Every once in awhile, I write a “what David did today” post … I’d love to see what others with similar jobs did!
So – What did I do today?
Checked to see if someone was answering a couple of blog post comments on our website (they were)
Gathered updates from my department about our nasty Conflicker worm (almost cleaned out – nasty, nasty worm. Still have to yell at McAfee.
Also got updates about our virutal servers we recently purchased, about scanners for the public, and about our recent bandwidth upgrade
Lots of Podcamp Topeka work (we’re hosting a podcamp) throughout the day- emailed podcamp.org owner to see about being listed there, emailed our cafe manager to figure out lunch costs, created a pbworks wiki page for session leaders, and tweeted about it a couple of times
Added 23 things kansas meeting to my calendar…
emailed youtube video of local family using our summer reading coupons at applebees to library managers
lunch at my desk … twitter/rss/emails/facebook messages
walked around public floor, asked staff how PCs were behaving
Did some planning for Thursday’s skype call with Darien Library for our weekly managers meeting
Worked on updating our Technology Plan to send to the state… erate and all
Finished off the day researching how to write an Experience Brief – thinking about writing one for our website.
I recently visited Darien Library with the goal of checking out their innovative approach to technology – goal achieved! Check out the video in this post (and thanks to John Blyberg for the tour and for putting up with my video camera!). While their technology is amazingly cool, that’s not really what excited me. What excited me most was Darien’s idea of extreme customer service.
During my Darien visit, I had the privilege of chatting with Louise Berry, Alan Gray, and John Blyberg over lunch (great lunch, great conversation – thanks guys!). We talked about technology, new library buildings, and how we should be serving our library customers. Louise and Alan told me about their library’s core message – extreme customer service. Basically, they want to demonstrate extreme customer service in everything they do.
This idea of a “core message” is discussed in the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. Most of the book is devoted to making your core message “stick” – this is what Darien Library has done.
They even provided examples. During lunch, Louise, Alan and John mentioned an after-hours wine and cheese event they held at the library. The library was closed, but doors were open. Patrons not attending the event came in anyway … and guess what? They weren’t turned away – instead, they were allowed to check out books (RFID-based self-check-out machines help). Staff were even seen setting up new library cards for patrons. This is very different from what many libraries do. For most after-hours events, patrons would simply be told (nicely, I’m sure) to come back tomorrow.
So – one example of extreme customer service at Darien. You can find another example in the video. Watch for the mini laptops in the children’s area of the library. Those are staff public service laptops used for roaming reference type stuff. But listen to the children’s staff talk about them – kids pick those laptops up and use them. Patrons even use the public service desktop … and Darien’s staff is fine with that! When I asked about this, here’s what I heard: “why would we NOT allow that?”
John said the same thing later on in my tour (not captured on video). We were in a staff area, and I noticed someone had brought in her personal laptop. I asked what she could connect to … and John said staff can bring in their personal laptops and connect to Darien’s staff-only network. I pried a bit further, and this is when John said “why would we NOT allow that? It would simply hinder their work!” Then John went on to explain that they plan for the exceptions and fix those things, rather than lock down technology so much that it hinders the work of the library. Extreme customer service for their staff, too!
Does your library have a core message, and how does that play out? And … does your library lock technology down so much so that it hinders the work of the library? What would happen if you opened that can of worms up? Would any escape? Something to think about…
Michael Stephens and Sarah Houghton-Jan
Building your techie team: tips for training staff – they were creative – this presentation was built around the word “experiment:”
Engage – use real world examples, stay relevant, highlight tips and tricks
Xenagogue – become a guide through a strange land, be available and accessible, encourage student independence
Play – encourage exploration, allow fun to happen, make exercises and discussions lighthearted
Explain – provide context for all topics, repeat ourself, offer handouts and online materials
Reward – right answers, participation, completion, presence
Imagine – ask students to dream up applications and concepts at the end of the class, be inspired by the muse, don’t dismiss them
Mentor – treat students like adults, be available for questions, etc… expect success!
Empower – use the tool that you’re teaching about in the class
New – there is always something new… hold an entire class on dealing with change. Hmm…
Time – enough time for practice, questions, training should precede technology launches by weeks at the least…
Go read the whole article at techrepublic… but here are two of their “10 dirty little secrets” about the IT department:
3. Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies
A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.
