Looking back at 2010

2010 has been a busy and eventful year at APL. Looking back, here's a few of the things that jump out:

1. Changing of the guard: new leadership, or APL:TNG -- Colleen Rortvedt has been tapped as the next Library Director -- I probably list this first because looming retirement somehow seems like a big deal to me. But after I've been gone for six months, it'll either be "Terry who?" or "this is great -- why did we never do it before?" I appreciate the extensive hiring process our Board went through to find the next Director: they made a great choice. Colleen will bring some great new energy and innovative ideas; she is poised to make positive changes. 2010's accomplishments testify to her vision and effectiveness. In any case, fifteen years of me in this chair is enough.

   Last May, Brian Kopetsky succeeded Meg Shriver, our longstanding reference supervisor with whom I worked for 30 years. Meg was well loved for many reasons, nonetheless Brian has begun making some positive changes as well, showing leadership in social media, marketing, technology, and the Wisconsin public library community.
   

2. Friends Executive Director & board bring new activism and energy -- After our Friends and Foundation merged last year, they spent some months getting organized and hired their first Executive Director -- Janice Daniels Quinlan -- who then set up a great annual meeting, recruited new board members, and has greatly expanded fund-raising and advocacy. With Jan's leadership, the Friends are increasing their visibility and effectiveness while fostering increased connections with the community.


3. RFID sparks massive weeding, slated for complete implementation in 2011 -- There are four great things about the way RFID is going. First is the concept of tagging the collection mainly with volunteers, making the process shorter and cheaper to implement. Second is the tight teamwork of the group that planned the details of implementation, and went through the RFP and vendor selection process. Third is the totally massive weeding project that saw tens of thousands of marginal, worn, or outdated items pulled from the collection, buying us some needed space and making the tagging faster and more cost-effective. And finally, the bold plan to complete the project next year with sophisticated self-checks, security gates and automated materials handling. The Library Board, Mayor and City Council all approved the $400,000 capital project, which will transform many tasks when implemented in 2011.
   
   
4. Meeting room changes -- We had several responses to increasing meeting room use, with associated workload issues as well as supply and demand problems. We created a new small meeting room, permanently set up as a conference room and thus readily available with minimal effort. We implemented the Evanced meeting room booking and calendar software, allowing anyone to check on room availability and put in a request 24/7 without staff mediation. Lower level rooms are now available to community groups on Saturdays. We set up a new color-coded directional signage system on the lower level, clarifying room information and eliminating confusion.
   


5. New long range plan -- Beginning with a staff retreat in February, through meetings of a staff task force in the Spring and a Library Board/community committee in the summer, we revised our long range plan. While the new plan did not represent a radical departure (only prudent in the midst of management transition), it includes a redefined mission, a serious update and some useful new directions. Some of these were already underway with building recommendations, RFID, changes to the Friends and updated marketing efforts.
   


6. Marketing plan & social media -- After a long evolutionary process, we have a new marketing plan with some good mechanisms to maintain communications. An active team has made our Facebook page into a great information source and opportunity for community conversation. We are poised to integrate calendar feeds, improved email communication and other social media, along with a re-branded Friends organization, to possibly re-brand the library and finally bring home the oft-delayed website revamp.
   


7. Program attendance & meeting room use jumps -- Our annual program attendance is pushing 40,000, an increase of 16% over last year. This is related to marketing efforts and to hardworking and innovative program staff, putting together cultural and educational offerings for all ages. There's also been a huge increase in use of our meeting rooms. Both these changes reflect the increasing community center role of the library.
   


