July 27, 2007
Something You Don't See Every Day
This is refreshing:
“It shouldn’t be so surprising that this post generated traffic. Anything new on the internet that’s even remotely related to libraries enjoys ridiculous popularity.”From a discussion on the Freakonomics blog about traffic jamming their website after the post about public libraries.
That being the case – “ridiculous popularity” – what are we going to do about it? Keep whining, or take power?
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2007
Rocket Science
Jeffrey Toobin has an article in the current New Yorker about Google's "quest for a universal library," discussing the pros and cons of the copyright issues, and coming down on the side that a settlement is likely, and not in our interests.
Some interesting information, though not a lot that's new if you've been following the issue.
I was struck by the following throwaway sentence:
The chief engineer of Google’s system for scanning books in the library collections is Dan Clancy, who joined the company after eight years at NASA, where he supervised teams of Ph.D.s. working on problems related to artificial intelligence.
Maybe it IS rocket science, after all.
Just kidding, since Clancy is responsible for the scanning, indexing and search end of the process, but let's get real about who's got the money and talent to bring to the fray. I've got a lot of faith in the Harvard, Michigan, Stanford and New York Public Library folks involved, but their perspective is a bit different from that of our cute little public library tucked away in a corner of Connecticut.
Where are we in all this? We do some things very well -- customer service (real customer service, not just saying "no" with a smile) -- and we're about to break ground on a new building since we're too busy in our current fifty-year old building that's been expanded two times. But if we aren't really clear in the future that we need to do extraordinary work in looking after the interests of our patrons, we're going to be washed away.
Which reminds me of what Marc Smith of Microsoft said in a presentation at the OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter, about trying to hold back the loss of private personal identity in this world of accelerating technology, "It's like standing on the shore watching Katrina approach and saying, 'Not convenient now.'"
Google, and Amazon, and lots of others are coming, and it's convenient for them. Now. And yes, there's the Open Content Alliance, which includes Boston Public Library, Johns Hopkins University and others (including Microsoft, Adobe and Xerox as contributors) but that's a distinction without a difference so far as our patrons are concerned. More and more, there's going to be massive amounts of stuff available out there (I mean, even more massive amounts of stuff) and we better do something more that pitch ourselves as being really good about helping our patrons find what they want. Google probably figures that's what's in it for them, and they're not scared about us -- they're thinking about Amazon and Microsoft.
What are we going to do? Some of it we know, some of it don't know, and some of it we don't know we don't know. And what you are going to need to do is undoubtedly different in your community than in ours.
But here's a guiding principle:
Rocket Science
Michael Griffin, head of NASA, gave a speech in Houston in January, in which he talked how support for NASA
came, not from what he described as Acceptable Reasons, but from the Real Reasons. Acceptable Reasons are based on cost-effectiveness and derivative engineering (Teflon, Tang) but Real Reasons are what stir the soul -- the exploration of space, extending the human spirit, the sight of someone walking on the Moon.
In the middle of his really fascinating talk (link is to the same speech -- it's really worth reading) he said:
But the JFK quote about space that I love more than anything in the world, because it evokes exactly the things I'm talking about here tonight, was the one he gave from this lectern at Rice University in September of 1962, when he said "We choose to go to the moon, and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." I'll say it again: "not because they are easy, but because they are hard".The cathedral builders knew that reason. They were doing something that required a far greater percentage of their gross domestic product than we will ever put into the space business, and they knew it was hard. We know it too. We look back across 600 or 800 years of time, and we are still awed by what they did. What is it that Americans make sure to see when they go to Europe? Who goes to Europe and does not, at some point, see the cathedrals? We are still awed across the centuries by what they accomplished.
To me, the irony is that when we do hard things for the right reasons – for the Real Reasons – we end up actually satisfying all the goals of the Acceptable Reasons. And we can see that, too, in the cathedrals, if we look for it.
