IL2009 – 23 Things in the Community

Last month, Sacramento Public completed what we felt was a successful “27 Things” program for our staff, and will soon be planning something similar for our public. So I was surprised to learn that only a handful of libraries have tried it, and with only limited success.

The four presenters, Jennifer Koerper (Boston Public Library), Bobbi Newman (Chattahoochee Valley Libraries), Rebecca Ranallo (Cuyahoga County Public Library) and Sean Robinson (Allen County Public Library) all had similar comments.

The major issues they mentioned included:

• Consider scalability (if you have huge participation, will you have the means to provide a prize for every finisher?) Experience shows, no prize, no participation. Will you have the available staff to spend the time needed to comment on blogs and keep track of progress? Time required is significant.
• Screen for previous skills. The public will have a  w-i-d-e  range of abilities, and the program seems to work better in one-on-one or very small group settings. Group people of similar abilities together.
• Target the “things” to specific audiences, for example, grandparents and Flickr; businesses and Twitter; moms and Facebook.  People are more apt to succeed if the “thing” meets their specific needs.
• Some libraries are exploring other venues, such as wikis, in-person class sessions and screencasts to ease the load for library staff.
• Unlike staff who are around during the day, it’s harder to nudge and motivate the public if individual momentum begins to flag.

Recommendations for libraries who still want to try it:

• Seriously limit the number of “things” you offer to the most essential: e-mail, blog, facebook/linked-in, etc.
• Consider a series of weekly in-person classes, one for each “thing”, and targeting a specific audience.
• Consider using a wiki instead of a blog, where each participant has a page instead of a personal blog – only one place for staff to check.
• Find out who else in the community is helping people, and partner with them. Move outside your library and into the community.

Based on these recommendations, we will need to re-think our public program, and we could also use some of these considerations to shape the requested continuation of the staff program – several wanted to continue learning about new things, but at a slower pace -  maybe one new one per month.

The More Things Change …

I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland.  Things look familiar, but are different, somehow, and not totally under control any more. Maybe our recent foray into 27 Things has highlighted an  individual’s ability to influence that which formerly came under the tightly-controlled purview of library departments.  Maybe the confidence staff has gained is causing an expectation of quick change and responsiveness in a historically lumbering institution. Maybe the institution is slowly recognizing the talent latent in its staff and, with the 2.0 tools we’ve been learning about, is coming to understand that we are no longer a collection of satellite libraries following the party line like lemmings, but that we are slowly coalescing into one library and one thinking and educated staff with great ideas, and who now have the capability of implementing them without centralized processes or permissions.

Here’s where the “Wonderland” feeling comes in.  I’ve been given extra time in Collection Management to spend on organizing our e-resources collection, including addition/deletion, training, problem management, catalog maintenance, and simply spending time using them. So far, so good.  Been there, done that.

But this time, my former ways of managing are now subject to different service models and assessment stipulations.  Instead of working with a single contact in a single department, I am now working with multiple colleagues in several departments, and the borders of  jurisdiction and responsibility have become fuzzy and collaborative.  I am finding it necessary to re-define what I thought was my job by the new rules, much like Alice and the croquet game in “Wonderland”. Whoever said  nothing exciting happens in a library ought to be … erm … well … “Off with his head!”

Week 10: Thingfo and Wrapping-Up

SPL Home Page: I’m really glad the webmaster put a link to the “legacy” web site in the footer of the new web pages.  I’ve used it several times when I couldn’t find something I thought should be there. By noting the “breadcrumbs” in the menu lines near the top of the screen, I’ll know where to find it next time.

Mango: Not related at all to 27 Things, but I’ve been working on a project to put a link to Mango Languages in the records of our audio language learning materials.  Once it’s completed, patrons will be able to click through to Mango from any record and “start learning this language now!”

Twitter: This was an acquired taste.  At first, I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to reveal TMI about my personal life.  However, as I acquired friends and followers, it was much easier to have meaningful conversations.  In the course of this 27 Things project, one staff member invited the 27Things team to follow him on Twitter, so I created a library account.  After this project is completed, it will be renamed to eliminate the reference to 27 Things. It’s been fun following RAN’s tweets and ELk’s, too.

Thingfo: I tried! I created a Thingfo, because I’m all about efficiency, but WordPress does not allow me to add the widget to my blog. Score one for Blogger!  Anyway, although it seems like a good idea to have all your social info in one place, I’m not quite ready to spout the contents of that stream on my blog.  So it’s just as well WordPress is not javascript-friendly in this case. I think I’ll pass on Thingfo and live with the “follow me on Twitter” widget.

Wrapping up

27Things has been a welcome break from “work” work.  I truly enjoyed exploring web sites and applications I might not have tried, and likewise discovered I would not use some of them – but now I know!

I would certainly like to do it again – maybe featuring fewer than 27 things – with different applications.  There are so many more to explore!  This project has also inspired me to write self-directed and video tutorials for our databases – hope to work on that during the summer.

And finally, I hope my co-workers will keep blogging, because I’ve really enjoyed the online conversations, insights, and opinions of all who participated.  Talking about changes, about our model for service, about concerns and questions can only be good for SPL, and sharing personal interests has added a dimension to work relationships that was missing before. Let’s continue, shall we?

Week 9: Podcasting

Experimenting with the Ubuntu sound recorder – made a short 10 second recording. The Dell Mini’s sound is atrocious, even after spending 20 minutes adjusting the mic and sound settings; I don’t think it’s the mic because people say they can hear me very clearly on Skype, but playback through the speakers is undecipherable.  Attempted to upload the file, but WordPress says it doesn’t meet the security guidelines.  Back to the drawing board.

