m-libraries @ Internet Librarian 2009

A couple of the workshops I attended today dealt with what has become a very hot topic of late: mobile site design for your library.

Should your library have one? Well, according to one speaker today, mobile devices will be the world's primary method for accessing the Internet in 2020. Unless you really believe that your local community is not going to ride that wave, the answer is yes, your library needs to start thinking about a mobile site. And studies have demonstrated that a successful user experience on your site is positively correlated with having a site that is designed specifically to be accessed on mobile devices. You need one.

What should be on your mobile site? Not everything that exists on your "normal" site. That's the short answer. As explained in one of the sessions, mobile sites shouldn't be designed for browsing; the reality of Internet browsing on mobile devices today doesn't support a lot of browsing. Thinking about your mobile site from a transactional standpoint makes sense. You users will want to find library hours, check their account, search for a book, get directions. Another study cited in one of today's sessions explained that 75% of users are willing to wait no more than 8 seconds for a page to load. 1 in 5 will wait 20 seconds. What does this say about what you have on your mobile site? It says include as few graphics as possible. Do everything you can to speed up the load time. And, for that matter, because the screens are so small, a bunch of text will look very dense; use brief sentences.

How do you design your mobile site? There are so many different platforms from which users are accessing the Internet on mobile devices that it's extremely difficult to design in such a way that your site will render the same on each device. This fact reinforces the need to stick with a simple design; the less complexity, the greater the likelihood of consistent rendering across platforms. But the diversity of platforms in use also suggests that you get feedback from your users when you're planning your design. Find out what they're using so you don't just focus on a design that works great on an iPhone but leaves 95% (or more) of your users dissatisfied with your shiny new mobile site.

The Future of Libraries and “Micro Interactions” @ Internet Librarian 2009

I went to three workshops today and two of them were great. The third, it was alright. That's OK, though; there are always a few sessions that don't turn out to be as interesting as you'd thought they'd be. The first session of the morning was "Digital Library Landscape" by OCLC's Roy Tennant. As Roy explained, the time constraints of these sessions don't allow for a real in-depth investigation of any one issue affecting libraries so, for that reason, Roy presented the "30,000 foot" view of what's happening in libraries today. And it wasn't pretty either. He started with a slide that read, "Libraries are in imminent danger". What is that danger? Pointing to a 2005 study titled Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, Tennant explained that the vast, and I do mean VAST, majority of people think automatically and almost solely of books when they think of the library. Beside the point that library folk know how inaccurate this perception is, what's the big deal if this is how we're perceived? Well, considering the rate at which books are being digitized and advances are being made in the development of electronic readers that folks can use to download books in their own home, our users' perceptions are apt to start at "the library is all about books" and end at "what do I need the library for, I can get any book I need without leaving the house". That's a bad situation. In fact, Tennant put it pretty bluntly himself when he said that "the value of libraries to society decreases as easy access to information increases".

And the fact remains that we are a few years away yet from the experience of really getting any book we want delivered automatically via the Internet onto a reading device that delivers a pleasant experience. However, right now there are tons of reasonable online experiences related to finding books but we all know that our library catalogs are not one of those reasonable experiences. Our catalogs stink compared to what folks get from non-library book searches (e.g. Amazon). Tennant said that our OPACs are nothing but a card catalog card on a screen. True enough. As an example of what he called the SOPAC (that's Social OPAC), Tennant showed the Darien Library catalog and emphasized the importance of including every opportunity possible in the OPACs for allowing customer participation of informal metadata. Allow and encourage ratings, reviews (also known as comments), and tags. And just as important, if not more so than creating a library catalog that encourages participation in the development of the library on the part of the users are our efforts (the one's we should be making, anyway) at "becoming essential in the new ecology"; inserting ourselves into the lives that our users are living outside of the library. We should syndicate our content so it the users don't have to come to us as often.

Of course, what we aren't trying to do is keep our users from visiting us which raises another point that Tennant emphasized. We should "be the place where stuff happens". We are always going to have books (and music and movies and magazines and…) but, if Tennant is right and we are going to lose a big share of our market on books, we need to do something. While Tennant didn't tell us what it is that we need to do specifically, he issued a good starting point: "You have to solve their problems. Once you solve their problems, you solve yours." So, the big question is what problems do we need to solve for public library users? I certainly don't have the answer but I sure intend to use this question as a method of framing my thinking when working on service improvements.