In the same way, we have been successful in Darien when we have done things even though, and maybe because, they are hard -- extreme customer service, a technology center that at five years old still stands out, making sure every child who had a reserve for Harry Potter got one the first day, even if it meant buying 210 copies, hosting the web sites of 60 local non-profit organizations, empowering staff to break rules if it is in the best interest of a patron.
What we do in the future is up to us, and it's going to be hard.
Great.
Think of it like this. Children come to the library, and they see a cathedral -- you've seen it in their eyes.
When adults in your community come to the library, do they see Teflon and Tang, or do they see a cathedral?
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2007
Telling our story, too well
We're building a new library because we have to. Our 50-year-old building is not large enough for the books, services, programs and differentiated spaces our community wants. We've done a lot of work to justify the new building project -- both to the community and to those whom we're asking to provide the private funding. We've cited statistics about how crowded our shelves are, how they are not accessible, how parking is a problem at many times of the day and week, and how our building doesn't fit the uses we need to make of it.
Here's an example of the information we've provided: Top Ten Reasons
We've done a good job telling our story. Approvals and fundraising are going well. We're on track to break ground for the new building in April 2007 and finish in September 2008.
But......
.....people believe us when we tell them the existing library is too crowded and there's trouble parking. So guess what? Our visits are down slightly, and our circulation is down the same amount.
We are still off-the-charts busy -- 1,200 people a day visit the Library, in this town of 20,000 population, and circulation per-capita is about 28 items per year -- but we have measurable proof that telling your story well and often will work! No matter what story, apparently.
One of the organizations I worked in some time ago had a Board member who was a successful advertising executive. He used to ask, at critical times, "What is the most positive honest statement we can make here?"
We're asking ourselves the same question right now.
What is the most positive honest statement you can make about your library? And is that the story you are telling? Or are you telling users not to use cell phones, that you don't have enough funding, that teens are not welcome, that your OPAC sucks, that you can't go to the shelves right now to help find a book, that they owe $0.45, that the copy is missing, to please be quiet, come back later, wait for that book, use Google, check out Amazon?
Whatever story you're telling, it's probably working.
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2006
The Stupid Library
Ah, following links. Confused of Calcutta wrote some time ago about a Don Marti post on lightweighting that led to an article by David Isenberg which describes the "Stupid Network" this way:
Stupid Networks have three basic advantages over Intelligent Networks – abundant infrastructure; underspecification; and a universal way of dealing with underlying network details, thanks to IP (Internet Protocol), which was designed as an "internetworking" protocol. Some key "two-fers" emerge from these basics: Users gain end-to-end control of interactions, which liberates large amounts of innovative energy; innovative applications are rapidly tested in the marketplace; and innovative companies attract more capital and bright people.
Taking this thought a little further: I know there are a lot of really smart people at Amazon and Google, but they have designed their services so that I don't feel stupid when I go there -- I get what I want, and move on. I also know there are a lot of users who are smarter than I am who also go there, and get even more out of their experiences -- whether it's using A9 or doing a mashup, or whatever.
But you know what? We have -- and you have -- lots of library users who feel stupid using our services, or the services we link to. And you work with librarians for whom that's not a problem, who say with utter confidence in the right of their position, that if patrons will only take the time to use the "databases" and "OPACs" and "periodicals" the way they are designed to be used, that the patrons will get the benefit they should. Never mind that each of the "databases" has a different interface, most of which we truly dislike, and we think our OPACs suck.
So what is the outcome of our patrons' encounters with our services? They feel stupid, and we look smart.
Well, I've decided that I want our library to be stupid.
A stupid library is "underspecified" without lots of rules that evolved out of events long in the past that are unique to just that building, nor does your user experience depend on whom you talk to, or what you look like. In particular, a stupid library doesn't think it's smarter than you, so you don't have to obey its rules just because, and it's so dumb it it thinks you are smart enough to do things the way you think best. It has lots of "infrastructure" to meet your needs -- books, media, on-line information sources, web services -- all approachable in a "universally" understandable way.