2. Some IT professionals deploy technologies that do more to consolidate their own power than to help the business
Another subtle but blameworthy thing that some IT professionals do is select and implement technologies based on how well those technologies make the business dependent on the IT pros to run them, rather than which ones are truly best for the business itself. For example, IT pros might select a solution that requires specialized skills to maintain instead of a more turnkey solution. Or an IT manager might have more of a Linux/UNIX background and so chooses a Linux-based solution over a Windows solution, even though the Windows solution is a better business decision (or, vice versa, a Windows admin might bypass a Linux-based appliance, for example). There are often excuses and justifications given for this type of behavior, but most of them are disingenuous.
Ouch! I’ve seen library IT departments that do everything on this list. Heck, I’ve worked in them! Do your IT departments have any of these tendencies? If so, what’s your plan to stop them from happening?
The Gordian Knot blog recently mentioned the OZSDUG (OZarks SirsiDynix Users Group) meeting that took place on June 5th… I attended the meeting – here are my notes:
First up, a SirsiDynix Sales Rep answered a list of pre-prepared questions:
Question – Can we trust SirsiDynix promises? Answer – “No.”
The company that bought Sirsi told them to drop one product, so they could focus on making just one thing (makes sense)
There has been no end of life announced for Horizon
They will support Horizon 7 for the next 4-6 years (see the first point, above…
Claimed Unicorn is a modern ILS
Unicorn/Rome has a very open API – is this true?
Unicorn/Rome is closer to Horizon 8 in terms of functionality
Rome is simply the next release of Unicorn (ie., 3.2) plus whatever they can swipe from Horizon 8
Rome releases 1, 2, and 3 – some functionality will be in 3 rather than in 1 or 2
Rome will be beta testing this summer
They will release a new version once a year
Lots of Horizon functionality won’t be in Rome 1
SAAS – they don’t host it – it’s outsourced to a server farm in Atlanta (makes sense) – Sirsi handles the software upgrades
San Diego Public and Kansas City Public are currently using SAAS
Rome is simply a marketing term – they’re working on renaming it
Then another sales rep did a demo of Unicorn EPS:
It’s ugly (my opinion!)
It does (finally) have built in RSS feeds on searches (yippie!)
Includes federated search as part of the base package, which also works with the RSS feeds (yippie!)
Don’t have to subscribe to Rooms to get RSS and the federated search portion – both are part of the base package
Sirsi updates Rooms – not the customer! That seems odd
Claimed that Sirsi spent lots of time designing the default Rooms look – then the speaker spent a lot of time pointing out the three-column design and explained the eye-tracking F thing…
However (my opinion) the base package is extremely ugly. It looks like it was made in 1999 rather than in 2007. Sirsi could certainly spend some time and money doing little itty bitty visual tweaks to make the customer web-based piece look at least normal, if not truly modern – just hire or contract with a designer!
One thing that really amazed me – on the default product in the list of results, do they highlight the title of the book and put the title at the top of the record? No… instead, they put the call number up at the top, in bold and in a larger font. That doesn’t seem customer-friendly to me.
This guy for some reason came off as being insincere – after the Sirsi people left, a question was asked “did anyone like [sales dude]?” Almost everyone said “no!” pretty loudly (which surprised me)! I think that was because of his presentation style (he was trying to be funny, but it came out being more edgy/sarcastic) – again, my take!
Finally, the Sales Director, East spoke about future directions and answered a few questions:
I asked a question – with the SAAS service, do you have to look like you’re hosted at Sirsi (most hosted sites I’ve seen have a sirsi.net/libraryname URL)? They didn’t know, but called in the question (which was cool – thanks!), and yes – you can use whatever domain name/URL you want to…
They’re working on a web staff client – there will be a limited release later this year
He admitted to swiping slides from Abrams…
Working on a faceted and visual search – I think they showed screenshots of a mock-up. It looks to be much the same as Aquabrowser, Endeca, or that new Worldcat thing that’s out
text messaging holds and overdues – this functionality was in Horizon 8. It is “in queue” for Rome (didn’t say which version)
Someone made the comment that what we see when Stephen Abram speaks or when we listen to the SirsiDynix Institute seminars and what we see when we actually see a SirsiDynix product or talk to a sales rep seem to be two very different things. To that, the Sales Director said (my summary here): we walk a fine line with Abrams and with the SirsiDynix Institute – we don’t want it to appear like we actually do all the stuff that Abrams says (apparently because he speaks at lots of non-Sirsi things??? – just what the rep said…), or what the Institute teaches. I didn’t like the separation he put between what appears to libraryland as the
voice of the company and the actual product – if the voice and the
product say two different things, well… that’s not good!
