Librarianship

LJ letter to the editor, response to Michael Stephens' "Heretical Thoughts"

"Innovation required
In 2009, we created 'innovation' as a performance requirement for all staff at my library. Each person (shelvers, custodians, librarians, department heads) must 'bring a new idea, development, or system' (Michael Stephens, 'Heretical Thoughts,' Office Hours, LJ 12/10, p. 72).
...
The goal is to encourage and reward the staff for thinking of improvements.
...
Stephens's closing paragraph recalls something that Lawrence Clark Powell wrote: 'A good librarian is not a social scientist, a documentalist, a retrievalist, or an automaton. A good librarian is a librarian: a person with good health and warm heart, trained by study and seasoned by experience to catalyze books and people.' —Nann Blaine Hilyard, Dir., Zion-Benton P.L., Zion, IL"

Ms. Hilyard, please hire me!

LJ Feb. 1, 2011

Reference: Screencasting

Screencasting can be used to answer reference questions for any number of people... Record your navigation to/through a database or online content and distribute it to users. Could be used for how-to's posted on a website or to answer virtual reference questions for one individual. Can be archived or posted to YouTube for others to browse and utilize.

Tame the Web

LJ January 2011, expanded article with tool reviews

Nancy Pearl...

"...conducted workshops for all 1200 staff members. 'From pages to library managers, everyone learned new ways of approaching readers, and they generated scores of new ideas,' says KCLS director Bill Ptacek. The library’s 'Take Time To Read' program, with its simple goal 'to make King County a more literate community,' grew out of Pearl’s workshops."

"'People who [are] circulation clerks or pages in libraries work there because they love libraries. Otherwise, they’d work at McDonald’s,' says Pearl. 'We must not cut them off from being able to talk about books and other materials with the people who use the library.'"

"'A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,' says Pearl.
'We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading."

"When people ask, 'What should I read next?' we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns."

"People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest."

"'She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,' says Janes" -U Washington iSchool Chair

"My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading."

"Pearl also worries about the demise of independent bookstores and the relative health of public libraries. 'Librarians must figure out what we need and how we need it, and then we have to get together and make it happen. I think we still have some power over the direction of these changes.'"

LJ January 2011

User Experience: Benefits of Less

Less is more - less content can lead to better website design.

"Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a daring pilot and talented author, also weighed in on user experience:

'In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.'

In some ways, libraries have been taking the opposite approach. We've gotten in the habit of tacking on new services and taking on new responsibilities, and many library websites can be seen as piecemeal collections of patron engagement tactics."

"More content thins out our efforts. It sounds simple, but the more things a library tries to do, the less attention it can devote to any one thing. Without the attention they deserve, web content and services can’t be as effective as they should be."

"Good content takes staff time to produce and arrange, and the navigational overhead can be a time expenditure for users. I’m not suggesting that libraries shouldn’t try new things or add content to their sites. They should. Still, the library world needs to start a dialog about an additional way to prevent stagnation: subtraction." Less content is easier to manage, thus make better.

LJ January 2011

Chicago government and CPL

John Berry's editorial calling for more cities to follow Chicago/Daley's example and to place an emphasis on public libraries. CPL's budget increased for FY11!

"Mayor Daley, LJ’s inaugural Politician of the Year (LJ 11/15/97, p. 28–30), sees each branch as a community 'anchor' crucial to Chicago life. Branch use is heavy, and the local branch is often the only library a citizen uses."

"When cultural institutions such as libraries are run by business managers, they are forced to adhere to the simplistic methods and measures that ignore their importance as public goods. In terms of economics, a public good is a service most efficiently provided to all people through taxation. Schools, libraries, public health, and police and fire departments are public goods. When anyone uses them, everyone benefits. It is more efficient to provide them through taxes than to levy a charge for each use."

"Commissioner Mary Dempsey and her team know CPL is a true public good and that when any Chicagoan uses it, everyone in Chicago gains. The United States will be a smarter, stronger nation when more elected officials follow the Chicago model and give the highest priority to their public libraries, recognizing them as the government agency that serves the needs of all the ­people."

LJ January 2011

Picture Books - not dead yet

Response to NYTimes story "Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children."

"'We live in such a visual world. Visual literature is increasingly important, not less important. Picture books are one important way to develop that.' Many picture books are better when kids are older. That's true for fractured fairy tales... which work best if kids know the originals. 'Those definitely require higher-level thinking skills.'" -Karen MacPherson, children and ys coordinator Takoma Park Library, MD

"The pressure to get kids to read at a young age is unfortunate. 'It's skipping a whole evolutionary chapter in the child's life.'" -Ken Marantz, emeritus professor of art education, OSU

"Picture books exercise kids' brains in a different way than test-only books. 'There's no other art form where pictures and words are completely interdependent on one another. An illustrated storybook can stand on its own when read aloud, but a true picture book needs both.'" -Elizabeth Bluemle, co-owner Flying Pig Bookstore, VT and ABC president

PW Dec. 13, 2010

American Libraries/ALA updates

Interesting things to remember:

ACRL's College & Research Libraries is now open access.

YALSA Teen Services Evaluation Tool

Gateway Games

Game reviews for five board/strategy/card games for all ages. Great for gaming beginners!

Tsuro
Blokus
Fluxx
Aquarius
Qwirkle

Library Journal Nov. 2010


Gateway Games, Up a Level:

Carcassonne
Forbidden Island
Pandemic
Settlers of Cataan (use for transition from basic to more complex games)
Tigris & Euphrates

LJ January 2011

Anythink: innovative libraries

Anythink is the new brand for a county library system outside Denver. Lots of interesting brand, space, culture, and job innovations.

"Beyond the deep rebranding effort, the Anythink “revolution” includes constructing four innovative buildings, dropping Dewey for the “WordThink” system, eliminating fines, upending summer reading for the more experiential MySummer, and recasting staff roles from librarians to Guides, bolstered by Concierges and Wranglers."

"They’re discernibly libraries but with some tweaks. Most important, there’s no reference desk but a 'front perch' and 'back perch' (and sometimes another), stand-up stations where librarians (er, Guides) and Concierges offer quick assistance. The buildings—the product of a stutter-step process that began eight years ago—are organized for flexibility, not for books."

"Because the library pays many bills (on time) with credit cards that accrue points, it can send staffers to conferences and training events without cost, says finance director Mindy Kittay, a former CFO and consultant for many small businesses, who began a new library career eight years ago. Also, staffers can partake in a technology lending program—iPads, Flip cameras, etc.—and buy technology at the library’s discount, with the payment deducted from their paychecks over three months, interest free."

Director: "'Instead of trying to get everything perfect,' observes Smith, 'we work to get the big idea right, then circle back to work on correcting and refining the details.'"

"At the end of her board interview, Sandlian Smith, who describes herself as 'very shy and very quiet,' boldly laid it on the line: 'I believe the responsibility of a leader is to shoot for the moon,' she said. 'If you want to build regular, normal libraries, don’t hire me.'"

"'I think you can be a brilliant organization, but without proper marketing/PR you will never be as strong or as viable as you need to be.' As such, the Communications Department reaches deep into the library’s activities. It not only creates newsletters, press releases, and advertising and writes speeches but also coordinates special events, manages signage, and runs the public art program."

"The use of aspiration as a management tool is a profound insight." - Jamie LaRue, director of Douglas County Library System

Library Journal Nov. 15, 2010