8. Monitors depart and “Maintenance” turns into “Operations” -- We significantly tweaked, rather than transmogrified, our former Maintenance Clerks to provide some increased security and oversight backup for public services staff. We had done this with part-time Monitors for after-school hours nine months a year, but had been unsuccessful for years in getting funds to expand the Monitor hours. Instead we eliminated a few part-time unbenefited jobs, folded those duties into the Maintenance job descriptions, and gave the full-time, renamed, Operations Clerks additional training on policies and Black Belt Librarian techniques. As city Facilities Management staff has taken on more of the maintenance duties here, our Operations Clerks have used the time to start some new routines, checking in with service desks while doing their regular rounds, and provide public assistance for the increased meeting room use.
   


9. Ebook platforms and discussions proliferate -- While a bunch of have been excited by the iPad this year, we continue to have supply, demand, format and DRM issues with eBooks. Through our system and a statewide consortium, we are able to offer downloadable eBooks in our catalog, and these can be read on Sony Readers and Nooks, as well as Androids, iPads, and iPhones. There are not yet enough titles or copies, and they're not perfectly easy to use, and they don't work on Kindles, but it's a good start. There's been a lot of conversation with much more to come.
   


10. Building project stalls with ongoing economic concerns -- The City Council referred the Library Board's building request to a special Capital Facilities Committee, which met for some months, and is currently on hiatus until late winter or early spring. Community Development Director Karen Harkness summed up the situation nicely, saying she:

    "believes the Committee would be in agreement that the most prudent way to proceed would be to build a new library. However, she also believes the Committee would be in agreement there are too many unknowns such as stimulus dollars, fundraising and the economy."

    Stay tuned!
    

The Magic of Social Networks

This was the keynote presentation, from Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, at this year's Wisconsin Library Association conference.

The Magic of Social Networks

View more presentations from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Pew Research Center.

By the numbers

We're doing our annual patron survey, both in-house and online. I always look forward to the results -- not because I believe that individual numbers have terrific significance, but because I want to see the trends, and read the comments.

We look at all the numbers and comments, but we are aware this is not a scientific survey. Participation by people picking up a survey form in the library, as well as those clicking a link on the website is voluntary. Participants are thus self-selected, and those who take the time probably have a mixture of motivations: some enjoy the opportunity to share their perceptions and participate in a public process, some want to help the library, and some have an ax to grind. Some years ago, we use volunteers to give a survey to every fifteenth person walking in the door. It was hard to find enough volunteers, and harder to dissuade the volunteers from using their good judgment to decide just who should receive the survey, so even then we were not truly random. When we gave up this practice and let survey participants self-select, we noticed little difference in the responses. We were still surveying library users as a subset of the population.

It's worth noting that library users make up a large subset, with about 2/3 of Appleton residents having library cards. We measure some things for inclusion in the City budget, which contains some output measures. But more important to us is watching changes in customer satisfaction with collections and services, measuring the number of people doing other things downtown when they use the library, seeing what they do at the library, and reading the comments. In addition to measuring attitudes, this is a regular annually organized effort to garner suggestions, and we take them seriously.

Web users enter their data directly via SurveyMonkey, and Kathy, our Data Assistant, hand enters the information into another SurveyMonkey from the in-house pages. SurveyMonkey automatically compiles the data and helps with analysis tools -- and it's interesting to see the differences between online and in-person patrons. Online patrons tend to have a lower opinion of the library neighborhood, somewhat unsurprisingly.

We hope we get a lot of responses. If you're a library user, let us know what you think -- we need to hear from you!

Information overload: the death of reference has been greatly exaggerated

The debate over how we read, perpetuated largely by media insiders, is starting to seem like little more than a distraction from the real problem: We have access to more information than ever, yet we do not know what to do with it. We are desperately information-illiterate.

Danielle Maestretti "Shelf Life: Information Overload", Utne Reader July-August 2009

This is very worthwhile reading, unambiguously concluding:

...media literacy should be a high school requirement, which seems like a no-brainer—10 or 20 years ago, even. For now, it seems that burden is being shouldered by school librarians, which would be a more promising scenario if they weren’t often among the first heads on districts’ budgetary chopping blocks.