And to be fair, he DID say that Abrams has a list of stuff that HAS to be in Rome for it to be successful (so that’s something, at least). But he did NOT say that SirsiDynix was working to include that list in Rome. And
So – to sum up… we heard:
don’t trust Sirsi
they made us drop horizon
we promise to continue to support horizon (see #1)
Showed us what they consider to be a modern ILS (Rome/Unicorn)… the audience didn’t agree (gleaned from the discussion after the Sirsi reps left)
When Abrams says something cool, or when you hear something neat about an ILS system at the SirsiDynix Institute, don’t expect it to appear in an actual Sirsi product.
Here’s something I’m doing at my library right now, and thought I’d share. The managers at my library meet every week (I’m a manager, too). Part of that weekly meeting is “my time.” We’ve been calling it simply “Cool Stuff” – I usually do a short presentation on a Web 2.0 product or concept, or talk about an emerging techie trend, then we hold a discussion about it. It usually lasts for 10-20 minutes of our 2-hour meeting.
discussed our library’s Digital Branch plans and progress
Google Docs & Spreadsheets
AADL catalog and AquaBrowser
How I keep up with blogs
Twitter
Toured our Second Life storefront and discussed plans
Outcomes so far? We’re purchasing a 10 user license of MindManager; all managers know the direction we’re going with our digital branch; they’re getting familiar with web 2.0 tools; they’ve seen what OPACs can do (especially timely, since we’re a Horizon site); and they have been introduced to Second Life and know what we plan to do with our storefront.
So, IT/Technology manager – what are YOU doing to keep your managers up-to-date with technology?
Why? Lucas says this: “the increasing pace of technology change requires us to be more innovative in how we both adopt and maintain technologies,” and then provides some tips on how to do this. The tips are:
Research technologies not only before you adopt them, but also while you’re using them.
Don’t get emotionally attached to a particular technology.
Continuously research competing technologies to the ones you are using now.
Don’t build yourself into a corner.
I have heard more than one library IT department say things like “we are a Microsoft shop” or “we’ll never go Mac.” Instead of saying these things, why not do this instead: look at the technology landscape, assess your library’s needs, and then base your decisions on goals and potential outcomes? if you did that, it’s quite possible that some of those “Microsoft Shop” types of statements would go away.
For example, in the web world many libraries are traditionally IIS/.asp/MS SQL users. But if you really assess emerging web trends, you might notice that most of the emerging web uses Linux/Apache/MySQL/.php (better known as LAMP) these days. And many of the newer APIs and add-on web 2.0 services gravitate towards LAMP. So – is your web and/or IT department starting to look seriously at migrating from Microsoft to Linux? From IIS to Apache? And if not, why not?
Another thing to think about – how many of your IT departments understand web 2.0 – blogs, RSS, Wikis, and instant messaging, for starters? Not just grasping the general concept, but actually participating in it? Using and testing out these new web-based tools? My guess is not too many. It’s important for IT departments to not only understand how to maintain the back-end of a blog on a web server, but to also really know how they work. And that requires a certain amount of immersion into the technology. It requires them to read and subscribe to blogs; see how trackbacks work; find out how to hack into some APIs to make these fledgling services better. Etc.
Becoming a technology agnostic will steer us out of that corner and back onto the innovation track.
From the LibTalk blog, The Determinants of Delight – this is a great article! Candi talks about how to delight library customers, and has a wonderful list of ways to accomplish this:
Smile
Be really nice, all the time
Get back to them as soon as possible
Limit the times you say no
Emphasize the positive
Speak their language
Go above and beyond
Listen to what they want and give it to them
And now, think about that list being applied to library IT staff. What if the IT staff uses this same list in order to delight THEIR customers, the non-techie library staff? Hmm? I think it works the very same way.
