La county librariesaug8-2012
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Public Libraries: Expect More Stephen Abram, M County of Los Angeles Public Libra Los Angeles, August 9, 20
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Transcript of La county librariesaug8-2012
Public Libraries:Expect More
Stephen Abram, MLSCounty of Los Angeles Public Library
Los Angeles, CAAugust 9, 2012
These slides are available at Stephen’s Lighthouse blog
Change
We Only Get So Many Once-in-a-Lifetime
Chances To Do Great Things
Black & White
Recognize key shifts
News Flash “The Internet and technology have now
progressed to their infancy”
2 parts
Academic Libraries:Central Michigan University
Grand Valley State University
Public Libraries:Clinton Macomb Public Library
Howell District LibraryKent District Library
Portage District Library
Michigan Outcomes: How Do Libraries Tell Stories?
• Goals?• Who are your potential partners and potential
funders? (Who, What, Where, Why, When and How to reach them?)
• GO AFTER STORIES!• Get the whole story (permissions)• Test your Story (brief, succinct, complete,
upbeat, appropriate, personable, actionable)• Get your story out!
Step-by-Step Guide To Storytelling
Facebook.com/CanadianOutcomes
The PastBuilding Libraries and Collections
The PresentLetting People Know About
Them
The FutureLetting People
Know What We Can Do For Them
The Evolution of Libraries
It’s All About Numbers It’s All About Marketing It’s All About Outcomes
So how must library strategies change?
Conclusions Up Front
1. Prioritize Programs not Collections2. Drive ‘Reference’ with Data and Know Your Top
Questions3. Balance of Physical and Virtual4. Invest Time in Demographics5. Put Technological Tools in Context6. Build Recreational Reading Away From Effort and
Get Real About the eBook Issue7. Homework: Deal With It8. Transliteracy is a Key Opportunity9. Partnerships are about everything
Specific Challenges
1. Setting Priorities and Making Sacrifices2. Innovation Culture, Pilots and Diffusion3. Program Hiatuses, Scalability4. Backroom and Front Room Balance5. Alignment with Goals6. Measuring the Right Stuff7. Organizational Structure and Governance8. Investing in HR Development & Cross-training9. Sacred Cows (desks, books, …)10. Promotion, Marketing, Communication, Advocacy
Change can happen very fast
Sensemaking
What is an EXPERIENCE?What is a library experience?
What differentiates a library experience from a transaction?
What differentiates public libraries from Google/Bing?
The Evolution
of Answers
Why do people ask questions?
Is your library experience conceptually organized around answers and programs?
Or collections, technology and buildings?
Why do people ask questions?
Who, What, When, Where How & Why Data – Information – Knowledge - Behavior To Learn or to Know To Acquire Information, Clarify, Tune To Decide, to Solve, to Choose, to Delay To Interview, Delve, Interact, Progress To Entertain or Socialize To Reduce Fear To Help, Aid, Cure, Be a Friend To Win A Bet
What are your top 10-20 questions?What is the service portfolio model
that goes with those?
The Baker’s Dozen: LVA Top 13
1. Health and Wellness / Community Health / Nutrition / Diet / Recovery
2. DIY Do It Yourself Activities and Car Repair 3. Genealogy 4. Test prep (SAT, ACT, occupational tests, etc. etc.) 5. Legal Questions (including family law, divorce, adoption, etc) 6. Hobbies, Games and Gardening 7. Local History 8. Consumer reviews (Choosing a car, appliance, etc.) 9. Homework Help (grade school) 10. Technology Skills (software, hardware, web) 11. Government Programs, Services and Taxation 12. Self-help/personal development 13. Careers (jobs, counselling, etc.) 14. Readers Advisory was 14th
Knitting & Needlecrafts
Arts & Crafts
Television Shows
Gardening
Pets
Music
Traveling, Tourism & Vacations
Exercise, Cycling & Walking
Movies & Film
Computers
Cooking & Recipes
Recreational Reading
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Top 12 Patron Hobbies
Top Hobbies?Top Homework Questions?
