Author Archive
Bringing in the Big Guns for Fines!
An interesting article about libraries hiring collection agencies just got posted on MSNBC. It provides a balanced view of the issue. Personally, my gut reaction is that this flies in the face of everything that I would like a library to be to its community. Realistically, I can understand the temptation to take such a drastic step.
It seems that most libraries who have resorted to using a collection service are using Unique Management Services, a company based in Jeffersonville, IN. I had never heard of them before I read this article. A quick bit of sleuthing reveals that they have partnered with TLC. You can have the services of Unique as an enhancement to your online catalog. According to the TLC web site:
Unique Management Services, Inc., a company in Jeffersonville , Indiana that partners with libraries to recover overdue funds and materials, offers its Debt Collection service to TLC customers – an efficient yet gentle way for libraries to recover funds.
I am really curious how they are more effective if they only use gentle means to collect the fines or overdue materials. It almost makes me want to get a fine at a Unique library to go through the experience of dealing with a “gentle” collection agent. I have never dealt with a collection agency, but from what I hear they are usually quite annoying and relentless and far from “gentle”. It seems that others share my doubts.
Back to the original article… they do interview the director at MPOW and it seems as if she is against the idea of a collection agency. whew.
I.M.
Sometimes less is more when it comes to titling a post and writing the entry. This will be one of those times.
If you are reading this and you work at a library that is resisting I.M. as a means of providing reference service or if your library will not allow installing I.M. clients for either staff use or on public computers, then I urge you to show this article on the I.M. Generation from the NYT to the powers that be.
My favorite quote from the article:
e-mail is woefully inadequate for guaranteed message delivery, and clumsy when it comes to conducting business in real time.
Nuff said.
Do they Count?
A quick follow up to my post yesterday about libraries and Sundays.
I did a seat count again at 3 pm and got very similar numbers to what I reported in my original post even with the sunny weather ( which actually sort of surprised me). But here is what I am left wondering:
Can I count the 9 people who were sitting outside the library on the public plaza using their laptops from our wireless connection?
We usually have anywhere from 10-30 people inside our library taking advantage of our wireless network. Late last fall the Borough of Princeton installed park benches and lovely tables on a newly built plaza that is right next to our library. Our signal reaches just far enough for those sitting in the plaza to log on. I guess with the sunny weather, our laptop users preferred to do their surfing in the sunshine.
So, can I count them?
Sundays and Libraries — they go together like PB&J!
Here it is high noon on the first really beautiful sunny Sunday of spring in New Jersey and I am already at work preparing to open the library doors in an hour. Part of me really wishes I was outside with the rest of the world enjoying the weather, but the other part of me really values and believes in public libraries being open on Sunday all year round.
I read an article this week about the library system in Mesa, AZ being forced to close their branch libraries on Sunday. [Budget woes close Mesa libraries on Sundays] I have seen all too many articles of a similar nature over the course of the last few years. It often seems that the big solution to budget problems for a public library is to simply close up shop on Sundays. Why is it that Sunday is the first to go? Why not close on Mondays or another day of the week instead if the budget is really so tight?
I think I know the answer to this question — because of union rules, or else libraries have contracts with employees that pay them extra for working Sunday so that makes the cost prohibitive. But we just have to accept the fact that our world has changed and (even if you don’t like it) Sunday is no longer considered to be different than any other day of the week by the majority of the population.
Librarians often talk about how they can attract the underserved or reach out to the non-user. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for attracting new library users and serving the underserved. But when I read about Sunday closings of public libraries it seems to me that what we are doing is alienating a significant portion of active library users and closing the doors on them during one of the few times they can use the library. Sunday is increasingly becoming the only day of the week that many people have time to visit the library and it is also the day that most students are trying to do their homework after procrastinating all weekend. I know for a fact that at MPOW our usage statistics would drop significantly without Sunday hours.
