Library 2.0

Some of you might have noticed I’ve been dropping very vague hints on this blog about my library’s website redesign… well, no more vagueness! In fact - how about checking it out for yourselves? Go to webdev.tscpl.org and and see what my web team has been busy creating.

A few asides:

• If something doesn’t work, most likely we are still working on it - we’re mostly done, but it’s still a work-in-progress at this point
• We do our “soft launch” on March 17
• We “go live” officially on March 31

Feel free to check it out, let me know what you like/don’t like, etc! Some things I’m real excited about:

• RSS Everywhere. Think AADL - we are blog-based, for lack of a better term. You can subscribe to the whole site via RSS, or parts and pieces of it (i.e., if you just want to subscribe to the Business & Investments Guide, you can).
• Content is provided by library staff - more on this later, but we consider our Digital Branch to be an actual branch… and our library staff is providing content, answering comments, creating resources, etc.
• We’re trying to be very community focused - and we’re showing that via open commenting on the site, our IM Meebo widget prominently displayed, and via RSS feeds and multimedia (more photos and videos).
• Modern visual design and a new logo for the library

And this is just phase one - we are starting to plan future phases right now! That’s all I can think of at the moment… 2008 should be a wild ride for us!

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Gee whiz. Every now and then, someone decides to share that some new-fangled “library 2.0″ project didn’t work out … and others start claiming “After John Blyberg and others come out and say that library 2.0 didn’t work and neither did tagging, etc., the flood gates open.” Huh?

It might be good to remember two things:

1. If one 2.0 project doesn’t work as expected, that doesn’t mean that “library 2.0 didn’t work” as a whole.
2. Social 2.0 projects require “Elvis” to leave the building.

Here’s what I mean. For #1 above, realize this - not every blog, wiki, IM reference service, Second Life project, or podcast that your library creates will be a blazing success. Some will be dismal failures. And that’s great! Why? Because you learned something, and you can take that knowledge and move on to the next project.

John Blyberg might be correct when he says “SOPAC was by-and-large a success, but its use of user-contributed tags is a failure.” Why does he think it was a failure? Because it’s not used by that library’s community. He’s not saying tagging in catalogs is bad in general (at least, I don’t think he’s saying that). He’s saying that a particular library’s 2.0-ish experiment wasn’t successful (though I’m sure they learned something about building stuff - that’s always a good thing). Make sure to read the comments to that post - he goes on to say that larger-scale tagging that can be added to catalogs (i.e., LibraryThing for Libraries) is much more useful than the SOPAC’s localized version.

How about #2? Who’s this Elvis guy? Elvis is the librarian - has he left the building? Or is he still sitting behind the oak reference desk, waiting for patrons to visit? You cannot participate if you haven’t “left the building.” What does it take for librarians to be successful in the digital space? Well… we have to go there. Not just randomly peek in once in awhile, but actually be present and active in that space.

Here’s a lame example - lots of people read my blog. It’s taken four years for that to happen (well, and me not spewing forth stupidity too often - that also helps) - four years of me thinking, writing, reading, and participating on other librarian blogs. That was active participation rather than passive flirting on the 2.0 block.

When you start hanging out in a new social circle, what’s it take to be respected there? You have to actually DO some things, like hang out with them, share yourself with them, build them up, be authentic, etc - you have to spend a significant amount of time just “being” in that social circle in order to be accepted by the new group. Social networking tools are the same - because we’re NOT DEALING WITH TECHNOLOGY. We’re dealing with people.

If you want people to comment on your library’s blog post, to friend your MySpace page, or to watch your YouTube videos… you have to actually tell your community they exist. here are some examples:

“No one subscribes to our RSS feeds!” Well - have you told them what RSS is and what they can do with it?

“No one watches our YouTube videos on bibliographic instruction!” Well… have you embedded the video on your website (I’ve seen some libraries that don’t do this)? Have you introduced them to your videos at all? Are your videos extremely boring?