A stupid library is set up to let you, the user, be the smart one. Just how many of us are prepared to let the next patron we deal with be the smart one? If we do, what if we see our "Users gain end-to-end control of interactions, which liberates large amounts of innovative energy; innovative applications are rapidly tested in the marketplace; and innovative companies attract more capital and bright people." Gee, that's a tough one.
Here's what brought it all crashing down on me:
John Blyberg and I had been batting this "stupid library" idea around, and we then moved on to something that caused him to get out his new Mac (that's him in the picture). I went on a riff about how much more useful Windows PCs were if you needed to do a wide range of things, and I could understand how my daughter the English Lit Ph.D. would find a Mac useful for her Internet surfing, email and writing, but I was surprised how many of the library techies had Macs (hi, Michael!). I accused them all of just being interested in cool and innovative design. John showed me how he could get to Unix, then he said simply, "Yeah, Macs, the 'stupid' PC." Ouch!
So, here's how I'm learning to look at it. "Smart" libraries are designed to be robust and broadbased, by people who think they know what you need, and provide it to you, even though their services are hard to learn how to use, have lots of interfaces that aren't compatible, and are down a lot. You have to work hard to use the services you need, and you feel stupid a lot.
"Stupid" libraries are designed to have the same access to a range of services just right for you, are approachable in the same way, are easy to use, and you feel smart when you use them.
My library: stupider than yours. And cooler.
I can live with that.
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 07:44 PM | Comments (2)
September 07, 2006
Good News. Your Place of Work is Risk-free!
We talk about "risk" quite often, but we're putting too much weight on one word. For example, John Blyberg led off a very thoughtful post-vacation post by talking about the need to tolerate risk:
So what does that mean for Library 2.0, and why is it important? Insecurity is an indication of risk, which is something we should all tolerate a little of. There is no guarantee that the work we put in to adapting 2.0-related ideas will have a net positive effect on our organizations and so the willingness to experiment on our production environments becomes a necessary aspect of L2. That, of course, is terrifying.
In fact, what we experience as we go through our days, is uncertainty. Risk is when you know the distribution of possible outcomes, and uncertainty is when you don't. It's like the difference between betting on the roll of dice (risk) and on a horse race (uncertainty.)
So what? Well, uncertainty leads us to make judgments about things ("that might not work" vs. "that's going to work 82% of the time") in a way that steers away from action. As a result, many of us drift to a system of decision-making that seeks to avoid "bad" things happening -- minimax.
What that means in practice is that we pass up actions with many successful outcomes because of the possibility of some failure.
Which looks like a typical library project, or policy? This:
or this:
For many of us, it's far better to avoid a potential problem -- some kind of failure -- even though it means passing up the likelihood of greater success.
What does that yield?
Rules that cause hardship for all patrons because of the actions of a few -- can anyone say "No cell phones allowed?" There is no better use for a cell phone than calling home 5 minutes before the library closes and saying, "They don't have 'When Harry Met Sally,' how about 'Last of the Mohicans?'" And just how comfortable is a caregiver going to be in the library if he or she is out of touch with her children at a critical time for an hour or two? All this foregone because of some jerks with an out-sized sense of privilege? I don't think so!
How about our procrustean beds of circulation limits -- "only three DVDs" or "that's due in two weeks, and I'm sorry if it means you can't take it on your vacation." (Here's a thought-experiment: what if a library which had self-check allowed patrons to choose how long they needed an item? There would be some problems, but I wonder if mode circulation times would decline -- and, boy, would patron satisfaction go up. Worth a try, unless we can't bear the thought of failure.) Radical trust anyone?
Why have we designed our catalogs for ourselves, not our patrons? Could it be that complex cataloging rules and hand-crafting mean that we can find what we're looking for ALL THE TIME (because we work with this thing ALL THE TIME) and we never want to fail, even if that means our patrons are missing the ease of use that Amazon gives them?