Tangible Results Already!

As we work through our 27 Things, we’re beginning to see them applied to library service enhancements. For example,

• As an experiment, our collection manager is soliciting comments on a new (to SPL) product by placing description and link on a wiki page (week 7) and inviting staff to try the product and add a comment to the wiki. This is actually much better than sending email comments to one person, because everyone can see all the comments and consider things they might have missed.
• At least one library has set up a Twitter account (week 10) and is tweeting information about its public programs.
• Another library has embedded an enticing  video (week 9) into the online event calendar inviting families to attend a toddler program.

None of this would have happened if staff hadn’t been encouraged to try those Things and discover they are not so daunting, after all!  Good stuff!

Week 9: Podcasts and Downloadable Audio

I’ve been pretty media-shy up to now, preferring to write instead of recording audio or video messages.  But after seeing how easy it is to listen to podcasts, and how easy it was for our 27 Things team to create the podcasts and videos for the exercises, I’ve decided to use the capabilities of software I already have to embed podcasts into my blog posts.

Last summer, a friend introduced me to Goldwave Audio, a free download that can take input from a record player (remember those?) and then edit out all the hisses and pops to create an amazingly clean digital recording you can burn to a CD.  I transferred cuts from an album the Al Nobriga Trio made in the late ’70s that was never published on CD, and was so delighted to hear my brother’s voice again! (He played bass for the group.)

Long story short, this weekend I’m going to use the voice recording capabilities of Goldwave to create a podcast.  If it works, I’m going to take my laptop to Hawaii and ask my mom to record some of her stories and memories.  It will be interesting, to say the least!

As for using our digital catalog to find downloadable materials – I’ve been downloading audiobooks for about a year now, and listening to them when I walk.  Last spring when I was practicing for the Avenue of the Vines half-marathon, I went through about 3 titles, the most memorable being “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.”

Week 9: YouTube – Skateboard Kerry

My family doesn’t have a history of video – we tend to take only snapshots, and lately, people have been hard to catch.  I decided to look on YouTube for something other than people.  We’ve been having an ongoing discussion at home about whether we really need a dog (no), so I looked online for a cute dog video to enjoy.  This one shows a Kerry Blue Terrier like one I used to have playing with a skateboard.  Enjoy!

Week 8: Publish to Blog From Zoho

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I’m writing this post in Zoho Writer. Specifically, I am trying the “post to your blog” feature. Although the WordPress post editor is functional, it looks as though Zoho brings more to the table in the formatting area, for example:

Inserting a table	inserting today’s date	emoticons
Special characters  Ψ Ω Ý β	find-and-replace editing	undo button

There have been times when I’ve wanted to do more formatting than Blogger could handle, and this might be a good way to add some pizzaz to Blogger or WordPress posts.

Here goes …

Week 6: Technorati and Other Thoughts

As with Delicious, I had already created an account with Technorati over a year ago and “claimed” this Annot8tions blog, but I didn’t ever go back.  Tonight I was poking around and I found a new blog to follow: Across the Great Divide.  I read the Invisibility post and was hooked.  I claimed a couple more blogs just to complete the exercise, but I have no illusions about becoming a mover and shaker in the blog world.  My blogs are ranked way down there, and that’s ok with me.

As for the future of librarianship, I noticed that the suggested  OCLC article was published in 2006, generations ago in Internet Time.  However, there are timeless ideas embedded throughout, this being one of them:

No profession can survive if it throws its core principles and values overboard in response to every shift in the zeitgeist. However, it can be equally disastrous when a profession fails to acknowledge and adapt to radical, fundamental change in the marketplace it serves.

The key is to be keenly attuned to trends and to anticipate correctly which will work harmoniously with library core principles to make the library’s collections and expertise most accessible to its constituency.  Not easy.

I’ve believed for several years that the telephone (cell phones, to be more precise) will become the communication medium of choice between patrons and libraries.  Not just to renew items, get hours, or talk to someone, but also to use the catalog and databases, to place holds, to pay fines, and to share information with friends.  I believe what we should be doing is figuring out how to make our catalog and databases small-screen-friendly, and to offer services that work with cell phones.  This might be creating program feeds, providing text reference service, pushing bibliographies, texting call number info for individual titles or providing maps and driving directions. Cell phones are getting “smarter” every day; we should be looking for ways to exploit their capabilities.

Week 5: Library Thing and Rollyo

Library Thing

It took me a little while to remember my login for Library Thing, and I suspect I may have 2 accounts now.  I opened an account in 2006, added 2 books, and abandoned it. I added another handful of books on Saturday, but the library computers were so slow, it was an exercise in frustration.  I don’t see any of those books today, so either I didn’t save properly, or I opened a new account and forgot the login.  I don’t have a huge collection of books that needs to be organized, and I’m keeping track of my reading in Facebook and on my Bibliog blog, so I don’t think I’ll be using Library Thing right at the moment.

Rollyo

I finally “got” it!  I’ve been messing with Rollyo for a couple of weeks now, and couldn’t seem to duplicate the finely-tuned results I’ve seen on others’ blogs. But I had an “aha!” moment this afternoon, and ta-dah! My Rollyo!

My object was to gather some library journals together and be able to search them all for articles on … whatever. But I couldn’t figure out how to make the search box display in this post, hence the link. I can see a use for this on our Research Guides, as a bookmark for computer classes on a particular topic, and as a work tool for selectors.