Have you left your library building to visit community groups to introduce them to your new offerings? Have you asked your community how they want to participate?

The title to this post is “Has Elvis Left the Building?” Has he?

Tagged as: library2.0, Social Networking, web2.0

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From the comments on this post:

“… what happens to the physical library? If Topeka Public mails the holds to patrons and they can drop the returned item at boxes, and the patrons need not come to the physical library… I’m the systems librarian at the Academy Library Budapest and am alarmed by the declining clientele. What still draws them to the library is the line of subscribed databases which are unavailable outside of the library. What can we offer to repopulate the spaces, apart from the complementary agora-like events like occasional exhibitions, book presentations and invited lecturers-speakers?”

Great question, and a great way to end the year… or start the new year, depending on when you read this. So - readers, what do you think? How can we get people into the physical library?

Here’s my shot at it - we need to run the library a bit more like a business, and simply offer people something they want (like a good or product that a business offers to a customer). But what do we offer them? Here’s a great example from the ReadWriteWeb:

“Imagine a future when you go to the library with a 5 minute video you’ve just made about last night’s Presidential debates and that librarian says to you:

‘You should upload it to YouTube and tag it with these four tags - two broad and two more specific to existing communities of interest on YouTube and the topic of your video. Then you should embed that video in a blog post along with some text introducing it and linking to some of your favorite posts by other people who have also written today about the Presidential debates. Make sure to send trackbacks to those posts!’

‘Now, I think this is a particularly good video on the topic, so if you’re interested I will vote for it on StumbleUpon (as a sexy librarian I have a very powerful account there) and give it a good summary explanation. Any of those are steps you can take that will make your work all the easier for people to discover.’ “

So again - readers? What do you think? Why should our customers still visit the physical library, and how do we get them to do it?

And… Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!

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Just saw this on Seth Godin’s blog today, and thought I’d pass it along. Go read it - but here’s the jist:

• Seth writes about self-promotion
• He explains that 37 Signals doesn’t do self-promotion, because they’re “promoting useful ideas. They’re promoting tactics or products that actually benefit the person they’re reaching out to.”

Then he sums it up by saying “that’s because they’re doing you-promotion, not me-promotion.”

And that made me think - which type of promotion do libraries do? When we want people to know about our databases for example - do we do me-promotion (i.e., “we have a new business database”) or do we do you-promotion (i.e., “we have a way for your new business to gather B2B leads…. in this new database at the library.”)?

I’m not even sure those are good examples of me- and you-promotion… but - do you get this idea? In our advertising, in our writing, in our video making (for those libraries doing video) - are you simply sharing what you have? Or are you emphasizing the benefit to the customer? Showing the customer what our content, our expertise, our form of community will do for them?

That has the potential TO BE HUGE.

Thoughts?

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Wow - there have been lots of comments on the MeeboMe widget. Great! Some other libraries are trying it out - check the comments on my original post and on Jenny Levine’s post titled Mashing on the Library, Part I to find them. Others have been emailing me, asking for details.

Now, let’s take this one further - where else can you embed this thing? For example, Edward had a great idea (left it in my comments). He said “Very cool. I think I might go ahead and add this to our log-in failed page for EzProxy.” Great idea, Edward!

And that made me think… I’ll bet there are other good places to embed something like this. For example, my library’s looking into other places to drop it in the catalog, like on the search results page (idea swiped from Paul Pival).

Think about it like this - where do your patrons get hung up? What stops them… confuses them… makes them click away? Maybe that’s a good place to embed a MeeboMe widget (or something similar). Don’t think “well, I put a link to a Help file there, so that’s good enough.” Come on - do YOU click that Help link? That’s like removing the Information Desk and replacing it with a bin of tipsheets on using the Dewey Decimal System!

