“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” ~Pogo

A few folks at MPOW were recently looking to book meeting rooms for a recruiting tour of the area. I suggested they contact the local public libraries in the cities they were planning to visit.

Now, I just came from working at the regional consortium, so I’m pretty familiar with the public libraries in the region. I’m also pretty familiar with the library directors. So it came as no real surprise when the person booking the rooms reported that reserving the room at one of the public libraries was “a piece of cake!” The other two libraries in question had hoops through which we were unable to jump: the one required that we hold a library card from their library and the other required that we sign a contract. (As we work for a behemoth organization, anything involving a contract also involves legal council and lots of time.)

I can’t say that any of this is a surprise. The first library in question is one of those places you love to visit. The staff are warm and welcoming, the place is open and colorful, and the director is one of those librarians who is innovative and works very hard to make her library the place that it has become.

The other two can be…..well, prickly.

Now, which library do you suppose my new coworkers have a better feeling about? And how many people are they going to tell about their new swell contact in this particular city? And, once they actually visit the place and see how lovely it is, how many people do you suppose they’re going to refer to that library?

And as for the other two….no amount of marketing will erase cranky and difficult.

Beware of the barriers that you’re erecting to customer service. Are they really necessary? Really?

 I recently started following Gen-Y blogs in an effort to understand where this generation is coming from.  I think I have an idea, but I figured learning from the actual demographic would be better than listening to fellow Boomers make assumptions.  There was an interesting post this week on Our American Shelf Life.  One of the blog’s contributors visited the Boston Public Library and was confronted by the dual realities of her own impatience and the non-immediacy of print resources. 

I found this post particularly interesting in part, of course, because of the library connection.  I also was interested in a number of the telling statements the author made.

It may seem odd, but about two weeks ago I went to theBoston Public Library for the first time in the course of my entire college career. I had been there before as a tourist, but this time I was there with an actual academic purpose.

Wow.  Judging from another post about this author, she’s graduating this year.  It took until her senior year of college to visit the public library.  We obviously have some work to do in reaching this demographic.

Anyway, she needed specific magazine articles for her thesis, and had researched the library’s collection and had determined they had the issues in question. 

I made my way to the library early on a Wednesday morning. I stood in line for 10 minutes while other people requested what they needed. Then, after making my request, I waited another 20 minutes for them to find my magazines. When they came back with the wrong volumes, I waited another 15 minutes for them to find the right ones. I waited for almost an hour! You have to understand, an hour during finals is like an eternity! I could’ve used that hour to sleep, to study for something else, take a nice long shower, you name it, I could’ve been doing that.

It’s unfortunate that it took so long to get the materials she needed - and I wonder why?  I’ve never been to the Boston Public Library and I assume it’s behemoth, so that might be the problem right there, if remote storage is really, well, remote.  She continues (emphasis mine):

Instead I was sitting there, at the Boston Public Library, waiting for someone to bring me the materials I needed from the basement. I couldn’t help but think that if only advertising content was available online like regular magazine content was I wouldn’t be sitting there wasting my precious time. It was then that I realized that as a digital native, I had become accustomed to having any information I wanted a click away and it never took longer than five seconds.

As a digital native the concept of waiting for information is quite foreign to me. Even more foreign, is the concept of having to move myself away from my own computer to get it. As long as I have access to the Internet practically everything is at the tip of my fingers, literally. I guess that’s why the Internet is so convenient and why I have become so impatient.

There’s the crux of the matter.  Back when I was in college (cue old woman in her porch rocker) the idea that you would have to wait a few minutes to retrieve information from the library was normal operating procedure.  You planned extra time in your library visits because you assumed that it would take a bit of time.  And to some extent, the time you spent in the library was in itself enjoyable because of the search.  Wandering through the stacks was half the fun, hoping for that serendipitous discovery that would make your research paper sing.  It’s sad that students today don’t have that same experience.