For the out-of-school, significant information literacy can be gleaned from public librarians, who are info-literate by trade. Yes, even in this digital age—especially in this digital age—librarians are often the best place to start. They’re at reference desks and Radical Reference (www.radicalreference.info), on instant messenger and telephone, behind brightly colored “Ask a Librarian!” buttons on library websites. They’ll help you cut through the clutter and send you back into the world with a few literacy skills you didn’t even know you needed.

Amen.

This is where I disagree with Toni Garvey's statement that “Reference is not our niche.” Google has won this competition! This is true as far as it goes, but is easily oversimplified. I use Google and Wikipedia, too. But I still use our reference service. Google has drastically changed the reference niche, but hasn't eliminated it any more than television eliminated movies.

This is why our reference librarians are busier than ever. This why experimenting with new information delivery channels, such as chat and text, are an essential part of library service. As more people need and use our public access computers, and as more people try to cope with information overload at home and at work, we're there to help.

We wish that more people knew what we could do -- but on the other hand, we're already pretty busy.

Beyond Books: Libraries Lend a Hand in Recession

As seen on the Today Show, June 11.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Pat Horn, Circulation Clerk, receives Courtesy Award

Pat Horn, left, with random cybrarian and Rotary Courtesy Award presenter Barbara Kelly

Pat Horn was one of the recipients of this year's Courtesy Award from the Appleton Downtown Rotary. She was nominated by Terry Bergen, who wrote:

I am a frequent patron of the Appleton Public Library because I am in two book clubs. The library becomes more and more heavily used every day and the line at the circulation desk is always long. I am always surprised to notice the good humor and gracious helpfulness of the circulation staff at the check-out desk, regardless of the conditions. Patrons will often get angry or rude for reasons beyond the control of the staff such as an overdue book fine or a lost book fee. The circulation staff serve thousands of people every day at the checkout desk, processing more than 1.5 million items every year. One individual I noticed in particular is an exceptional provider of customer service. I described this person to the Circulation Supervisor at the library who gave me her name, Pat Horn. The Circulation Supervisor also endorsed Pat as the outstanding member of her team because of her caring and attentive customer service.

Pat (Patricia) Horn is particularly worthy of the Courtesy Award because she warmly welcomes everyone who approaches the checkout desk at the library and:

• listens to patrons' concerns
• is able to communicate and enforce library rules, procedures, and policies in a way that informs without offending
• makes everyone, from all walks of life, feel like this is his or her library
• never has a bad day
• never gets rattled
• will drop everything and look throughout the library for something a patron wants so that they leave knowing she did everything she could do to find what he wanted

This award reflects particularly well on Pat, who has a great gift for service, cares deeply, and applies her heart and mind to doing a good job for our patrons. But it also reflects well on the whole terrific crew at our Circ Desk.

Thanks to Library Trustee Terry Bergen for taking note and submitting the nomination. Thanks to the Rotary for making this award. But especially, congratulations & thanks, Pat!

from left: Brian Kopetsky, Terry Dawson, Colleen Rortvedt, Pat Horn, Vicki Lenz

Intel's Social Media Policy

David Griner writes on the Social Path blog about Intel's new Social Media Guidelines,

... trust me when I tell you that Intel’s new Social Media Guidelines are barn-burning fare.

Standard business model: No matter how many people work at a company, only a select few employees are allowed to speak to the public. All statements must be approved by the top brass, who will be sure to suck the life out of any comment until it sounds like good-old corporate PR dreck.

The Intel model: Any employee can speak to the public. And the more interesting your perspective, the better.

... there’s no denying that this is an astounding bit of empowerment.

The guidelines, which go on in some detail, would be useful for a library in the process of retooling its website or examining electronic marketing. But they'd be good for any organization trying to get people more involved and reaching out -- encouraging creativity but requiring responsibility. Actually, the guidelines provide a useful perspective for all sorts of uses of the social web.