The second excellent workshop I attended today was "Micro Interactions, Conversations, and Customers" with David Lee King, Julie Strange, and Amy Kearns. For the most part, this session was another discussion of the utility of Twitter (though not entirely exclusively of other social networking tools) in libraries but the real message was more about the philosophy behind using social networking tools as additional routes for customer engagement rather than focusing on the tools themselves. Basically, to use David's term, a micro interaction happens anytime a library representative talks to a customer via website comments, wall posts, tweets, IM's, status updates, or even when we retweet something that might be of interest to other customers. As guidelines for jumping in and using these tools to foster micro interactions, David gave a several pointers; here's a few:

• Say what's in your head – Don't worry about what you have to say; if you're thinking it (within reason!) and feel like sharing it, somebody will find it useful. Libraries' online presences really shouldn't be stuffy and formal. Speak in an authentic voice and you'll get authentic responses.
  
• You have to give to get – This is the bottom line. If you don't add to the conversation, nobody is going to pay attention. Find something to say!
  
• Ask and ye shall receive – Much like Bobbi Newman mentioned in an earlier session, a strong social network of likeminded professionals is an incredible resource. Develop your network and ask these folks your questions; they'll answer!
  

Amy and Julie followed David and talked more specifically about using Twitter to connect with your users. I found their three C's of Twitter, connections, collaborations, and conversations, to be useful in answering the questions of your library peers who don't understand the value that Twitter brings to the customer development table. With Twitter (and Facebook , Flickr, FriendFeed, etc.) we can create more "real" relationships with users (some of whom are and some of whom aren't frequent face-to-face visitors) by working with them to answer questions, solve problems, and just talk about what's going on in the community. Amy and Julie also mentioned Twitter's potential for "harnessing the hive" or crowdsourcing when you have a question. With Bobbi, David, and Amy and Julie zeroing in on this idea, it seems clear that Twitter is establishing itself as a tool we can all take advantage of for problem solving if we develop strong networks.

Internet Librarian 2009 Pre-conference Day 2

I took it easy on the second day of the Internet Librarian pre-conference. I started the day with an awesome, fog-filled jog in Pacific Grove, and then visited the Monterey Public Library to get my official library card. I am an avowed library tourist so I get a card from the local library wherever I go in California (the public libraries might all be broke here but at least you can get a card anywhere in the state if you're a resident!). I will say that the customer service I received at the library was really quite excellent, which is always nice to see.

I only attended one workshop today but it was a good one: "Twitter: Enabling Customer Conversations" with Michael Sauers and Christa Burns from the Nebraska Library Commission and David Lee King from the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. While the workshop was intended primarily for folks very new to Twitter, and thus provided some information with which I was already familiar, there was some good, new information, too. And listening to three different perspectives on the use of Twitter in libraries was just plain interesting.

Among the Twitter-related websites and platforms that were discussed, Hootsuite looks good (I actually have an account already but I have no idea when I signed up or what my log-in info is…) as a platform for Twitter because, while offering a lot of the robust features of the more well known Tweetdeck, it is entirely web-based meaning that those of us who can't download applications to our work computers (probably most of us?) can still use Hootsuite at work without a problem! One of the coolest features in Hootsuite is the ability to track click-through statistics on URL's included in tweets. I see a lot of use for this as Sacramento Public Library's Twitter account often features links to items in our catalog; knowing how effective this approach is would obviously be a good thing. Tweetstats is website that you can use to very easily generate some colorful graphic displays of your Twitter usage. Kind of fun to see the patterns of my usage. Another website, Tweetreach, is also potentially useful in tracking the effectiveness of specific tweets. The site will tell you how many people saw a given tweet, URL, or hashtag. I can see using this site as a means for evaluating the effectiveness of different types of tweets from the library. That is, are followers more likely to retweet a program announcement or a book recommendation?

David Lee King had some interesting comments about, too, about measuring the success of your library's Twitter presence. Most importantly, he said, was the need to plan your strategy before you even start using Twitter as a formal method for representing your library online. Beyond that careful planning, though, he also mentioned four different categories worth measuring once you've started:

1. Raw numbers – just tracking the numbers of folks you're following and how many are following you. Look for trends and think about what might be behind any trends you see. For example, if there was a sudden increase in the number of followers you attracted one month, try to correlate that growth with something else. That information will be useful developing a strategy to continue to grow your follower base.
   
2. Interactions – How often are the library's tweets being retweeted by followers? How often are followers direct messaging the library account? These are good indications of the value the community is finding in your message and the value they find in your organization. Again, pay attention to those retweets in order to determine what kinds of messages resonate with the community. Then keep talking about those things!
   
3. Sentiment – Another way for evaluating your library's value to the community is through measuring the sentiment of tweets about the library. There are tools out there that will help you to analyze how positive or negative the comments are that people are making about your library on Twitter. Here is a link to an article that reviews five such analyzers.
   
