What is the Role of a Library?

I've been busy lately and, to my disappointment, I've haven't been keeping up with the blogs I like to follow. So when I finally had a chance to catch up with a bit of reading last night I was delighted to come across the latest post from John Blyberg - The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians.

The statements are the result of a conversation between John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill and Cindi Trainor about the fundamental purpose of libraries and librarians. In this time of increasing pressures on libraries - technological change, shrinking budgets, new competitors - many libraries are examining what they do and where they should be heading into the future. The Darien Statements are therefore a very timely, thought provoking piece of work, around which a great discussion may develop. (judging by the comments on John's blog it's already got a head of steam)

This manifesto of sorts is full of great stuff but three sentences in particular resonated with me:

...The Library has a moral obligation to adhere to its purpose despite social, economic, environmental, or political influences. The purpose of the Library will never change...

...Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.

Why we do things will not change, but how we do them will...

To me, this says that libraries are about more than the individual tasks that we perform. They're not about a bibliographic record or the service at a reference desk. We have a bigger purpose. However, what we need to do to achieve those objective will change regularly (and alway has) if libraries are to remain part of the landscape. No area of library operation has a right to keep doing things 'the way they've always been done'.

Meeting New Users in Wikipedia

I've just read an interesting article by Dreanna Belden called Harnessing Social Networks to Connect with Audiences: If You Build it, Will They Come 2.0? (Internet Reference Services Quarterly; 2008, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p99-111). Unfortunately it's not available in full text online as far as I can see but it is indexed in Ebscohost Masterfile Premier, which all NSW libraries should have access to. You may even subscribe to it at your library - if not you can request a copy from Sutherland Library through Interlibrary Loans.

At the author's library at the University of North Texas they are using Wikipedia to drive traffic to their digital library initiatives. They add references to relevant Wikipedia articles that link to items in their digital collections. When I read this it struck me as so obvious. Why aren't all libraries and librarians taking a much more active role in editing the references in Wikipedia articles? This is what we do best isn't it? The author gives some statistics in the article suggesting that they are receiving more referral traffic through Wikipedia than through Google Search.

Talk about putting your reference service 'in the way' of the user. If users aren't coming to the library for their information searches then lets put our services right in front of them where they are looking. How much could libraries improve Wikipedia articles by adding some comprehensive reference and reading lists? It doesn't have to be limited to referencing resources held in digital collections either. The combined book stock of libraries worldwide offers enormous opportunity for reading lists across the range of Wikipedia articles.

Book references could be linked to Worldcat records as a way of guiding people to libraries as the place to find a copy of the book (rather than Amazon, which so often happens online for book references).

I see this as a similar philosophy to Slam the Boards. You might not be directly helping your immediate local users but a cooperative effort by libraries creates a better outcome for everyone.

This is such an obvious idea that I can't believe that librarians aren't already doing this. Maybe they are? Maybe you are? Have you ever heard of this going on in libraries?

Six Degrees Makes for a Small World

Did anyone see the documentary, How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer, on the ABC on Tuesday night? In a case of serendipity it examined an idea that was explored in Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, that I was about to blog here. I highly recommend it and if you missed it you can still catch up with it on the ABC web site.

This documentary was about a relatively new field of science called network theory. It used the Six Degrees of Separation game, the idea that any two people in the world can be connected within six steps, as a way to explain Small World Networks. How come I know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows anyone in the world?

The answer goes something like this:
In any social group most people know all the other people in the group because the group shares something in common and there are many such groups. Most people can be considered to be part of several of these small groups - your workmates, friends, family, and so on. There are some people, however, who are part of many more of these groups than the average person. These highly connected individuals form the connections that create the small world phenomenon. While you may not be highly connected there is a good chance that you know someone who is - that is that you know someone, who knows someone. So when you meet someone new and after a brief conversation you realise that you both have a common friend you say, 'it's a small world, isn't it'. These highly connected nodes in the network are called hubs and they are the key for linking disparate nodes. This is essentially how Myspace and Facebook work.

Shirky devotes a whole chapter to small world networks and how social networking tools make use of these small worlds to bring people together. As I was reading this chapter I started wondering whether libraries could capitalise on these highly connected social hubs and convert them into library champions. How do we identify the people in our community that are part of many smaller social groups and get our message to them in the hope that they will pass it on? Indeed, can libraries become these highly connected social hubs for our communities? Surely we are in a position to bring together disparate groups - to make the library a place Does this have any implications for how we might engage in online social networks.