Jamie LaRue - market share pyramid

A couple weeks ago, when Jamie LaRue presented the keynote at the Wisconsin Strategic Visioning Summit, he described a "market share pyramid" of successive ways libraries can reach various parts of their communities. There's a copy of the whole pyramid diagram on Jamie's website.He lists the highest thing we can do is to get out in the community; I like that. It's not enough to wait for the reference questions to come to us. People don't know what resources we have to offer, so many of them will never ask. We need to put librarians at lots of tables, where they can contribute and help bring library resources to bear on many questions. That's the "librarian at every table" community development philosophy, just like I learned from Margaret Monroe, in days of yore in library school.

We have a lot to offer and contribute. I'm glad that our staff is involved on community committees, boards and task forces, and always want to be open to opportunities. It's good for professional growth of the staff and it's good for the community.

What are some other ways we could be answering the "community reference question"?

National Library Week: I love my job

What can you say? Some days the serendipity just gets you. I had a call late this morning that the Children's desk was going to be short-handed due to a family illness. A few quick calls did not get us anyone to cover, so I went in, grumbling, to work it until we could get somebody.

I was grumbling because I wasn't thrilled about going in on my day off -- especially since I got called in the previous morning at 4:30 AM with a security system problem -- and because I was pretty sure that I couldn't do very good work for the patrons. What if I got a tough reader's advisory question about current children's lit? What if somebody needed to book a group tour? Their tough luck to get a supposed librarian who's more of a bureaucrat, and who knows more about budget spreadsheets than how to sign up for story hour.

Of course, my fears were -- as usual -- unjustified. Vicky, my colleague in Children's, covered for me admirably. We were able to find another worker who graciously came in and covered (and did know how to work Children's). In the meantime, I was able to help a fifth-grader and his mom with a homework question, and discussed with them the uses and limits of Google and Wikipedia before pointing them to some books in the collection. I managed to quiet a rowdy group of twelve-year-olds fairly gracefully. I got a truck of adult DVDs shelved and got in some reader's advisory: "Yes, there were two versions of Wicker Man -- most critics consider the first one better, but they're both pretty strange." It's nice to feel like a librarian sometimes!

And then there was the barbershop quartet singing in the atrium. Dozens of people stopped to sit in chairs downstairs or just paused in the entryway to lean over the rail and listen to a song or two.

Most of all I was impressed with the very large and diverse group of people using the library. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, sunny and warm and the nicest weather for the past several days. But the library was jammed. Half an hour after we opened, there were about fifty people just in the Children's area. There was a long waiting queue for the Children's Internet stations. The adult nonfiction stacks had lots of browsers. Almost every table was full. There were lines at the checkout. The public services staff was hopping, answering questions and helping people find stuff.

Needless to say, this leaves me a lot more fired up about what we're doing than committee meetings or budget spreadsheets ever do. I'm impressed with how the community uses us, I'm impressed with how our staff comes through, and I'm impressed that we're doing the right thing to study our facility needs. It's great, but it's crowded!

No grumbling here -- I'm glad I got the chance to go into work today.

Project Play: monkeys with typewriters

Our final assignment in our Library 2.0 curriculum is to watch and comment on a video of Seth Godin discussing curiosity. This one is easy, because I watched the video and posted it in this blog two months ago. But this assignment calls for a few more comments.

Godin lifts up: "a desire to understand, a desire to try, a desire to push whatever envelope you're interested in" and this is very much to the point of Project Play, to the point of why we need to keep pushing our own envelopes, and being curious about our users and ways to deliver our services.

The final point of the videographer is that curiosity is not something we can do, but something that comes from beyond our cleverness. I'd agree, curiosity is inherent: cats have it and so do us apes. Those of us who work in public libraries rely on curiosity to bring people into our doors. I think most children tend to have a natural curiosity -- if it's not trained out of them -- and that's part of the joy of working in library children's services.

