The Civil Librarian in AL Direct!
First, a piece I posted on my blog on May 19, "Put the Book in Their Hands (however we can)" was included in that same day's issue of AL Direct, the American Library Association's electronic newsletter. That's pretty cool! It is funny, though, because on May 20, I noticed way more traffic to my blog than I'd ever had before but I wasn't able to figure out where it was coming from because the showing up in my analytics package pointed back to some encrypted page. I just stumbled across my name in AL Direct last night while surfing around.
After writing that post, in which I suggested that libraries ought to familiarize ourselves more fully with the e-reader capability of smartphones as well as with the vast "collection" of freely available ebook titles on the web, I did some more thinking on the subject. I'm convinced that this approach would be an enhancement to the services we already provide our users but this isn't something that we can just pile on top of everything we already do.
In order to make the concept of library staff as purveyors of free, online ebooks in addition to the physical titles we own in our collections, staff need training. And we need to implement service models that encourage absolutely as many customers as possible to do for themselves in the library what they can (using self-check stations that allow for every possible transaction to be carried out there). This is important because the kind of service I'm envisioning down the road relative to face to face "reference" transactions are those that are more complex, take more time, and require a greater degree of technological facility on the part of staff than we currently expect.
For the reasons I've just outlined, I'm excited that, due to some restructuring at Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library (forced upon us by fiscal crises), our library will have a dedicated staff trainer come July! I think this is an example of some really good news coming out of difficult situations. SSJCPL is under tremendous stress right now due to all the budgetary concerns but we're going to come out of this positioned to provide even better service than we already do while, at the same time, demonstrating our commitment to the ongoing education of the staff. And, we'll also be implementing self-check stations across the county (and in sufficient numbers) that allow for the scope of transactions required to free up staff for those more complex and meaningful interactions with customers.
Possible SSJCPL Privatization?
This morning's Manteca Bulletin details the ongoing issue of potential privatization of our library. It's very encourage to see a councilmember described as "having no stomach for privatization"; here's to hoping that other influential folks feel the same. The other noteworthy part of the article is the expressed interest on the part of the Manteca government in reviving the regional library advisory board. Manteca isn't the first body to suggest this lately and I concur that such accountability and transparency on the part of the Library could only be a positive for our system as we move forward.
Google Forms!
Yes, I know that Google Forms are not new. But, admittedly, they're new to me. I have not played around much with Google Docs in general but, last weekend, as I was putting together an HTML form to collect statistics from all the branch libraries in the system, I stumbled across Google Forms. My challenge (as a non-expert in web development) was how to dump the data I collected in a form into a spreadsheet that would allow for easy use later on. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Google Forms does exactly that in about as easy a manner as imaginable!
Take a look:
Just in case you have data collection needs and aren't aware of Google Forms, this program lets you very, very easily create a form with any number of different input types (radio button, check box, likert scale, free text, etc.) that, when completed by a user, dumps that data directly into a Google Docs spreadsheet. If you want, it's very easy then to export that data into Excel but the Google spreadsheet does plenty on its own, too.
SSJCPL has not done the best job of collecting statistics in the past and, clearly, a well-conceived and consistent approach to data collection can provide a great deal of valuable decision-making information. I'm excited by this small enhancement to our administrative processes as well as by the improvements to our library that this will bring!
3 comments:
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Chris, congrats on getting picked up in AL Direct! My son, the non-reader, is reading voraciously now that he has a Kindle. Clearly, the e-platform is just right for some people.
To that end, here's a story shared by RH at our all-staff meeting this morning: A woman in her 80s called TELIS to ask what the green "request" button in our catalog was for, and when we explained it was so she could request that a book be delivered to her local branch, she exclaimed, "OMG! I didn't know you could do that! I've just been using your catalog to download e-books."
Congrats on the ALA Direct mention!
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