I’m not sure how to address this issue.  We have a new generation for whom instant is the norm: instant news, instant information, instant communication.  The idea that retrieving information might take a few minutes is something that this generation doesn’t completely understand because it’s something they’ve rarely experienced. 

The reality of storage of materials in a large library is that sometimes getting the stuff takes some time.  So how do we prepare the students/patrons for that fact?  And that it’s OK that it takes a bit of time? 

The folks at the Orange County Library System have done it again. I love these guys; they’re always finding ways to draw people into their web page. You may remember a while back when they created a program that allowed the kids in Florida to build their own snowman.

Now, enter Citricon, Library Defender. It’s not available until May 15th, but I can’t wait to see what they’re developed now!

H/T The Shifted Librarian.

Superturbo alerted me to this wonderful story today:

Frustration for authors as students hog British Library reading rooms

Oh, heavens. Surely not that. Students hogging reading rooms? What is the world coming to? </sarcasm>

Although there are 1,480 seats in the library, the author Christopher Hawtree was last week forced to perch on a windowsill while the historians Lady Antonia Fraser and Claire Tomalin have swapped horror stories of interminable queues. Library users complain that the line to enter the new building in St Pancras, central London, has recently been extending across its enormous courtyard.

Lines of people waiting to get into the library. How fabulous. However, some don’t agree:

Of the long queues she [Tomalin] said: “It is absurd. It’s access gone mad. Access has many good points, but making the British Library, which was for specialist readers, into something for general readers seems to me terrible.”

They’re letting the peasants in! Alert the authorities! Good God, how obnoxious.

The article ends with comments from the library itself, rather than cranky patrons who feel their unofficial social club has been usurped (emphasis mine):

The British Library does not deny that there is overcrowding. It has even produced leaflets listing other recommended libraries. But Phil Spence, its director of operations and services, said: “There are currently no plans to restrict the numbers of users.” (Way to go, Phil. You tell ‘em.)

He added: “We understand that busy periods can be frustrating for readers, but we are dedicated to delivering excellent services and carefully managing the increase in reader numbers during vacation periods.”

He confirmed that the library’s directors received performance bonuses depending on the number of visits.

Good for you, British Library. We should all have such problems.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

To tamp down the noise level in their libraries, some colleges are considering installing a warning system that looks like a traffic signal. Called the Deluxe Yacker Tracker, the device flashes a yellow light to indicate when the noise exceeds a certain level. When it exceeds the level by at least 15 decibels, the red light illuminates and a siren can go off, too.

As the author of this little snippet comments,

What ever happened to just approaching students and telling them to keep it down?—-Andrea L. Foster

Amen, sister.

The New York Zoos and Aquarium have a delightful interactive tool online that allows you to Build Your Wild Self.  It’s great fun and educational, too!  Here’s one version of my wild self:

Those are reindeer antlers, a penguin bottom, polar bear ears, and wings and tail from a lesser bird of paradise.  The final version of yourself explains all of these parts.  (I found out, for example, that my penguin legs do have knees - you just can’t see them for the feathers.) Try it yourself….and bring a kid along!

The subject of Internet porn and the realization that people are able to access hideous stuff on public access computers in libraries has reared it ugly head yet again.  An editorial in the Dallas Morning News takes libraries to task for their handling of the situation, and I have to admit I rather agree with what the writer has to say.

Let’s review: You cannot eat your sack lunch inside the Dallas Public Library, because that would be messy and distracting. If, however, you wish to view an Internet site depicting “merciless scenes of raw brutal domination,” that’s your business.

The city wants to devote taxpayer scratch to a pull-’em-up billboard campaign, lest anyone be subjected to the unsightly upper portion of somebody’s underpants. But if you want to park next to a schoolkid working on a homework project and use a city-owned computer to slobber over images of “unleashed sexual terror,” go right ahead.