4. Stories – This is just anecdotal measurement. Keep track of the interactions with customers via Twitter that have really had a positive impact for those customers and include these stories in your reports to administration, to the Board, to the Foundation, to the local press, to whomever ought to know the positive and innovative things your library is doing!
   

Tomorrow marks the "real" start of the conference and I am looking forward to it!

Internet Librarian 2009 Pre-conference Thoughts

Today was a great warm-up for the next several day's worth of library geek-out at Internet Librarian 2009! First I attended LibCamp Monterey at the Monterey Public Library and then a workshop on time management with Bobbi Newman and Brenda Hough. I also got to meet some cool people face to face (like Bobbi) who I've "known" via Twitter and Facebook but with whom now I'm enjoying the opportunity to actually get to know a little better. In fact, I also met several interesting folks for the first time today; I hope the rest of the conference is filled with as many interesting new people!

While I heard many thought provoking ideas and comments today, maybe my favorite take away from the day's sessions was a rather prosaic one. I think it was Brenda in my second workshop today who mentioned that there are three "stages" to time management:

1. Planning
   
2. In the Moment
   
3. Reflection
   

I like very much the idea of consciously including reflection as part of the process of any project, task, or experience. Perhaps this idea is attractive because it articulates for me something I already do but about which I wasn't aware. I think the reason I've taken to blogging in general is because it provides an impetus for me to reflect on ideas that interest me in some way. As I think through these ideas to the degree necessary to write a few coherent paragraphs, it helps me to internalize what I've learned. And I think taking the time to reflect on what I experience at professional conferences is the only way to really ensure I take something back to my job with me when I return (though I'd be happy to stay right here in Monterey if there were any way I could manage it!). So count a new dedication to be more thoughtful about my experiences as a first Internet Librarian benefit.

There were a few other tidbits from Bobbi and Brenda's session that I'm looking forward to trying out when I get home as methods for increasing my productivity, too. A potentially big one for me is the concept of just completely shutting down my beloved Outlook but for a two or three designated times a day. The idea here is that the little bell alerting me to a new incoming email will cease to pull my attention away from whatever project on which I'm working. But here's the problem: I love the little bell. I'm seriously like Pavlov's dog about the little bell. It isn't rare that I'll be walking away from my desk, here the little bell, and sit right back down to read whatever "urgent" message has just arrived. Seriously, I can see the point of the suggestion that I eliminate this distraction from my attention and I want to give it a try. I can already tell it won't be easy though; as I write this post, every time a Tweetdeck pop-up appears on my screen telling me that a new #IL2009 tweet was posted, I'm switching over to see what somebody had to say. If this post seems a little disjointed, now you know why. I guess that ought to be a lesson for me?

Bobbi said something else in the workshop that I found very interesting. As part of discussion about the merits of social networking in the workplace (not everyone in the session was convinced of the positive aspects of this), she said, essentially, that when you hire someone today, you're also hiring the collective expertise of everyone in their social network. In short, the argument I heard Bobbi making was that being part of a robust social network of professionals increases our value to our organizations as individuals. That's a really interesting concept that I need to think about a little more.

LibCamp Monterey, too, was a great time. Basically, it was just about twenty librarians (from all manner of libraries – public, academic, corporate, medical, law) having a conversation that flowed from one topic to the next for three hours. We touched on the idea of emerging technology librarians (shouldn't we *all* be following emerging technologies?), customers' expectation of librarians versus our perceptions of ourselves and the roles of different library employees, libraries as community "living rooms", concepts of roving reference, and the importance of being as transparent as possible in decision-making both to our users and to the members of the organization. That wasn't all of it but really just a sample. Perhaps one of the more striking comments from that session was that, as different as libraries are from one another (a corporate library is very much not a public library), we shared remarkably similar concerns, interests, etc.

Right now, as I should at a professional conference, I feel very energized about my profession and am looking forward to building on that enthusiasm over the next several days.

Internet Librarian 2009, Here I Come

I'm finally making it to Internet Librarian! This conference has been on my must-see list since I became a librarian and, finally, I'm going to get there. Just because I'm super excited and I leave for Monterey in only 100 hours or so, I want to give a run-down of the workshops I plan on attending while there:

Saturday
*Library Camp Monterey @ Monterey Public Library

*Technology Strategy Planning

Sunday
*Technology Grants for Libraries

Monday
* Digital Library Landscape

* Digitizing in Action
Both of these workshops ought to be helpful now that SPL's Sacramento Room is in the very early stages of a digitization project.