Finally, a couple of commenters have mentioned being wary of embedding an IM widget in the catalog because it’s not a 24/7 service. My thoughts:

• Well… it CAN be a 24/7 service, if you’re willing to not sleep
• I think the focus is off - you’re concerned with what is most likely a very small minority of patrons searching the catalog at 2am. Instead, focus on helping the majority of your patrons… and add text stating your IM hours.
• Most 24/7 virtual chat reference services (the only thing I can think of providing 24/7 live help) have people in other libraries answering those 2 am questions… do you really want someone at another library answering a question about YOUR library catalog? Maybe yes, maybe no…

Are you planning to embed a meeboMe widget in your catalog? Leave a comment!

Tagged as: Catalog, ILS, IM, meebo, meebome, OPAC

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Update: I’m getting some questions on how we did this, so… We have a Horizon system - look for the searchinput.xsl page in your XSL folder. Then find the appropriate chunk of code where the “nothing found” message and table appears, and add the meebome widget there.

And if you have more questions, feel free to email me (davidleeking at gmail dot com) - and I’ll put you in touch with our Web Administrator.

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I was reading Helene’s post about online chat, and remembered I had wanted to try something in my library’s catalog… and we just went live with it.

What did we do? We added a Meebo widget to unsuccessful keyword searches in our library catalog. This way, when a customer searches our catalog and doesn’t find anything, they can contact us via IM and ask for help (we also display our phone number if they want to call).

SO - should be interesting to see what we get from this (since we just turned it on maybe 15 minutes ago). If nothing else, it’s a solid attempt at “humanizing” the OPAC!

Tagged as: Catalog, ILS, IM, meebo, OPAC

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Just a small aside… but I’ve been doing real live work the last two days using facebook (go friend me - David Lee King at facebook)!

Michael Porter, my writing buddy, is to blame for some of it… We write the Internet Spotlight column in Public Libraries Magazine together, and he posted a question to his facebook friends. The plan is to incorporate some of those responses, some he’d gotten via email, etc into a cool article [status: article almost done, and IS cool].

So part of the work was copying/pasting quotes and contacting the quotees to get job titles, etc. Whew!

But that has spawned a whole host of facebook emailing back and forth, getting new information, thinking “out loud” via facebook email about library innovation in other areas, and even making a few new facebook friends.

So - real live library work in facebook. It can be done! Anyone else want to pony up? How do you use facebook to do actual work (or do you?).

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Lately, I’ve been hearing librarians say some interesting things about incorporating emerging online trends into their already hectic work lives. They’ll say “wow, this is cool” when I give a presentation - but when implementation time arrives - when these busy people actually need to start incorporating some of these new things into their work day, here’s what I sometimes hear (warning - simulations of real stuff I hear):

“we don’t have time to write blog posts - we’re busy serving customers” or “I’m extremely busy answering real patron questions all day long, so I don’t have time left to [fill in the blank with a 2.0 tool]“

I understand what they’re saying. It’s difficult to believe this new-fangled, 2.0-ish stuff is relevant when you are sitting at a busy service desk with a line 20 people deep, or when you have waiting lists for computer use. Library 2.0 is about building community? Visit a public library branch any day to see community building in action. Attend a program, join the bookclub, participate in an adult literacy or ESL program as a volunteer tutor or learner. That’s community building. Sometimes, emerging 2.0 tools and services seem to get in the way of all this busy, real-time activity already taking place.

Ok, wait a sec. This is davidleeking dot com we’re reading, right?

Yep… I see a small problem in the stuff I just said. Most of our library communities have a quickly-growing number of library customers that are actively participating in the emerging web - they are already creating content, participating, and interacting - with each other and with the companies and products they use. They are your library’s digital community.

The problem? We don’t have anything for our library’s digital community to do! OCLC’s recent report, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World says this about our physical libraries: “Offline, libraries are vibrant social spaces. They are hubs of community activities and provide a venue for open exchange and dialogue” (8-5). But online? How many libraries can say they provide “vibrant social spaces,” hubs of community activity” or “a venue for open exchange and dialogue” in our digital spaces? Not too many.

