Comments on: Experience Economy Goes by Many Names

By: Random alchemy update « Library Alchemy

Random alchemy update « Library Alchemy — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:55:39 +0000

[...] a recent post on the experience economy, David Lee King provides notes on a presentation by Jane McGonigal. I’ll reproduce the money [...]

By: Aaron’s Notes on Spool’s Talk | David Lee King

Aaron’s Notes on Spool’s Talk | David Lee King — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:46:59 +0000

[...] And the best tidbit, which relates to my post from yesterday: [...]

By: davidleeking

davidleeking — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:35:19 +0000

Agreed. One thing megachurches have that libraries don’t have automatically are transformative experiences. At least, for the people attending church, they expect to be transformed – that’s sort of the goal.

Libraries? We CAN be that type of place, I think – improving one’s life, getting a job, learning a new skill,e ven reading an amazing novel can all be transformative.

The hard part for libraries is pointing those opportunities out for people – that takes nasty words like pr and marketing and doing WAY more than the reference interview… all things we don’t do well.

By: Stephen Michael Kellat

Stephen Michael Kellat — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:43:50 +0000

It has been a busy yet productive day. Although I should be in bed already, I’ll leave a couple thoughts to start things off. Bear in mind that these are tentative thoughts and not as complete as they might be otherwise.

Enchantment is a useful thing. From my realm of experience, megachurches provide that easily. I need merely go up to Central Christian Church for one heckuva experience.

From my discussions with Bible scholars and folks like the Chaplain to the Institute at MIT, I have learned that enchantment is not enough. Megachurches enchant big crowds. Within those crowds there is pretty severe turnover and a feeling that there is flash but no substance. The literature regarding megachurches lately seems to be focusing on the question of how to not only have enchantment but also substance. The megachurch experience shows that enchantment gets you in the door but it does not anchor you there.

It is one thing to attract users to a library with enchanting experience. The big problem is keeping them coming back. Temples to knowledge and wisdom might have something to learn from the experiences of the Lord’s temples.