Pick the greatest peeve you have with your library and think about how it could be remedied if you were willing to bear the possibility that you might screw up when you tried to fix it. You know what, we need a Library Failures wiki more than we need a list of successful best practices. I bet we would learn more. (For example, we have been paralyzed in planning for adoption of a really neat idea for home delivery because there is a good possibility it will bomb. As penance, I'm going to blog about it soon, and if someone with more guts than we have decides to put into practice before we do and gets the credit, well, more power to you.)
You know, if we let our patrons play a greater role in deciding how the library can be useful for them -- "I'd like these books until my baby is due" or "Thanks for letting us use the meeting room to give you our thoughts on good book club selections" or "I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to borrow a digital camera for this weekend" or "It rcks tht u let us ply games even if we yell" or "It's outrageous that you let people use bad language when they comment on books in the catalog" -- it would not be a tragedy of the commons. After all, that's why we're there, isn't it? To deal with the exceptions and problems, and let the successes flow?
I used to work for an amazingly bright, thoughtful and gentle man by the name of Saul Yanofsky, whose second-biggest putdown of someone was, "he doesn't tolerate uncertainty very well." His greatest putdown, by the way, was, "that's simply not helpful."
Well, Saul Yanofsky would look at what we're doing and say, "You don't tolerate uncertainty very well, and that's simply not helpful."
So look around your risk-free library and see if you can't find some uncertainty to dive into.
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 08:22 PM | Comments (3)
August 24, 2006
MAGIC
Dan Farber, who blogs at ZDNet, points to a blog post by Vinnie Mirchandani, in which he sets out five steps used by Chief Information Officers to define and deliver technology development within their enterprises -- using MAGIC as a framework.
As I read the post, I thought the MAGIC framework could apply more broadly to initiatives to improve libraries. And I'm not just referring to technology developments -- there's a lot of work to be done on the presence of libraries in their communities, which to me means customer experience and the physical structure of the library.
Mashups
Marchandani isn't thinking of combining Google maps with something, but he's talking about:
"exploring every nook and cranny of the ... innovation framework - business model changes, channel optimization, product improvement and more. ... CIOs ... want basic building blocks in each area and then have their teams do the mashup." Read the post, there are some great links in there, particularly to the Doblin innovation framework.
The work that Casey Bisson, John Blyberg, Ryan Eby, Andrew Pace, Ed Vielmetti and others (John Blyberg reminds me of Glenn Peterson's initiative EngagedPatrons and David Walker's work) are doing to create building blocks which the rest of us can use to mashup our enterprises is critical to the future of all libraries (and that's why it's really important to pull as many of the innovators together at Library Camps and other venues so we can look for synergies collaboratively.)
There are many other "business model changes" and "product improvement" efforts going on in libraries that don't fit under the technology rubric, but which are at least as important to our futures as technology developments -- customer services initiatives such as home delivery, "in front of the desk" reference and reader advisory; staffing initiatives and workflow improvements, pre-processing of materials -- that we should be gathering around a metaphorical campfire to discuss and extend.
Alpha Technology
I first thought that this was an area where libraries fall down -- since other than open source initiatives from the committed few I haven't seen much use of alpha technology in libraries. But then I realized that RFID, for example, is a technology where some libraries are far ahead of the early adopters in other industries -- Seattle and Macombs Dam have committed more of their business practice to the use of RFID than Walmart, for example. John Blyberg's recent exhortation to risk failure is a good lesson for us, and we should hold ourselves out to at least listen to vendors who want to try out their new ideas somewhere.
Global Inspiration
Certainly we're doing well here. There have been several conferences I'm aware of where there was a conscious effort to look for global examples of library initiatives: Shattering Stereotypes at Seattle Public Library last year, and the invitation-only NY Public Library program sponsored by the Niarchos Foundation this year.
As I write this, Jenny and Michael are in the Netherlands, and goodness knows one only has to follow Stephen Abram around the world to see that there's a lot of information swapping going on.
