Just spent 5 days in Minneapolis for the Public Library Association conference and came back with a renewed sense of confidence that there are a lot of smart, passionate, innovative, good-natured, and hard-working people working to improve public libraries and serve communities everywhere. It’s good to step outside of what’s happening in Skokie and learn from other libraries. We’re doing a lot of things right at MPOW, but there’s so much more we can do. Libraries and librarians are evolving, taking more risks, getting things done, and having fun at the same time.
So, to start things off, here’s what I learned from Karen Hyman‘s exploration of 12 Questions for 2008:
- if you’re satisfied with the status quo, you’re not a great library or you won’t remain one long
- have a story. what’s your library’s story?
- your library brand is how people feel about themselves and their decisions when they’re with us; it’s not about how they feel about the library
- when it comes to branding, libraries usually stop at “Here’s our name!”
- have fewer stupid rules
- stop using words like “delinquent borrower”
- be nicer!
- your library is as friendly as your least friendly public service employee
- is your space holding you back? probably YES. do you have space where people can choose their noise level and activity?
- quova – geo-location software to authenticate people without library cards
- have a “teen volunteer of the year” award and get the local politicians involved
- marketing is about them. where are they in the picture? what do they care about? go where they are.
- www.qandanj.org video – “Now Your Library is Open Late Too!” – shown during MTV Music Video Award show
- most important, be FUN! fine free Fridays, eating and drinking in the library, concerts, dance lessons, tai chi, Princeton PL’s art wall, Artspoint.org
And here’s what was covered in Leonard Souza’s Technozoo presentation (zip file):
- Joost – created by guys who created kazaa, the internet revolutionizing tv
- Skype – same guys again
- Kiva.org – “loans that change lives”
- web 2.0 – people waking up to the fact that you can talk to others on the internet, social networking
- web 2.0 formula: “community + subject + interactivity = web 2.0″
- YouTube and Digg are examples
- Apple iPhone – 70% of mobile internet use done on iPhones, which tells us that this is a viable tool to extend our library services
- Starbucks “quick order” – ordering Starbucks on iPhone; ask yourself what this could mean for libraries, what services can we develop, start researching and developing now
- microsoft surface – “iPhone on crack”
- iPhone and surface – making the internet tangible
- eReaders revolutionizing books – Sony eReader and Amazon Kindle
- gaming – wii, ps3, xbox 360, nintendo ds, psp (demonstrated brain age on ds)
- instead of granting access, libraries need to learn how to grant tools of interaction
- keep the net neutral – important
- one laptop per child – the internet is about the become richer
- challenge to libraries: become as functional online as you are offline
And here’s what I learned from Sarah Cofer from Worthington (OH), 2007 library of the year, talking about social networking and outreach to teens:
- worthingteens is the name of their teen blog
- blog is used as outreach to promote services and also to connect with teens
- teens love photos page – highest number of hits
- blogging personal content, not just library stuff (ex. librarian blogged about dyeing her hair purple, going green)
- blog fusion used to integrate into existing library website, includes photo package
- approval of teen advisory board before launch
- blog rules and guidelines
- try not to make registration required to be able to post comments
- myspace page: goal is to drive traffic to the blog; traffic doubled after the myspace page went up
- facebook page: her personal account has become her professional account since that’s where her teens want to connect with her; the library’s page doesn’t have a lot of fans because it’s not a personal account; communicates with teens on a personal level, recommending books, talking about life, etc.
- feeds from blog are used to drive more traffic to the blog
- other cool stuff to look at: Hennepin co.’s book alerts, framingham’s twitter account, parma pl’s wiki called parma books, and using delicious tags as clouds on blogs.