Why is this? I think we’re simply not focusing on that growing digital community. Yes, we ARE focusing on customers (that’s a good thing)… but many of us are only focusing on our library’s regular in-house customers (that’s a bad thing). It’s quite possible that by focusing primarily on library customers who visit the physical library, we are ignoring our growing digital population.

Huh?
Let me use my library as an example. We certainly get our fair share of traditional walk-in customers - our parking lot is ALWAYS FULL. But we also have a huge number of digital customers. Remember what we do with holds? We mail them out - you never have to physically visit our library to check out a book (cool, huh?).

Those items our customers are putting on hold come from our digital community - most likely customers who used our online library catalog from home or work. That’s just one example of living, breathing members of our digital community using our digital library. And they are a growing digital community. What else do we offer them? Thankfully in my library’s case, quite a lot currently (with more to come next year).

Let’s develop this a little further by perusing OCLC’s report a little more. OCLC provides some amazing insight into our growing digital communities:

• “The vast majority (89%) of the 6,163 general public respondents have been using the Internet for four years or more” (page 7-1) [update - Michelle reminded me that OCLC surveyed online users… the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s research shows that 73% of the US are Internet users, for what it’s worth)
• “The majority of the online population surveyed have moved from “digital immigrant” status to fully naturalized digital citizens. Nearly two-thirds of the general public respondents over the age of 50 have been online for seven years or more, and nearly a third have been using the Internet for more than 10 years” (page 7-1)
• “The Web community has migrated from using the Internet to building it.” (7-1)

Did you hear that? Most A majority of our library customers have used the web for at least 4 years. And most of those customers (read the report for the stats) have grown beyond simple clicking and surfing… they are interacting, creating, and participating… at other websites.

The gist of the report is this - the web has moved on, and libraries need to catch up. “To entice users to the online library, libraries must expand their social activities, allowing users to easily share and create content and collaborate with others. They must build a high-value presence on the Web, a strong enough brand to compete…” (8-5).

First steps? Stop ignoring your library’s rapidly-growing digital community. They might not be current users of your physical library - how can you reach them? What do you have to offer them? Can you offer them something that would keep them coming back for more?

I think so.

Tagged as: community, Library 2.0, Web 2.0

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Yesterday, I spoke at Salt Lake City Public Library’s staff day. I actually gave three presentations - one keynote and two breakout sessions… all three were extremely fun talks!

Salt Lake’s staff day theme this year was “Transform.. Adapt… Grow.” Transformation is a strong theme with them right now - for example, take a peek at what one needs to submit for their current Library Director opening: “The package should include a paper resume and directions to your digital presence, blog, or social networking Web site.” Wow.

Anyway, here are some links to the two presentations I gave:

• Keynote
• Breakout session

And as promised, here are the links to all the websites I mentioned in the keynote (in the order they appeared, I think):

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• flickr
• Ann Arbor District Library
• YouTube
• Wikipedia
• facebook
• Google Docs
• Picnik
• Google Maps
• Topeka’s Google Maps bookmobile mashup
• Cheap Gas Prices mashup
• retrievr
• netvibes
• MySpace
• twitter
• David Lee King
• Topeka’s Papercuts blog
• Atchison Public Library
• last.fm
• librarything
• Steele Creek teen MySpace page
• del.icio.us
• furl
• blinklist
• Subject Guide wiki at St. Joseph County Public Library
• Stevens County Rural Library District County Wiki
• meebo
• Topeka’s meebo widget
• Thomas Ford Memorial Library’s Click-A-Story podcasts
• Russell Library podcasts
• Stanford on iTunes
• Topeka example of a podcast
• David Lee King’s videoblog
• Brookside Baptist Church
• What if Barbie had a Bookclub video
• Arlington Heights Memorial Library’s LibVlog
• Ann Arbor District Library’s library catalog
• Hennepin County Library’s library catalog
• AquaBrowser
• Endeca at Phoenix Public Library
• Koha
• OCLC’s WorldCat Local

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