Well, yes.  It doesn’t make much sense that we’re vigilantly banning soft drinks, but not hard porn.  She continues:

Librarians might argue that it’s not their job to be content cops, to decide what patrons can and can’t see.

But they already police content when they decide not to order Hustler for the periodicals department. Libraries make decisions about what they will and won’t offer every day.

Yup.  Collection Development is censorship, if you choose to look at it that way.  The reality is, we make choices all the time about the appropriate content for our respective libraries.  Leaving something out of the mix can be viewed as censorship, or it can be viewed as proper collection management.

Librarians are familiar, no doubt, with being caught in the vise of competing interests. A few years ago, one small Denton County town installed filters on library computers at city leaders’ behest.

A handful of patrons complained that this violated their rights, so the library unplugged Internet access completely. Then the state commission that funds libraries warned that, unless the Internet was restored, the library would lose state support.

Oh, geez.  It’s that kind of knee-jerk reaction that does no one good.  It rather reminds me of a childhood story: one day, driving around will all five of us kids in the station wagon, two of my brothers got to squabbling.  Tommy announced to my mother that, “Mo-om, John’s looking out my window!”  Mom, no doubt wanting quiet more than justice, declared, “No one look out anyone else’s window!!”   She’s now mortified that she actually said something like that, but I think it’s hilarious - and illustrative of the sorts of reactions we have when we’re stressed and sick of hearing about/dealing with a problem.  Someone’s looking at porn on the computers?  FINE.  NO ONE CAN ACCESS THE INTERNET EVER AGAIN.  Ahem.

It’s an idiotic situation – everybody making so much noise, while the librarians themselves are afraid to make a judgment call.

But for crying out loud, can somebody please muster the coconuts to say that civility and decency have value, that people who want to wallow in filth don’t have the right to do it in a public place and on the public dime?

I’d sign that petition.  My take on the situation has always been this:  while it may be your constitutional right to view this stuff, viewing it on a public access computer in a public place is about as appropriate as walking in the front door of the library and dropping your pants.  Get over yourself and CUT IT OUT.

The writer concludes:

I understand there are no ideal solutions here. Dallas libraries can and do warn patrons that they’re violating policy. Maybe the policy needs to be spelled out a little more plainly.

Filters aren’t ideal. Requiring librarians to pace around like hall monitors and check on what patrons are viewing isn’t ideal. Reserving a few unfiltered computers for adult users only isn’t ideal.

But doing nothing is worse than not ideal. It’s unconscionable. The city needs to pick one of those less-than-perfect options and live with it.

It’s amazing we’re still dealing with this nonsense.   Can we just decide that this is not appropriate viewing material for a public library and move on with more important stuff?

There is a wonderful opinion piece in the London Times that talks about the treasures of the Oxford Bodleian Library.  The author starts with a bit of historical context, and then goes on to describe how things have changed:

King Charles I once asked the chief librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford if he could borrow a book. He was told, politely, to get lost. A few years later, as the wheel of history turned, Oliver Cromwell also wondered if he might take a book away from the great collection, to read it at his leisure. He received exactly the same answer.

Roundhead or cavalier, king or commoner, no one could take a book out of the library. Its books were not for lending, but for consulting. The library was a temple of learning, where scholars might come to read and learn. The books stayed put.

But no longer. Today I can select any one of hundreds of thousands of digitised books from the Bodleian, including some of its rarest treasures, and read them on a computer screen. I can do this when the library is closed. I can do it without authorisation. I can do it from Antarctica, so long as I have an internet link.

The Bodleian is one of the libraries being digitized by Google, and the author couldn’t be happier.  His opinion is that the availability of these resources online will create a resurgence of interest in libraries.  Most of the opinions I’ve read up until now tend to lean the opposite direction - that the online resources will make libraries obsolete.  I rather like this version better.

Through the internet, the library doors are suddenly thrown open to the widest possible readership, genuinely fulfilling Thomas Bodley’s aim to make collected books “available to the whole republic of the learned”.

