Posts tagged ‘Uncategorized’
Screenagers and the Future of Libraries
Last night I spoke at the “Archons of Colophon” of NYC, meeting in an Irish bar called Rosie O’Grady’s in Times Square. The title of my presentation was “Far out or forthcoming? Foreshadowing the future of library service excellence. ” I spoke about “screenagers,” the 12-18 yr. olds who have grown up with computers and a life full of looking at screens. Their preferred mode of communication is Instant Messaging and SMS texting. They are busy chatting away loads of hours after school with school aged friends. I also talked about how libraries need to be present in cyberspace (through email and live chat reference) to be responsive to the needs of this cohort. In a recent focus group with screenagers from rural Maryland, I found out that this group distrusts print (ouch!), really distrusts librarians (double ouch!) and looks first to friends and Google for all their information needs. They rarely check anything found in Google and only seek librarian help as a “last desperate resort.” I posed the question of how we can morph and deliver service excellence to these students and how libraries can be responsive and relevant to this group. I believe that we need to be invested in cyberlibrarianship, in email and chat reference and we also need to be much more receptive to this group and to value their need for immediacy and respect.
I also showed video clips from 3 feature films featuring views of librarians in the distant future: Star Trek, Star Wars (Attack of the Clones), and the Time Machine. Librarians are portrayed in each of these films as stereotypical icons: judgmental, contemptuous of users, and totally condescending. Is this our fate? Can we change with the library users of the present and future or remain on the periphery of information seeking as we cling to traditional practice?
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!
About Library Garden
ABOUT LIBRARY GARDEN
(You can reach us at librarygarden[at]gmail.com)
Library Garden has been conceived as an ongoing conversation among librarians with differing perspectives (public, academic, consortial, state, youth, LIS) but one shared goal: ensuring the health and relevance of libraries.
Library Garden is maintained by a team of contributing editors. We will each contribute to the blog, offering our individual perspectives on issues that affect or relate to libraries of all types. But we will also get together for regular topical conversations — conversations with each other, with others, with you — and post those conversations to the blog.
We love reading interviews, and often find them more interesting and stimulating than the articles that appear in our professional literature. Therefore, we intend to interview members of our extended library family, and occasionally interview folks from outside of the library fold, and post those interviews to the blog for your reading pleasure.
While the Garden is tended by our team of contributing editors, we would also like to open this forum to the occasional guest editor. If you have a piece you’d like to contribute, or discussion you’d like to be a part of, let us know.
WHY “LIBRARY GARDEN”?
Simple. We’re from New Jersey, the “Garden State”. Before you snicker, consider this: Our tiny little New Jersey ranks number 2 nationally in blueberry production, number 3 in cranberry production, number 3 in bell pepper production and number 4 in peach production. Also we have the best corn and tomatoes in the world. So there.
Sowing the seeds
First Post. Just testing. This is a picture of some baby ducks that I took near my office last May. What do they have to do with libraries? Well you see, I think ducks are an underserved population in libraries. If we can get them to come in for quacky time when they’re still fuzzy, cute, and let’s face it a little impressionable, I think we’ll have them for life.
Library Garden 