by Christina Stoll, MLS

What is at the Heart of Libraries?

Stephen’s presentation began with this question and then posed other questions to the audience of librarians. Is “just Google it” good enough for our end users when special interests groups with the right amount of money can pay for top searches?  How can the library be at the heart of a community like the fire or police department?

He spoke to our current concept of a book and text and how it’s mutating where in 5 years there will be 100-150 million books online.  The shift is moving in a direction like when we moved from bound periodicals and indices to an article level information economy to one where books move to a chapter and paragraph economy.  The question is will libraries be ready?  Can we handle e-books as the standard medium?  Will libraries be able to adapt from DVD collections to streaming video?  Will library search engines include spoke word as valid information which is quickly being popularized by sites such as YouTube?

The current generation is smarter. They have powerful  brains, but who will teach them to make the most of them and how to use and evaluate information? 

Localization is one of the many secret weapons of a library’s arsenal.  Using your library’s local collection to serve your community’s needs and provide personal service is what libraries have over faceless search engines. Your local staff is the key differentiator from Google.

Yet, how much are you promoting your staff, the experts of your library’s information?  Do you have staff photos on your web site? 

The example that Stephen uses is that of the children’s librarian in town who has kids running up to him or her when out in the community. Does Google get this same kind of personal reaction?  It’s not enough to simply put your library out on the Web, you have to promote your people, your library stars. Otherwise, you are no different than the faceless Google.

Knowledge-Based Economy with a Focus on the End-User’s Experience

Just as in the late 1700s & early 1800s when we were ruled by an industrial economy with scientists and engineers at the forefront; and then in the next century we turned to a financial economy with CPS’s and MBA’s ruling. We are now in a 21st century knowledge based economy where the key players should be educators, social workers and librarians.

Combining this current knowledge-based economy with the different ways people learn, library users are more than just the books they seek when they visit the library.  Library users seek an experience.  How do libraries create an experience- based focus in an emerging knowledge-based economy? How does your web site serve all of the ways your users learn?

Stephen summarizes what libraries are really for:

• Economic Impact: workforce preparedness, industrial attraction, quality of life, libraries add value to a community.
• Equity: digital divide, integrating population growth, generations.
• Student performance impact: studies show that school librarians impact school test scores.
• Competitive advantage, community, learning, interaction
• Social glue:  looking at social technologies such as Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin and their impact on being connected to everyone you’ve ever known. Current generations are remaining connected to the kids they went to grade school with through these means.  What does it mean if the librarian is not part of this?  What does it mean if libraries are not participating in the way the world is currently interacting and sharing? How do we overcome the barriers of being fearful and unknowledgeable about how it works and be able to coach and set privacy within these tools.

What’s our glue that connects libraries to people?

Bricks, Clicks and Tricks: Library as Community Center, Online Presence and its Staff.

What is more important for value-based funding?  Increased circulation statistics or interlibrary loan requests? More web site hits or database usage?  How about your library’s customer satisfaction numbers? 

Others do this: Amazon wants to know what its users buy; Google focuses on what its users want; Facebook targets who I am / who I know.  Do you examine the intentions of your library users?

Stephen suggests 5 things your library can do right now to help you identify your library user’s intentions:

Identify Your Top Reference Questions: Localize your library’s work based on what’s being requested most often by your end users.
Conduct a Signage Audit: How many signs in your library say you can’t do something versus you can do something?

• Turning No into Yes changes the image of your library; e.g, eg. “Cell phones can be used in the lobby” vs. “No cell phone use in the library.”

Get Some Widgets (API): Pre-set search results based on the top questions within your community provide some ease to your staff’s workload.

• Other suggestion for increasing library usage without increasing staff: Encylopedia.com, HighBeam, WorldCat, iPhone applications etc. free from Gale.

Get Jiggy with GIS:

• Update your teen page with information on how to get to the library on a skateboard or bike.
• Within 100 feet you can tell where your requests are coming from.  This information could help your library identify where a branch is needed.  One community who conducted this discovered that the poorest part of its town has the highest number of users.

Go Beyond Statistics:

• What we never knew before can be known through Geo IP and identify  even more about our end users including virtual use by age, gender, geographical location, user experience level, education levels, product use, professions, trust of library, etc.

What is at the Heart of Libraries?

One possible answer that resonates throughout Stephen’s presentation is a library, through the heart, mind, and abilities of its staff, can become the heart of its community as it often has beenin many towns and neighborhoods for years. Given that individuals are asking the questions as well as providing the answers, human nature plans a big part in our behaviors as librarians.  Our behavior changes depending on who is asking the question. 
Consider your own behavior as a librarian if you were approached by a 14 year old inquiring about divorce versus a 35 year old.  Or, how would you go about providing medical information to a senior citizen versus a senior in high school with a class research project?

Reference librarians provide that personal human approach to each end-user interaction. How do we replicate this on a search engine, and turn search results into ‘find’ results within the context of the end user’s life goals?

Success is not about things but about the relationships between users; libraries need to be relevant to our communities.  With a looming future where 150 million online books can be downloaded to a Kindle, how do librarians continue to make a difference and have an impact on the world around us?
How do we align the questions so that reference interviews align with behavioral interactions? How do we craft the responses to recognize users’ individual experience and their learning preference?

If the answer to the heart of libraries is its staff, the challenge then becomes how to continue to make a difference in the future.  If librarians can be connected personally to their end-users and not just a faceless search result, it’s up to the current and future library leaders to focus more on our secret weapons to remain competitive and relevant in the on-going battle of progress.

About the speaker: Stephen Abram is the current Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets at Gale Cengage. He is the past president 2008 of SLA and past president of the Canadian Library Association and the Ontario Library Association. His career includes working as Chief Strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute as well as Publisher–Electronic Information at Thomson. Listed by Library Journal as one of the top 50 people influencing the future of libraries, he has received numerous honors, regularly speaks globally, writes for Library Journal as well as has columns in several other professional journals, and published the book Out Front with Stephen Abram: A Guide for Information Leaders, and blogs at  http://stephenslighthouse.com.

Published April 7, 2010 in vol. 4, iss. 7 [View]