Month: October 2008

Now that I’ve been back from Internet Librarian for a couple of days, I’m ready to write the final overview post for the conference. My big take-aways from this conference were the theme of experience – libraries & librarians providing experiences, not just service – and the absolute utility of Twitter. It seemed like many of the presentations I went to discussed the need for libraries to provide experiences for their patrons, not just books or “customer service”. The obvious presentation was David Lee King’s Designing The Digital Experience, a presentation based on his new book, aptly named “Designing The Digital Experience“. While his presentation was all about the experience, there were other presentations that just touched on the idea – but so many of them did that it stood out to me as a theme for this year.
As for the utility of Twitter – one anecdote comes to mind as the defining moment for the conference. One of my Twitter “tweeps” (twitter + peeps) sent out a tweet announcing $3 margaritas at a local establishment in Monterey. Within 20 minutes there were at least 20-25 people wandering in saying that they had heard that there were cheap drinks available (and yes, I was one of them…). One of our keynote speakers, Harold Rheingold – author of “Smart Mobs” – spent some time discussing the rise of groups of people who congregate where ever the tweet, text message or other “update” message says their friends are. This was definitely a case of a smart mob of librarians getting together for excellent conversation over so-so margaritas.
Finally, I did spend a good number of bytes complaining about the wireless access at IL 2008 this year. I stand behind that – I didn’t get a really good wireless signal until the last half of the last day of the conference. On the other hand, this year’s conference included a “blogger’s row” of tables set up at the front and back of every room. They were a really good idea (though they would have been more useful if we’d have had wireless access…) and something that I’d like to see at more conferences. The conference, in general, was useful and – as always – the bar/restaraunt/hallway conversations were among the most useful parts of the conference – because of the quality folks that attend this quality conference!

It’s not enough to just create an account anymore, and it’s not enough to shove your bad services into a new space. He’ll talk about new ways of planning & implementing things today. Why use emerging tech? Outreach & service – we need to get away from designing for the user and start designing by the user. How do we approach new ideas? Planning approach – takes too long, jump through hoops, eventual success or failure – slow! Committee approach – take an idea and destroy it.
Association professionals through the ages video from YouTube – very funny!
The evolving library – where we are headed – try, assess, reflect, repeat ad victorium.
Action steps:
• Try – Yoda was wrong
• Be fast – try to do it within 3 months
• Be human – be real, be patient with yourself
• Don’t over-plan
• Assess – assess our relationship with our users and their relationships with our services
• Write assessment into your plans
• Get user feedback – and use it
Write a 3-minute plan – who will coordinate, what are we trying out, when it will be complete, how do we know it will be successful. Be willing to fail – spectacularly! What made your most amazing user experience amazing? Use that information to fix things and improve things
How to gather the tools – surveys, focus groups, user observations (jing), have conversations
How to gather your volunteers – have something to offer, get out of your library, remember that everyone loves to give their opinions, embrace the power of selling out – get some free stuff by doing a bit of advertising, offer swag (pickups at conference)
Implementation – something will go wrong, it’s ok.
Get the boss’ buy-in: data & stories, make it publishable – The Practice of Social Research by Earl R. Babbie is a good book to help you with getting the data into publishable form
Do it half-assed – you need the data and don’t need to wait ‘til its perfect! You can always refine & redo later.
Being user-centric – our users are the center of our universe, but we aren’t the center of theirs…
Be willing to do the work
Evolution will take care of the bad ideas. Create a culture of innovation – be brave and stop the naysayers in your library
Question time:
Talk a bit about how you set up a structure for getting user feedback? They are dealt with in meetings and spread as far as possible, reflected back to the users, and told to everyone who will sit and listen.
How do you deal with people who aren’t coming up with ideas and aren’t forthcoming? Ask ‘em what the hell they are doing if they aren’t coming up with new ideas.
What do you do about haters? Let ‘em hate – that’s why they are called haters, they are out there to hate, let them do that and don’t listen to ‘em.
How do you deal with the librarian who is still working in the libraries of 20 years ago? Expose them to new ideas, telling them what you are doing and what kind of ideas you are being exposed to (audience member said to pair them with new librarians with fresh ideas)
Do you have an opinion on pop-up surveys? No, he tries to stay away from those, finds them annoying – he’d rather people be pulled to a survey than have it pushed on ‘em.
What made his library’s blog so awesome, that everyone wanted to participate? Giving folks freedom will get them excited about the blog – let them go with what they want to write about.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this particular keynote since I heard danah (this is how she spells it – no caps – even on international capslock day) was going to be here at the conference.
She began her talk by telling us that she wants to talk about what’s going on with different kinds of social media and how to apply it. Web 2.0 – tech crowd sees it as a shift in development/deployment – a change in the way you get information out there. Web 2.0 – business crowd sees it as hope, coming right after the big crash.
Social network sites include: profiles (change from being “an IP address” to a digital body), public articulation of friends (used as social leveraging – getting social acceptance in return for being in the “top 8 friends”), comments – or wall – section (form of social grooming, even when their comments are banal and dull), status updates (peripheral awareness of everything that’s going on around you).
What are people doing on these sites? All kinds of social purposes – gossiping, flirting, making sure people around you are ok – stuff that we used to do because we were allowed to go out in physical public spaces, kids today really don’t have that kind of freedom because of fear.
“If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist” – Skyler (16, Chicago)
Properties of social spaces:
• Persistence – what you say sticks around
• Replicability – copy and paste things from one place to another
• Scalability – potential to reach millions with the reality of reaching pretty much nobody, possibility of broadcast but not necessarily the ability
• Searchability – you can make yourself searchable – or not
• Invisible audiences – public articulation of friends is an articulation of their perceived audience
• Collapsed contexts – socializing with different people in different contexts, but in the same place
• Public = Private –
What does this mean? A change in both social and information ecologies. Wikipedia is the most transparent information creation project EVER. Teach our young people how to read the information & histories in Wikipedia – teach them media literacy.
This is an attention economy – what bubbles up isn’t necessarily the best, but what gets the most attention.
3 points where intervention are desperately needed:
• Net Neutrality – all bits are created equal – she is a Comcast customer and she can’t use YouTube at all
• DRM – defectivebydesign.org, runs the risk of killing off the ability for people to interact with text
• Defending Fair Use – it’s only a defense, you have to be sued before it comes into play
Web 2.0 is going to become very mobile – cluster effects aren’t happening because of a lack of mobile standards, we need to get over that.
Technology is radically reshaping public spaces and “public” as we know it.