* Micro Interactions, Conversation, & Customers
This will be my first presentation by David Lee King so I'm looking forward to that! With SPL really trying to engage our customers in this fashion, I hope to get some great ideas in this workshop. On a side note, while looking up the URL to King's blog, I just noticed how much my blog photo looks like his. That's kind of weird.

* 2.0 Too: Web Services for Underfunded Libraries

* Marketing Digital Collections
Even though this will be the fifth workshop of the day (that's a lot!), this should be really helpful as I try to make accessible our newly digitized materials.

Tuesday
* Dreaming, Designing, & Using Mobile Library Platforms
SPL recently launched our first iteration of our mobile site based, in part, on the Skokie Library mobile site. Skokie's R. Toby Greenwalt will be at this session and I'm looking forward to what he has to say.

* Putting Your Library on a Mobile Phone

One of the presenters at this workshop is Greg Carpenter of Boopsie. We are looking at Boopsie as a potential resource for our mobile catalog so I'm very interested in attending this workshop.

* Mobile Marketing

Now that we've launched our mobile site, I've been thinking a lot about how to both market the new site and use the site to market to new audiences. Hopefully I'll learn a little about both topics here.

Wednesday
* Every Library Should Have a Sandbox to Play In

SPL's recent 27 Things program demonstrated that our staff is interested in trying new things. I'm hoping to get some ideas about how to institutionalize our organizational learning here.

* Persuasion, Influence & Innovative Ideas

Piggybacking of the previous workshop, new ideas often meet with a lot of opposition and I'd like to learn how to better deal with that in this workshop.

* 23 Things for Communities

I've already decided that SPL *really* needs to host a public version of the 23 Things so I am *really* excited to see this topic as an option. And I'm looking forward to seeing the Librarian By Day present, too.

I'll be blogging about much of what I see and hear at the conference so, if you're interested, come back and see how the conference goes.

Why Should a Library Use Twitter? Because the Customers Are!

I've mentioned before how much fun I'm having participating in the development of Sacramento Public Library's online presence (largely via our Twitter and Facebook accounts) and something just happened that only reinforces my belief in social networking as a boon to our efforts both to broaden and make more meaningful our contact with our library users. At the end of the day today, I was browsing through the latest results from the RSS feed from my Twitter search for the word "library" within 25 miles of Sacramento. I came across this tweet from @brownthumbmama:

"Email fr library: books are in! Go to library: closed today for staff training. #FAIL"

Yes, it's true, the Library was closed for our annual Staff Training day. We did our best to notify folks in advance via signage, our website, and postings both on Twitter and Facebook. Nonetheless, not everyone got the message and we had at least one disappointed customer. Not cool! In the best tradition of using Twitter to engage our customers, I responded with an apology that @brownthumbmama kindly retweeted. Nice. Even nicer, though, was what I discovered when I clicked through to her profile, saw the link to her blog and was treated by this absolutely awesome tribute presumably referring to Sacramento Public Library! Even the comments on the post left by other readers are positive about the Library.

Besides the pleasure of seeing the community's fondness for the Library on display, I love this because it gives credence to the notion that its important for the Library to work at developing our online presence. There are lots of folks "out there" online talking about us; by participating in those discussions we learn more about our users while having the opportunity to respond within the online network of library users when someone has a less-than-perfect library experience.

Staff Learning @ the Library

Sacramento Public Library held its annual Staff Training Day today and it was a great time! Folks from 27 branches across the county as well as all of our important support departments came together at the Central Library to meet, eat, hear an exciting keynote from our new Library Director Rivkah Sass, and most importantly, learn from one another in an impressive series of workshops throughout the day. Workshop topics ran the gamut from computer and database training sessions, customer service-related courses, retirement planning, programming ideas, project management skills, supervision techniques, volunteer coordinating, ergonomics, and my favorite, the technology petting zoo!

Judging by the turnout, I wasn't the only one who loved the petting zoo, either! Check out the turnout in this shot:

SPL's Digital Services Library Megan Wong put together an exciting session that let people get their hands on a wide variety of tech toys. There were digital cameras, flip video cameras, a Skype set-up, a magic jack, a netbook, an iPod Touch, a Kindle and a Sony eReader, Guitar Hero, Nintendo DSI's, a Wii, and even a robotic lawn mower (though I'm not sure how that one figures into the library setting)! I was really excited to see the enthusiasm that exists at the Library for learning about new technologies as evidenced by the turnout for this program; even more impressive to me, though, was how familiar so many of the attendees were with most of what we had to offer. The staff at SPL are really a pretty tech savvy bunch!