Aquabrowser, Bibliotecha, Libramation, FKI and MK all have migrated to the US and Canada from Europe. Talis comes to mind as having adopted an aggressive MAGIC stance: see this announcement.
Internet Librarian International, Access 2006. Lots out there, and not having attended something outside the US, I would hope, but not know, that US attendees have themselves set on "receive" not "transmit."
Intensity
Marchandani puts it this way: " Short time frames. Stingy budgets. Constrained based innovation... It is about tactical, but significant, payback projects."
This is where we should all get to work, right now. I blogged about a project we did with limited scope and big payback, and there are many opportunities like that lying around.
We have wanted for a year to upgrade our web site, but instead of a huge makeover (coming but not this year) we've chosen our spots by introducing blogs, for example. But this work flows from a short time frame stingy budget constrained innovation project that resulted in creation of an HTML-formatted electronic newsletter that we completed more than two years ago.
And even though we are moving into a new building in 24 months, a year ago we reconfigured some underused space (more of a hallway than anything) into a teen area that's becoming more and more popular, and teaching us lots of things for the new building -- like DO NOT put a carpet in the new building's teen area.
Note that the lesson we drew from this is NO carpet, not "NO drinks and food."
We're anxious to undertake some more initiatives -- we think we have a good idea for a delivery service -- and just doing those will give us some ideas about next steps. And don't you have some stf.sb.cbi projects you could do that would result in big payoffs?
Collaboration with LoB (Line of Business)
This is such a buzz-word in the business world that it has a meaning of its own, but I interpret it to mean, "bypass the geeks, go right to the salesforce."
In our world, we're using it in two senses. The positive one is, make sure all members of the library staff are involved in and see the benefit of technology initiatives. Michael Stephens has lots of detail here.
But I think the negative sense of this is the "OPAC sucks" movement, which results from the nearly incomplete willingness of ILS vendors to even consider LoB requirements as an element in their planning. And we all agree we have some MAGIC to do here. If only they would bypass the geeks and go right to the "salesforce" (in our LoB world that's every patron-facing staff member) or even bypass the LoB and go right to the geeks. Just go to someone, please!
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 07:47 AM
August 21, 2006
Siege Warfare
An outwork is a defensive position used in siege warfare.
Here's an example of one in the modern day:
Okay, I'm being unfair, but not inaccurate. Note the configuration, protected on all sides, and from the rear, with clear line of sight and good defilade position. The sense of it is, "we're here, and you're there, this is our workspace, and let's keep it that way." By the way, the space was designed in 1984, and it's quite welcoming for its type. And let me make this very clear -- the staff that work here are among the most helpful, professional and committed librarians you are ever going to find. IM them if you're not near Darien and you'll see.
That's why the Reference Staff of Darien Library, led by Mary Freedman, decided to do things differently in our new library, which will open in 2008.
What they've decided is that we are NOT going to have a desk or any kind of barrier, but that reference librarians will work in partnership with patrons at reference "pods." Truly, we don't have a clue what they are going to be like exactly (we have done lots of sketches but we aren't to the mock up stage yet -- some drawings look like lima beans, or saddleshapes or boomerangs) except we know the general principle is that a reference librarian and the patron will sit together so they can share access to computing resources if necessary. And the space will clearly as much the patron's space as it is the librarian's space.
When we started talking about this concept two years ago, we got some very helpful and supportive comments from Scott Bennett, Yale University Librarian Emeritus who commented how rare it was for a public library to be going in this direction. He pointed us to the concept embodied in the planning for the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins of "touchdown suites." We don't have enough space in our new building to do things that way, but we like the empasis on comfortable collaboration.
We're sure that others are working towards the same goal of removing barriers and prompting a partnership between patron and librarian, and it would be wonderful if sometime in the last two years, somewhere, there's been installed a collaborative reference space that is just perfect. Great. If so, we'd love to take a look. Failing that, it's back to the sketches and mockups.
In the meanwhile, we're coming out with our hands up.
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 06:12 PM | Comments (2)