Like many public libraries, Sunday is our busiest day of the week. We are open 1-6 pm on Sundays year round. In those 5 hours that we are open we answer more questions and have higher circulation and door counts per hour than we do in any of the 12 hours that we are open on Monday (or some Tuesday for that matter). We have been taking seat counts on Sundays at 3 pm for a few months and even though we knew it was busy, we had no idea how busy until we started these seat counts. Consider this, 2 weeks ago at 3 pm on Sunday we had:
- 137 people actively engaged in activities on the 2nd floor (tutoring, studying, reading magazines, doing research, using the computers, etc)
- 102 people attending a program in our community room
- 37 people browsing the collection on the first floor
- 112 parents, children and teens on the 3rd floor
- 20 people in the library cafe
- 14 people in the conference room
If you are keeping track, that is 422 people in our 58,000 square foot building. I for one think that is impressive and I am sure many other libraries will be able to chime in with similar numbers. If you are not impressed yet, let me offer up these other statistics for the months of February and March 2006:
- When we open the doors at 1 pm on Sundays we have an average of 48 people lined up waiting for us to open. They start lining up around 12:45 pm or earlier and many wish we would open at noon.
- Our average gate count for the 12 hours we are open on Mondays: 3,390 or 282/hour
- Our average gate count for the 5 hours we are open on Sunday: 2,628 or 526/hour
Our gate count is almost double on Sunday when taken on an hourly basis. To me, that statistic alone should be enough to convince others of the value of being open on Sundays.
We have recently changed the way we staff on Sunday. We used to operate with a minimal staff of mostly part-time employees and one or two full-time employees. We have since added extra staff to each service point on Sundays and staff with as many full-time employees as possible. To accomplish this we had to do something that wasn’t easy or popular. We totally eliminated the concept of “Sunday Pay”. We had staff meetings to debate this issue and formed a committee to look at alternatives and (in the end) the reality was that Sunday was important to our users and we needed to staff it to best serve their needs.
I actually don’t mind working Sundays. I get time off on Monday in exchange when the grocery stores are less busy and I can do my other errands without the weekend crowds. I often accomplish a great deal more on a Monday off than a Sunday off, plus I can watch daytime tv or go to the gym in the early afternoon and not fight for a treadmill. To me, becoming more accepting of working on Sundays was just a matter of mind shift. Look for the positives and then the Sunday shift looks much better.
One more Sunday story before I get off my off soapbox:
When we built our new library 2 years we installed 105 computers for public use. We felt pretty confident that we had several years to go before we reached “computing capacity”. But it was less than a year after we opened that we actually had all 100+ computers in use and people waiting in line for a turn. When did this momentus event occur? On a Sunday, of course! To this day, we have only reached capacity a few more times… and it is always on Sunday.
Sharing: It’s the New Black
Last week I was at Computers In Libraries 2006 where the buzz seemed to be all about wikis, collaboration and social software. While attending a panel presentation called Wikis in Action one of the panelists made an off-the-cuff comment that “sharing is the new black”. This quip has been rattling around in my brain for several days — it ranks right up there as one of my top 3 favorite quotes of the conference. So, if you are the clever panelist who said this, please step forward and identify yourself — I would like to give you proper attribution. I think it might have been Darren Chase from SUNY Stony Brook.
As The Library Garden takes root, I am once again pondering this quote as we are envisioning this blog to be a collaborative effort by several librarian editors. We want to create a blog that exemplifies the “new black” attitude of the Web at the dawn of 2006. The Web is now a place where:
We want to contribute to the content.
We want to comment on what others contribute.
We want space to express our ideas, likes, dislikes, etc.
We want to create, remix, socialize, and connect.
We want to work with others to add and to share our knowledge.
This weeks cover story of Newsweek highlights the trend of viewing the Web as a place for users to both consume and contribute:
Next Frontiers – Putting The ‘We’ in Web
From MySpace to Flickr And YouTube, Social-Network Sites Are Leading a New Tech Boom; User-Generated Movement Called ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘Live’ Web
As the Newsweek article states:
…less than a decade ago, when we were first getting used to the idea of an Internet, people described the act of going online as venturing into some foreign realm called cyberspace. But that metaphor no longer applies. MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren’t places to go, but things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live.
As the Web evolves in to what Dan Chan of Daypop coined “The Living Web”, a place where users congregrate not just to find information but to share what they know and what they are thinking about, librarians need to continue to explore the opportunities that exist for weaving ourselves a place in this new social fabric.
Many physical libraries currently view themselves as the “community living room”, a place for people to congregrate, learn, share and discuss. How can we translate this in to the new social web that is rapidly emerging? Can we create an online version of the library as community living room? Is there room for a LibrarySpace next to MySpace?
Let’s get the discussion going. Let’s Collaborate… after all, sharing is the new black!
Library Garden 