Top Travel Destinations?What do you know?
News Flash
News Flash
Tech Shift Happens
Seth Godin on Decisions (June 8, 2011)
o Which of these are getting in the way?o You don't know what to doo You don't know how to do ito You don't have the authority or the resources to do ito You're afraido You believe that money matters mosto Once you figure out what's getting in the way, it's far
easier to find the answer (or decide to work on a different problem).
o Stuck is a state of mind, and it's curable.
What Are Libraries Really For?
• Community• Learning• Discovery & Access• Progress• A welcoming community space• Research (Applied and Theoretical)• Cultural & Knowledge Custody • Economic Impact
What Are Librarians For?
• Expertise• Relationships• Transformation• Professional Service (not servant)• Vision• Leadership• Economic Impact
Columbus, Cook, Magellan and Libraries: Searching for the corners of the earth, the edge of the
oceans and discovering dragons ...
Columbus, Cabot, Cortes
Magellan Columbus Cook
Questions for Libraries Today:
1. Are our priorities right?2. Are learning, research, discovery changing
materially and what is actually changing?3. What is the foundation of future library
success . . . Books? Meh…4. What is the role for librarians in the real
future (that is not an extension of the past)?
Grocery Stores
Grocery Stores
Grocery Stores
Cookbooks, Chefs . . .
Cookbooks, Chefs . . .
Meals
Let’s chat
What is a meal in library end-user or education and learning terms?
The new bibliography and
collection development
KNOWLEDGE PORTALS
KNOWLEDGE,LEARNING,
INFORMATION &RESEARCHCOMMONS
Chefs, counsellors, teachers, magicians
Librarians play a vital role in building the critical connections between
information , knowledge and learning.
Programs
What are the components of a program focus?
What lifts PL’s beyond the foundation?
You have the tools.
Stop Making it So Hard!
Trans-Literacy: Move beyond reading & PC skills Reading literacy Numeracy Critical literacy Social literacy Computer literacy Web literacy Content literacy Written literacy
News literacy Technology literacy Information literacy Media literacy Adaptive literacy Research literacy Academic literacy Reputation, Etc.
Steal This Idea
List of content farms and general spammy user generated content sites:
All Experts (allexperts.com) Answers (answers.com) Answer Bag (answerbag.com) Articles Base (articlesbase.com) Ask (ask.com) Associated Content (associatedcontent.com) BizRate (bizrate.com) Buzle (buzzle.com) Brothersoft (brothersoft.com) Bytes (bytes.com) ChaCha (chacha.com) eFreedom (efreedom.com) eHow (ehow.com) Essortment (essortment.com) Examiner (examiner.com) Expert Village (expertvillage.com) )
Experts Exchange (experts-exchange.com) eZine Articles (ezinearticles.com) Find Articles (findarticles.com) FixYa (fixya.com Helium (helium.com) Hub Pages (hubpages.com) InfoBarrel (infobarrel.com) Livestrong (livestrong.com) Mahalo (mahalo.com) Mail Archive (mail-archive.com) Question Hub (questionhub.com) Squidoo (squidoo.com) Suite101 (suite101.com) Twenga (twenga.com) WiseGeek (wisegeek.com) Wonder How To (wonderhowto.com) Yahoo! Answers (answers.yahoo.com) Xomba (xomba.com)
GOOG
The nasty facts about Google &
Bing and consumer search:
SEO / SMOContent Farms
Advertiser-drivenGeotagging
StrategicAnalytics
What We Never Really Knew Before (US/Canada)
27% of our users are under 18. 59% are female.
29% are college students. 5% are professors and 6% are teachers.
On any given day, 35% of our users are there for the very first time!
Only 29% found the databases via the library website. 59% found what they were looking for on their first search.