So far from driving readers from libraries and on to the internet, digital collections are likely to have the reverse effect. Just as televised football matches revitalised live football, so the chance to see and sample great literature on the web will encourage more people to go in search of the real thing.

Interesting.  He goes on:

Libraries die when people forget what is in them: they thrive when we are reminded of their riches, and so far from eroding our physical contact with ancient books, the great online library currently amassing its collection will surely revive that relationship.

There is still no tactile pleasure to compare with opening an old book: the gust of vellum and parchment, the knowledge of countless eyes tracing the page before you, the marginalia, the chance to hold some knowledge in your hand.

The internet will never replicate that experience (just as no technology has been able to supplant the paper book, of which we are reading more than ever), but it can help, immeasurably, to lead us to it.

From his mouth to God’s ears, as my grandmother would say.  What a refreshing take on the digitization of library materials!  Perhaps, instead of fearing this new technology, we should embrace it as a chance to show off the wonders available at libraries.

I’ve been hearing for a while now about the One Laptop Per Child program, wherein you purchase a laptop for a child in a developing country for a very low price. They now have the Give One Get One program, where you can get one for yourself and one for the aforementioned child.

Sounds good on the surface, but I have a few questions.

If these countries are so underdeveloped, how is it that they have internet access? Or electricity, for that matter? I mean, there are parts of Minnesota where internet access is a bit sketchy, much less parts of sub-Saharan Africa. I’ve been at two conferences recently where the number of people accessing the internet has crashed their servers. These folks in these underdeveloped countries are going to have a better time of it? (If so, let’s get their internet providers over here, pronto.)

If they don’t have internet access…..then why a laptop? There’s the cool factor, of course. But how about good teachers and a boatload of notebooks and pencils?

I’m seeing the same trends in the public schools in this country, where one bond question after another is being voted upon by communities who are being told that their children aren’t learning because their buildings are shabby. Uhmmm…..it’s really nice to have new, spiffy stuff but it really has little to do with learning. As the product of less-than-pristine old Catholic schools, my education was just fine, thanks. Better than fine, in fact.

This is not too far from the current hoo-ha in the library world over all things 2.0. Granted, a lot of the technological toys associated with 2.0 are cool and may give your library an edge with your patrons. But the reality is that good old-fashioned library customer service and a terrific collection go a lot farther to endear your patrons than IM reference.

Let’s all take a deep breath and focus on why we’re here and what we’re doing….and try not to get so sidetracked by the shiny things.

Trainer, part two.

In order to provide technology training, you do not need to know everything there is about technology! Everyone has pockets of what they know.

If you don’t have a computer lab, how to do technology training? Can offer classes before the library opens for the day. Technology training doesn’t always need to be hands-on. Sometimes people need the awareness of what’s there. Can do a ten-minute presentation and then turn them loose on the computers to try it themselves. Letting people loose to learn and explore by themselves is much messier, but tends to be the most effective. People don’t learn by doing exactly what you do - let them try on their own.

Innovative library technology training programs:
For patrons: Reading Public Library, Reading, Massachusetts. “Geek out, don’t freak out! - Digital Cameras” Patrons bring their own digital cameras to the class and they figure it out together. There tended to be a lot of interaction within the class, with students helping each other.

Also have a program called Netguides, where patrons can sign up for a one-on-one training session. The netguides are students trained at the library to provide patrons with one-on-one techology answers and personalized instruction.

For staff: Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Learning 2.0 and the 23 Things. 23 things that you can do on the web to expand your knowledge of the Internet. Every staff member who completed the program will recieve an MP3 player, and were entered into a drawing for a laptop.

Discussions of different problematic training scenarios and possible solutions.

The session wrapped up with a tour of five online sites for library technology trainers: Webjunction, Library Instruction Wiki,
Infopeople, CLENE, and Librarians with Class.

Originally posted on SELCO Librarian.