Some people come to us merely for comfort and entertainment; there's nothing wrong with that. But some walk in the door wanting to learn, to understand, with a desire to make something better. We try to give them tools, such as literacy and access to information and ideas. We want to encourage curiosity; it behooves us to be curious as well, to keep trying to understand our users' changing needs and our own options to meet those needs.

What I love about Project Play is that it encourages us to develop our own natural curiosity and mess around with some technological toys and tools to think up -- and discuss -- new ways to deliver services. The world keeps changing: we need all our curiosity to keep learning and all the worthwhile tools we can find to keep our libraries changing with community needs.

Or in the words of Bob Dylan:

He not busy being born is busy dying

Even monkeys using typewriters might write the works of Shakespeare . . . library folk with 2.0 tools ought to be able to do some worthwhile things.

Web 3.0? Not so fast, there!

Some of my favorite bloggers are sounding cautionary notes. Amid recent concerns about Library 2.0 from folks like John Blyberg, Jeff Scott and Rochelle Hartman, there are new concerns from Tasha Saecker and growing affirmations of slow reading and slow library.

Blyberg notes that Library 2.0 "represents technology that is inherently disruptive on many levels" and that it can "undermine notions of authority and control." These concerns were discussed here recently. Hey, in a 2.0 world. we can read lots of reviews on Amazon -- let's cancel that Booklist subscription. And Tasha's concern about the personalized web 3.0 is right on:

...perhaps our strength is that instead of having a faceless computer ... making suggestions, we have REAL LIVE PEOPLE who can do it. And do it well.

Honestly, let's use our technology knowledge to blog, tweet, post, comment, shout that we already do this. Let's offer the service online to make it shiny and new, but let's not forget that LIBRARIANS RULE in this arena already. And let's keep on making sure that we are the human face of information, of recommendations. "

I dearly love InfoSoup, our consortial catalog, as a great library tool. I want to continue developing our online resources in an interactive 2.0 way. But I'm concerned if patrons identify more strongly with online resources than with the physical library. Call me old-fashioned (maybe just old), but I think we need to mindfully maintain high touch as well as high tech. That means library as place and librarians as face-to-face. It means marketing the value of our staff expertise and our reference services as well as library programs.

I remember my colleague Barbara Kelly, twenty years ago having an argument in correspondence with Alfred Glossbrenner, author of How to Look It Up Online. At that time Barbara and I were the apostles of online service at our library, but in the emerging Internet, we were already concerned with the downside of disintermediation which Glossbrenner was touting. Yes, you can look it up for yourself, but the information you find will be presented without authority -- or with anonymous authority. Is it surprising that not long ago, I found myself in a meeting where a community was debating building a library and a high school teacher publicly declared that the Internet had made libraries obsolete? We hear that misperception too often, but we need to be careful how we feed it. As Tasha notes, our role as mediators has value.

In a self-check, instant message world where people google for information, we need to think about how we build connections and community, how we turn information into education, and why people should pay taxes to ensure we keep doing it. If the library is a growing organism, we need to promote growth for our users and communities -- in a balanced way, online and in person. We need to connect. Or we could turn into Amazon and Netflix.

Black Belt Librarians

Thanks to OWLS, our library system, and an LSTA grant, we’re having two days of Black Belt Librarian training with Warren Graham, the author and library security consultant. An unsolicited endorsement: he gives a terrific presentation, entertaining, full of common sense wisdom and useful ideas. Feedback from dozens of staff is uniformly enthusiastic.

Graham describes library security in broad contexts: library staff and users are human, with all the inherent strengths and weaknesses. He teaches us to approach problems by understanding ourselves, being self-affirming not self-defeating, and responding than reacting. He teaches good communication techniques and ways to keep improving. He shares good ideas about using our organizational structure to make our organizations and our libraries better places to be. He teaches how to be "all about communication, rather than confrontation".

Listening to Warren talk, I had to think about pros and cons of current practice at our library.

