newspapers, magazines and greeting cards. A wide assortment of candy was a staple and some even had a soda counter with light refreshments. These businesses employed people from the area whose task-oriented jobs were to manage materials and service customers. The pharmacists were generally well-educated and a bit reticent, preferring the pace, intimacy and independence of a local pharmacy to working in a hospital. Their remedies included medications and good advice about your ailments, sympathy cards and compassion for your losses, and a range of antacids to reduce the indigestion of spicy food and local politics. Pharmacies were more than dispensaries, they were community spaces.

Despite providing necessary services and clear value to their communities, independent pharmacies have all but disappeared in my region (Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire). Nationally, there are nearly 45% fewer today than there were in the 1980s¹ and this decline has occurred amidst an explosion in pharmaceutical sales. People have simply adopted other ways to meet their needs. They fill their prescriptions by mail. They get health information via the internet. They get refreshments at the drive-thru. And they purchase goods from retail giants that offer all the products independent pharmacies do, and more.

A thousand cuts versus a single blow drained the viability from these community fixtures. Across the nation, community by community, independent pharmacies have struggled and closed. As I said, they’re pretty much gone where I live. Although a few news outlets connected the dots along the way, the closings were viewed as local matters. I remember people used to talk about them (“Hey, have you heard McCarthy’s Pharmacy over in Shrewsbury is closing?“) but the change occurred so steadily over so many years that people stopped talking about it. After a while there just wasn’t anything left to say.

¹Sarah Moses, “New independent pharmacy in Lyncourt fills need for personal touch“, The Post-Standard, January 31, 2010.

Thinking ’bout library professionalism

RP — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:00:55 +0000

If asked to name the hottest topic in the library world, I’d say “professional stature”. This impression is based on the number of articles in library blogs and professional publications that try to dispel negative stereotypes or forthrightly question librarians’ professional standing.

Andy Woodworth of the Burlington County Library System addressed both quite recently. In a guest post on Will Manley’s blog, he asked his colleagues “How do you feel about the Librarian image?” On his own blog he writes in The Master’s Degree Misperception: “It is a disservice to the education, to the degree, and to the profession when the bulk of a librarian’s daily tasks could be performed by someone with a GED.” Both essays generated a cascade of comments, as these posts always seem to, and reveal how frustrated and beleaguered many public library employees feel.

Kudos to Andy for saying what many observe: the ceiling is low in terms of the services most public libraries provide and professional opportunity they can offer to employees. This is a significant structural problem that will accrue to their demise as much as technological disruption or tight funding. We’ve got to raise the ceiling — not to save libraries, but because there are so many things our citizens and communities need that the marketplace does not provide (and librarians are well-trained and positioned to provide). I’ve offered a number of ideas and have more to share.

The sky is the limit. Digital technology has made so much possible and based on the people I met at the Reference Renaissance conference last month, I believe we have an incredible untapped labor pool in our nation’s librarians. It’s time to tap into it.

It’s unlikely these professionals will be adequately leveraged within the current ecosystem. If our public libraries have remained impervious to substantive change up to this point, what will it take to budge them? I’ve been pushing a National Public Library Corporation to address funding, deliver better content & services and provide increased employment and upward mobility for the library profession. Weigh in. Can you get behind an NPL? If not, can you think of ways to get this stone to roll?

Additional reading:
1. A recent blog post on employment outlook from the front lines.
2. ALA, Planning for 2015: The Recent History and Future Supply of Librarians, June 2009

On getting patrons to use the databases

RP — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:00:11 +0000

How do we get patrons to use the databases? We spend a lot of money on them and no one uses them.

This question from a public librarian during one of the Reference Renaissance forums intrigued me. My first reaction was to wonder why a library would continually subscribe to resources patrons aren’t using and my second was to ponder why the databases aren’t being used.

Why do libraries subscribe to databases with low utilization?

Might it be that:

this is one of those basic, functional things we seldom question (i.e. databases are part of the collection and collection management is a core library function);
the databases come as part of a consortium membership or bundled with other resources, thereby obscuring their costs and making it easier to take them than leave them;
other libraries in the area have them and yours doesn’t want to be the first to go without?

The time for bold library action is upon us, so for all resources libraries know (or strongly believe) are not being used, I say: just drop ‘em. Don’t do a survey or ask broad permission, just drop ‘em. Here’s why:

Seeking affirmation and permission generally reinforces the status quo regardless of how costly or unproductive it is. Asking forgiveness rather than permission is an effective change management tactic. I’ve used it throughout my career when faced with outmoded, costly or unproductive elements and found that 99% of the time, the change goes unnoticed.
Hanging on to, or worse yet, promoting resources people don’t find valuable contributes to an impression of library irrelevance. Better to use the funding spent on underutilized databases to deliver programs and services that more people will value.
Subscribing to databases in spite of poor utilization suppresses vendor dialogue about what would make the products more valuable. As long as libraries continue to subscribe to them, there’s no incentive for vendors to make more than cosmetic changes to database products.

If you drop the databases, what about the patrons who did use them? When a user inquires:

Be prepared to advise if the information sought is available on the open internet or another dB; reasonable users will appreciate the reference along with knowing their library is spending public funds wisely.
In cases where there isn’t an alternate source, purchase an individual article for the patron. If the databases are truly underutilized, the annual cost (material and labor) of individual purchases will probably be less than database subscriptions. Particularly in these financially challenging times, I believe reasonable users will appreciate this cost containment.

Why aren’t patrons using the library databases?

I don’t use them because doing so is terribly inefficient. The databases themselves are inefficient; their interfaces and functionality seem 8-10 years behind the times. The brief descriptions on library websites or information on the dB interfaces haven’t helped me determine which database is best suited for a particular type of inquiry and so I may have been looking in the wrong place for information. Unfortunately, the 4-5 times I’ve sought help at a public library haven’t gone well. Staff has simply logged in and rummaged around, seemingly with no more familiarity or expertise than I have. In my estimation, Google or good content websites win hands down on discoverability; once I’ve identified a resource, I go through the tedious process of retrieving information from a library database as a last resort if it isn’t freely available elsewhere.

During the forum, the topic of usability arose in response to the public librarian’s question. Panelist Jamie Larue, Director of Colorado’s Douglas Public Library, briefly gave straightforward examples of how the databases could be organized much better. And following the forum, one of the librarians I was chatting with ‘went off’ a bit about their deficits and listed a half-dozen serious usability problems. So I’m not the only one who grades these databases as “needs improvement”.

Is database usage low at your public library? Do you have users that view the library databases as a sub-par resource of last resort? If so, what can be done about it?