72% trusted our content more than Google. But, 81% still use Google.
We often believe a lot
that isn’t true.
Emboldened Librarians hold the key
So how must library strategies change?
Books
What is Changing?
1. Evidence-based Reference Strategies2. Experience-based Portals: The New Commons3. Personal Service on Steroids4. Quality Strategies: Consumer vs. Professional
Search5. Social Networks and Recommendations6. Trans-literacy Strategies7. People-driven Strategies8. Curriculum and Research Agenda9. Service and Programs
Recommendations
Strengthen Your Personal Brand Reposition the Library and Librarian Don’t Tie Yourself directly to Collections or
Physical Space Network with Your Users Socially Measure, Don’t Count Engage in partnerships Know Take Risks
Technology Context
Cloud (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) Laptops and Tablets Mobility / Smartphones Bandwidth (Wired, WiFi, Whitespace) Learning Management Systems Streaming video and audio vs. download HTML5 and Apps – the battle Advertising auction models and ‘product’ New(ish) Players (Amazon, Apple, G, B&N, Uni’s,
states/provinces/nations)
What Changes with Mobile?
Everything and Nothing
What doesn’t change?
The User User needs vs. user context Content (versus format and display) Questions and improving the quality of
questions Creativity and human progress Stability = fossilization
What changes with mobile?
The Ecosystem Communication devices move increasingly
from feature phones to smartphones Personal computing moves to a hybrid
environment of laptops and tablets (plus a few power desktop anchors)
In libraries the dominant mobile task environments are based on answers, communities and e-learning
My Humble Recommendations Pilot and experiment with mobile social
cohorts in the library Clubs Classes (mobile training or extended
learning) Reading cohorts and book clubs Associations Fundraising Meetings Teams (business or sport)
My Humble Recommendations Actively lobby and educate to ensure that
the emerging mobile ecosystem supports the values and principles of librarianship for balance in the rights of end users for use, access, learning and research.
Support vendors and laws to be as agnostic as possible by ensuring that, as afar as possible your services and content offerings support the widest range of devices, formats, browsers, and platforms.
My Humble Recommendations Design for frictionless access using such
opportunities as geo-IP and mobile ready websites
Test everything in all browsers – mobile or not.
Invest in usability research and testing and learn from it and share your learning.
Watch key developments in major publishing spaces – kiddy lit, textbooks, e-learning, fiction, etc.
My Personal Hobby Horses
This is an evolution not a revolution The REAL revolution was the Internet and the
Web. The hybrid ecology is winning in the near term
for operating systems and content formats. This is good since competition drives
innovation. Engage in critical thinking not raw criticism. Be
constructive. Critical thinking is not part of dogma or
religious fervor or fan boy behavior.
My Personal Hobby Horses This is an evolution not a revolution Perfectionism will not move us forward at this
juncture. Really understand the digital divide and
remove your economic and social class blinkers Get over library obsession with statistics and
comprehensiveness. Get excellent at real measurements, sampling
and understanding impact and satisfaction. (Analytics, Foresee, Pew)
My Personal Hobby Horses This is an evolution not a revolution We need to revisit the concept of
preservation, archives, repositories, and conservation.
Check out new publishing models like Flipboard.
Watch for emerging book enhancements and other features that will challenge library metadata, selection policies, and collection development.
‘Reading’ trumps print books . . .
Be More Open to the Users’ Paths - Filtering
What Would You Attempt If You Knew You Would Not
Fail?
The power of libraries
A Third Path
SmellyYellowLiquid
OrSex
Appeal?
Considering the Whole Experience
COMMUNITYIMPACT
Discovery&
Learning
Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLAVP strategic partnerships and markets
Cengage Learning (Gale)Cel: 416-669-4855
[email protected]’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.comFacebook, Pinterest: Stephen Abram
LinkedIn / Plaxo: Stephen AbramTwitter: @sabram
SlideShare: StephenAbram1