Things we’re doing right:

• We have a security policy and procedures -- developed with staff input
  
• We have communication mechanisms, we document problems
• We use progressive discipline and ban people from the library when we need to
• We orient new staff to security concerns, policies & procedures and specifically tell them:
• There’s nothing more important than the safety of users and staff
• Anyone on staff is authorized to call the police any time – you won’t be wrong
• Anyone on staff is authorized to throw people out of the library
• Every one of us is responsible for maintaining the library environment

Things we might improve:

• Some of our procedures are a bit black and white. But in a gray world, our rules will never cover every problem, so maybe we should have fewer rules
• Some staff areas need locking doors, and it’s possible we need to do some construction work to build a doorway or two
• We need to keep talking about the security gate / book alarm and how we respond. Much of this is driven by our space design and how materials are processed in other libraries before we get them. Nonetheless, more talk is in order.
• We should talk about visibility and mirrors in out of the way corners.
• We should have a security review process – we’ve done this with Police and we’ve done it with staff, but we need to plan to keep doing it.

To people not in our area, I strongly recommend getting Warren Graham to do a presentation. This would make a great preconference program for a state association. Or at least read his book

To APL staff, trustees, friends, whether or not you made it to Warren’s program – let me know what you think – comment here or drop me an email. A program like this does not resolve issues – it helps start new conversations.

Appleton library's new program reaches out to teens

Bethany Blank, 14, and Skyler Keough, 15, both of Appleton enjoy some friendly competition while playing a video game during the Teens Take a Break series at the Appleton Public Library. Post-Crescent photo by Dan Powers

Post-Crescent January 14, 2008
Appleton library's new program reaches out to teens
Series hopes to draw kids looking for a place to hang out and have some fun

By Cheryl Sherry
Post-Crescent staff writer

When you think of hot spots for teen fun, the Appleton Public Library doesn't necessarily come to mind.

Not yet anyway.

"We're not just stuffy old books and homework," young adult librarian Paula Wright said.

Although the library always has offered programming for teens, it never has been on a weekly basis. That all changed Tuesday with the kick-off of the new Teens Take a Break series, which gives young adults in grades seven through 12 four different entertainment options each month. It also gives them a break from the rigors of school, homework, work and social obligations.

"This is something where they can take a break from their busy lives and at least once a week come to the library and do something fun and relaxing," Wright said.

Menasha teen Tori Fisher said while there are many activities in the area for teens, Take a Break will offer them the chance to hang out with teens from all over the Fox Valley, which normally isn't an option.

Kaukauna teen Skyler Keough not only sees the program as a great idea, but the library as a great place to do it.

"I think that if the word gets out, then as more teens come together we can make more friends and become more accepting of others. There are many great opportunities, and I hope to become involved in as many as possible. … I think the program will be a huge success."

"The idea was to have one all-encompassing program where we try to incorporate all the different things we know teens are interested in and want to do into one big program where we do something for them every Tuesday night," Wright said. "So they know at the library every Tuesday night there's going to be some kind of program. And the different kinds of programs appeal to different kinds of personalities of teens. The goal is to let teens know there is a place they can come hang out. They are welcome."

The first Tuesday of the month is game break night, a drop-in chance to play Wii or Playstation 2, board games or cards.

"We've had lots of requests by teens to do some kind of gaming program, and the Wii and the Playstation 2 aren't available to all teens," Wright said.

As part of the Outagamie Waupaca Library System, a Wii, Playstation 2 and games were purchased and made available to member libraries interesting in offering a gaming program for children, teens or adults.

Under the guidance of library assistant Diana Sandberg, week two of the program gives the crafty teen a chance to create anything from a juice pouch handbag to Amigurumi (Japanese art of crocheting small stuffed animals) to magnetic poetry.