Cliff started with a quote from the ‘net from someone asking if there is some kind of rental store for books – is this the user or the library failing. Bookswim is competition for us – we don’t trust our own users so we don’t do this. Users are willing to pay for this kind of service. Valdosta, where Cliff works, just did some user testing and found that things that are obvious to us are obviously not obvious to the library’s users. Sex, drugs & disease – gets attention and interest immediately. Beware the super-user ego-hug – really grateful and really heavy users of the library – watch out for assuming that everyone can figure things out just because they have. We also forget about the “out” part of outreach – do more advertising to people who aren’t already in your building – have a conversation with your non-users. Find out why they aren’t using your stuff!
Cliff is talking about teachable moments – I had one of those last night. The security at the karaoke bar was talking about getting a computer soon and being able to find the pictures online – once he got his computer – of us crazy library-types. I told him to get his butt down to the Monterey Public Library and do a Flickr search. Teachable moment!! Next he mentioned that we need to remember to ask our users for how they want to be contacted, etc. Picture of a porcupine with a tube on its head and the caption “utube – ur doin it wrong” got some big laughs.
Talking about user studies – use Jing or something to record their screen.
Kelly started talking about her library’s “Mobile Literacy Vehicle” equipped with laptops and staff to go out to underserved neighborhoods to do programs and such. Their other project is outreach to incarcerated populations – they do have some who come to the library after they’ve served their time. They also do these through virtual outreach – some of the kids have access to computers so they meet there occasionally. They also have an account with OPAL (www.opal-online.org) where they offer information and outreach for their – and other – libraries. They stream some of their programs so that they are available for people even when they are unable to attend. Ustream (www.ustream.tv) helps with that as well. They are also developing an Alternate Reality game to advertise their “one book” program.
Take homes:
• Market the library outside the library
• Find out what your (non)users want and need
• Are you doing it right? Measure and find out
• Involve staff in fundraising efforts of the library
• Develop out of the box partnerships
• Blend the traditional/nontraditional
• Create blogs and sites that are interactive
• Hire non library staff for programs and other perspectives
Question time!
How are they developing their alternative reality game ? It’s still being developed, but they’ll have a blog (written by one of the main characters in the book, To Kill A Mockingbird) that will be the main “starting point” for the game. They’ll have phone numbers that will have messages that will help people get farther into the game. Puzzles and clues will branch out from there.
What kinds of user behaviors did you see during testing? Cliff said that he noticed about 2 minutes of attention, then they’ll skip over to Google
How do you respond to a website that is imposed on you? Valdosta’s library goes wild – within the constraints that the University gives ‘em
What is the best way for a library to learn about their users’ interests? Cliff said that conversations are the best – he pays attention to the patrons and occasionally just sits there and smiles at folks and strikes up conversations with them instead of working and appearing busy at the desk. Kelly gets to play with stuff at her library and that play gets teens and kids interested and
Kelly asked if there are any success stories from folks in the audience.
Susan, an audience member, said that they provide books to kids who are waiting to see their incarcerated parents
Eunice gives away dictionaries (used & picked up a garage sales) to anyone who asks to use the library’s dictionary.