I never really understood why so many libraries frown upon sleeping. How could this be bad?
Reading aloud at the library
Happy holidays… Lichen
Many of my Sunday mornings find me, still pajamaed, coffee in hand (with just the tiniest splash of Bailey’s), pouring over the latest Postsecret cards. I look forward to it every week, probably the way some people look forward to church - it’s a small pilgrimage to our own essential humanity.
I also like Postsecret as an example of why the internet is a tool to reach out to our community’s under-served. There are people with needs, but no way to comfortably express them. I picture myself, hopelessly shy, terrified of crowds and awkward social situations, avoiding the hustle and bustle of the library like the plague, but totally comfortable and happy interacting via blogs, twitter, facebook, what have you. (I wonder how my life would be different if the today’s internet were around when I was 17… hmm) There’s a lot of people who fit that description.
When selling online services to librarians I often point out that the trick is to give the illusion of free speech while actually screening user-generated content for appropriateness. It seems underhanded but a necessary concession for librarians who have to be vigilant about protecting the library’s image… this one’s for the shusshers, kinda of thing.
This morning I had a rude awakening at the end of my Sunday ritual:
Last Monday, the PostSecret Blog on MySpace was the most visited Blog on MySpace. The next day MySpace administrators removed postcards and comments from the Blog and prevented more than 100,000 people from viewing it.
Many people have emailed me concerned about what happened. I am posting a response here because I am unsure if an explanation on the MySpace Blog will go uncensored.
As I write this,
the MySpace Blog is unblocked but the latest postcards and comments have been removed completely. MySpace has set my Blog so that only friends can see it. If you friend me now I will add you.http://www.myspace.com/postsecret
I will try and post more secrets on the MySpace Blog next week (November 15th) and see what happens. I hope you will email your friends about this and encourage MySpace to repost our secrets.
Conclusion: The ‘free and open exchange’ taking place on the internet is not always as free and open as it appears. This is a place where information can be censored - all the more reason the libraries need to be there.
* My new favorite phrase, ‘Humanity is the new technology‘ from David Armano.
In NH we get an extra long campaign season - so much that I’m a bit worried about the news vacuum that we’ll have on Wednesday - but it also creates an interesting sense of ownership and gravity in the state.
There have been some awesome posts from libraries about the election and the election process:
November — Time to Vote from the Dover PL- Don’t forget to vote from Cook in Tamworth
- Don’t forget to vote! from Merrimack PL
- Election Day: Tuesday, November 4th from border-town Chelmsford
- and finally two from Manchester: One for Kids and one for grown-ups…
I understand why they do it, being associated with the city and wanting their staff to vote, but a library closed on Election Day seems a bit ironic to me.
I just finished up my big NELA gig. I covered, step-by-step, how I updated my library website using flickr, a flickr badge, WordPress, and Feedburner. Google Calendars and Twitter made cameos.
The slides are available in pdf and Brian did a super job blogging it for NELA.
Last night, as I was updating my Wordpress, I decided I was sick of my old theme. So I found a new one. No great shakes… except that I’ve been blogging for the library. It’s quite interesting to put all the things I’ve talked about here into play over there. So, on the sidebar of the new theme you will also find the latest posts I wrote for the library blog.
As I was cleaning things up for an upgrade I noticed that Jill tagged me! I missed it like a big dope.
So, how did I become a librarian? Is it too smoochy to say I think I always was one? My mom is a librarian (and her little dog too); I loved computers; it just, kind of, made sense, I suppose. The really exciting thing was when I realized that I wanted to be a Technology Librarian. That can be pinpointed to a day: May 3, 2005 I attended the NEASIST Spring Program: Syndicate, Aggregate, Communicate. Jenny and Michael opened doors that day for me. I came home and started a blog. Shortly after I enrolled in SU’s advanced study program in Digital Libraries and, viola, here I am.
- Best library school faculty member when I was getting my degree: Jill Hurst-Wahl, Information School - obviously!? It’s not just because she memed me (although that would be a fine reason!), but it’s hard to find a connection when you’re taking online classes. You often feel like an afterthought. But Jill did it and it mattered a lot.
- Favorite class: Planning and Designing Digital Library Services taught by Mr. David Lankes
- Best bosses: Myself! I also really like Denise, my current boss. She gets it.
- Favorite library: Cook Memorial in beautiful Tamworth, NH… not just because my mommy works there, although it doesn’t hurt. It’s just a really welcoming place.
- Most unexpected career move: Becoming a Library Director at 22.
- Best career move to date: Cultivating a professional identity outside my job.
- Favorite piece of advice to others: Try it! You won’t break it and it won’t break you.
- Best piece of advice received: Play.
And with that I’m off to dust off my goods for NELA next week. I’ll be doing a super hands-on gig on how to get started overhauling your website: Easy Web Fixes. More on that later, to be sure.
I just made a personalized page for contacting me, the Head of Technology, using a bunch of free stuff:
- Meebo me
- Flickr’s embed option
- the NukeFeedback module for Dot Net Nuke (the city’s web content manager)
I know it’s not new or revolutionary, but it took me five minutes and it’s a great way to make a step toward bringing the value of librarians to the internet.
Making a page like this would be easy for any library with a website.
- Get a Yahoo account (free),
- sign up for a meebo account (free),
- Add your Yahoo IM to your Meebo account,
- create a meebo me widget
- copy that code into your website’s source code
- use your Yahoo ID to create a flickr account (free)
- upload a photo of a librarian (this is supposed to be about faces, right?)