Anime will be shown on the third Tuesday of the month. Anime is essentially animation and a popular form of entertainment in Japan. Many times, anime comes from a manga, or Japanese comic book.

Music will fill the atrium on the last Tuesday of the month with the Jungle Jive Concert venue featuring local teen and young adult bands.

"It's an opportunity for teens to play their music in a safe open environment that is extremely casual," Wright said. "It is hard for teens to find a forum in which they can play. They have to play 50 minutes to an hour, and all musical styles are welcome."

Plus, bands get paid.

For participating teens, however, Teens Take a Break doesn't cost a dime, thanks to the Appleton Library Foundation.

Cheryl Sherry: 920-993-1000, ext. 249, or csherry@postcrescent.com


Sidebar
More info

Teen bands interested in playing at the library's Jungle Jive Concert venue are asked to e-mail Paul Wright at teen@apl.org or call 920-832-6177.
A Program Extra! pizza and book discussion will be offered from noon to 1 p.m. Feb. 15 in the lower-level meeting rooms of the Appleton Public Library. The Community Reads books, "Green Angel" and "Blackbird House," will be discussed.
Upcoming schedule:
Jan. 15: "Go Green Scrap Art" drop-in between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. in the lower-level Young Adult room
Jan. 22: "Slayers Next," Anime for Teens film series, 6:30 p.m. lower-level meeting room
Jan. 29: Jungle Jive Concert, 7 to 8 p.m. in the Library Atrium
Feb. 5: Game Break, 7 to 8:45 p.m. in lower-level meeting room
Feb. 12: Valentine/Un-Valentine Altered Cans craft drop-in between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. in the lower-level Young Adult room
Feb. 19: "Suzuka," Amime for Teens film series, 6:30 p.m. lower-level meeting room
Feb. 26: Jungle Jive Concert, 7 to 8 p.m. in the Library Atrium

For the rest of the schedule, go to teen.apl.org

Hacking the Library

In a post titled "10 ways to hack your local library", Jeff Scott at Gather No Dust gives us some good insights on ways anybody can exert their influence at their public library. In fact, if we at the library are doing our job we're paying attention all the time. To cite one of Jeff's insights, merely by the act of checking out a book, a library user communicates a preference that will influence future purchases.

Jeff's points are all worth checking out. The only distinction I'd make is not all libraires extend such major benefits to their friend's groups -- but the ideas are worth considering. Check 'em out! Some of these are like a low tech 2.0, but the principle is the same -- we need to be open and interactive. Library 2.0 is in many ways only good customer service principles and techniques while acknowledging and using rapid technology changes in our professional environment. Here's the outline:

1. Check out Books
2. Don't see it -- ask us to buy it
3. The world is at your fingertips with Interlibrary Loan
4. Don't know what to read? Ask us! Or ask us anything, really!
5. Be our Friend
6. Ask us for services
7. Return books
8. Ask about our services
9. Databases are good
10. In fact EVERYTHING is free

Ask for What You Want

Michael Stephens & Michael Casey, writing in Library Journal, challenge us to move beyond our perceived stereotypes. They note:

Unfortunately, librarians are often portrayed as technologically backward, fearful of teens and loud noises, and overly protective of books to the point of not wanting anyone to “touch our stuff.”

Their suggestion is that we as a profession need to be more assertive. If we confront our problem patrons rather than creating new rules so we don't have to confront them, we'll be moving in the right direction. We should not hesitate to enforce our rules.

Their other example is our failure to get any library vendors to provide iPod-compatible audiobooks via libraries (surely a frequent patron complaint). I'm unsure that a lack of librarian assertiveness has been key in that issue. I suspect we don't swing enough weight in the market to make a difference in this particular battle of the Apple-Microsoft wars.

It occurs to me that budgets might be another example. We have to articulate our needs, but we're hesitant to alienate decision-makers. We may not get what we ask for, but if we don't ask, we'll surely not get it. The LJ article, and the reader responses, are worthwhile.