- click ‘Share this’
- copy the code under embed and paste it into your website’s source code
- that should do it.
For the next two days I’m in beautiful Portland, ME at Turning the Page: Building Your Library Community. We were fortunate to be awarded a Gates Technology Grant for the next two years which requires a matching component. Attendance at this conference is a grant requirement intended to assist the libraries in raising the matching funds - an interesting idea. The conference itself is a joint effort between PLA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
We think we have already secured the required funds via our Foundation, but learning about effective advocacy is never a bad idea and I like attending a conference with such a narrow focus. I’m hoping to buy laptops to circulate for patron use in-house but we’ll see how that goes.
The opening speaker is about to get started.
I’m spending the day today at the NELA-ITS workshop on Library-Wide IT Proficiencies. I’m sitting across from the eminent Andrea Mercado and next to Brian Herzog, which is lovely… since I trust and respect both of them. And feel like my next professional challenge is going to be dissolving institutional idea of a Technology Librarian as IT support. My job and training is not best utilized rebooting computers and unjamming printers. These are important things, of course, but things I think every staff member should be empowered to do themselves.
My mantras:
- You are NOT going to break the computer.
- What did you try before you phoned me?
- Did you reboot?
I am hoping this workshop will help me take thing a bit further toward formal training and giving staff a sense of ownership and confidence when it comes to computers. My convention when live-blogging is to take notes but put my personal comments in brackets []:
Part I: Proficiency, IT Staff and End Users presented by Gary K. McCone and Grace R. Sines, National Agricultural Library
IT Proficiency - know what your end-users need/expect [my feelings are they EXPECT librarians to know everything or at least be proactive to solve their problems - they do not expect blank stares and shrugged shoulders.]
Training improves moral and teamwork because staff feel a sense of mastery.
Manages expectations.
Promotes efficiency. [Lately, this seems the magic word, 'it will make us more efficient goes quite far.]
A successful IT person wants to ENABLE staff to solve problems on their own.
Get to know your end-users better [I'm not trying to be sassy, but I'm not entirely sure why the National Agricultural Library is qualified for this.]
Four generations currently working all together: veterens, baby boomers, generation Xers, millennials.
[Idea: ask staff how THEY want to learn. Ask each reference librarian to take on a class.]
Define your core competencies - in black and white - the ability, skill, and knowledge required to do something technical.
Puposes:
- Develops a uniform knowledge-base
- Promotes self-sufficiency
- Keeps staff technology savvy
- Develops clear expectations
- Creates a culture of learning
- Improves customer services
Types
- Task-based: arrow in scope and specific, easy to demonstrate/measure.
- Descriptive: Broad, I know how to use the web.
Who should develop?
- management
- Professional Library staff
- Professional IT staff
- paraprofessionals
- volunteers
- Everyone should be involved.
People who are doing the work know what they need to know.
Decide on categories, levels, positions… expand on ideas within the categories.
What does everybody need to know?
Implementation: Communicate, Training, Job Description, Rating, Others… institutionalize it.
Incentives
Why? Threatened by technology, fear of looking foolish, change-resistant, increase motivation. Examples: Prizes, time off, bonus, public recognition.
All employees must go to two trainings per year related to their work… most choose what is related to technology. [I like this idea.]
Managers/supervisors write personal notes to congratulate staff, monitor progress toward a goal on a visual, group-incentive. Incentives are not always tangible.
IT Liaison Program - each division selected a liaison to act as the first point of contact for support questions - faster service, able to handle minor issues, enables self-sufficiency, representative of unit needs, assists in maintaining standards. Installation of software, assist in setting up new computers, assist with purchases, coordinate inventories, attend meetings and distribute to their unit. Wrote Standard Operating Procedures.
For months, nay years, I’ve been running around talking about how a library website should have all the earmarks of a branch library: materials, librarians, reference service, and programming. I finally got a chance to put my money where my mouth is.
This is Children’s Book Week and to celebrate I invited our staff to pose for photos with their favorite kids books. Then, in flickr, I added all the photos to our Manchester City Library flickr pool and then created a badge on the website for all photos in that pool and tagged with ‘cbw’ will show in the badge.
A blog post invites patrons with a flickr account to take a photo, add it to the group, and tag it appropriately in order to be part of the children’s book parade on our website. No one has done so yet, but I’m extremely hopeful… I don’t see why you would have to be a resident of Manchester so please, if you’re moved, join in!
After many months of spottily focused work, I was thrilled tonight to launch the upgraded, updated, preferred, deferred Tamworth Library website.
When Casey and I began to expand the concept he proved with wpopac into what has become Scriblio we quickly realized we would need a development partner. In order to create a tool to meet the needs and limitations of small and rural public libraries we needed to know, first hand, what the users those libraries expected from their library online. Enter Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth, NH. Serving an incredibly strong community of 2500 and with a staff who was dedicated to learning and implementing online services, Tamworth made an ideal beta site. We learned lots and everyone was happy with the result but as Scriblio grew and evolved, it was hard to keep Tamworth up to date. With both of us working day jobs, Tamworth’s site, while always growing in popularity, fell behind the latest and greatest Scriblio developments.
Those days are over. This evening we happily launched a new tamworthlibrary.org complete with a cleaned up and consistent database and a new look. Casey and Jay (Cook’s director) were extremely patient and supportive and patient during the slow process - thanks to both of you.