I don't have answers to these questions but I'll bet some of you have suggestions. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Beth Jefferson on Bibliocommons

I've just been listening to a fascinating interview with Beth Jefferson, founder of Bibliocommons - a social discovery system for libraries. Bibliocommons gives libraries a way to allow their users to contribute to the metadata of their collections by allowing them to tag, review and link items in the catalogue. It's a similar idea to what Jon Blyberg is doing with The Social OPAC. The best way to understand is to have a play with the Oakville Public Library Catalogue, which is running the Bibliocommons software.

What really struck me about this interview is the insight that Beth had on the role that social search and discovery can play in library services. Where Web 2.0 ideas, the Internet, library users, librarians and library collections fit in the puzzle that is the future of libraries.

A couple of points that had me nodding my head...

First of all, there is a recognition that the Internet is changing the ground rules under which libraries operate, but also that public libraries have a high participation rate from the community. We are in a very good position to harness the knowledge and good will of our users to improve our service

One of the roles of libraries has always been to facilitate the seredipitous discovery of books - the perennial RA question, "I just want a good book to read". Traditionally OPACs have done a very poor job at answering this question. Web 2.0 has shown how much benefit there is in social discovery (think Amazon recommendations for instance).

The vast majority of people who visit their library online do so to undertake tasks within the catalogue - search for books, check their account, etc. Integrating the social discovery tools directly into the catalogue places them 'in the flow' of our users and provides us with the best opportunity to gain maximum benefit from them. Sharing this social data between libraries (who use Bibliocommons) gives the critical mass of users required to give the social data relevance.

Librarians have traditionally seen themselves as expert navigators of information. However, we may be better served in the long run by providing the tools that let people facilitate social search and discovery as a means of information navigation. Combining these tools with traditional library discovery tools may give us the best of both worlds.

Beth makes many more observations in the interview than I have outlined herebacking them up with interesting data and there is much value in what she says. If you kind of understand the Web 2.0 concept but are wondering how it might fit with libraries I strongly recommend you have a listen to this podcast.

The Hyperlinked Library

Yesterday morning I went to a presentation by Michael Stephens, Librarian and educator who writes and speaks widely about Library 2.0, entitled The Hyperlinked Library: Trends, Tools and Transparency. Michael has posted the slides and the links he discussed on his blog so you can follow them up if you're interested.

It was a wide ranging talk about preparing your library, staff and users for the kind of hyperlinked environment in which we now exist. There was one theme from the presentation, however, that particularly interested me and which this blog post is about.

Several times in the presentation Michael used the phrase, "Libraries tell stories". What he was talking about was that whether we realise it or not the physical and digital spaces our libraries occupy, along with the decisions we make about what our users can and can't do in those spaces, send messages to the people who come to use them. Take a look at this photo from his presentation - go click on it and read the comments on Flickr.

oh no
Originally uploaded by aaron schmidt

There were a bunch of similar examples and what he was really talking about was what kind of experiences are we providing for people who visit the library, whether that be the physical library or our digital presence. There was another example in the talk (and forgive me if I get the details slightly wrong) where a customer at a store in the US went into a change room to try on some clothes, only to find that the change room was a mess with a heap of clothes piled up in the corner. The customer took a photo of the mess with their mobile and uploaded it to Flickr. Within a day it made a major newspaper!

It's often quoted that customers who have a bad experience talk about it to 10 times the number of people than do those who have a good experience. I don't know about the numbers but I do know that the connectedness of the digital environment makes it easier than ever before to spread the word quickly. Can you imagine a situation in your Library where a user takes a photo or video on their mobile phone of a bad experience they have and shares it with all their friends via Flickr, YouTube, Facebook or their blog?

The examples of negative stories that Michael used in his presentation all come from well meaning libraries that were trying to create an environment that benefits all their users, but who had lost sight of the bigger picture. It reminded me of the idea of the Tyranny of One, an idea first drawn to my attention from another blog post in which a library director discusses her library's review of policies and practices. She states:

...in many cases we have implemented policies and practices because of the minority of people who do the wrong thing, and in the process make things more difficult for the majority who do the right thing...

When we put up a sign or make new rule are we doing it for the benefit of our customers or for the benefit of the library staff? What kind of stories are we telling our customers? Consider the following example as a comparison with the sign above.

Courtesy
Originally uploaded by Mary Carmen6676

David Lee King discusses customer experience regularly in his blog and I strongly encourage you to have a read if this area interests you.

At the start of this post I suggested that Michael Stephens was one of the foremost writers and speakers about Library 2.0. What he is saying here is the essence of Library 2.0. Library 2.0 is not just about adding Web 2.0 tools and technologies to libraries. The technology is just a means to an end and the end is that we need to be telling better stories and providing a better experience to our users.

This is why we are running a Learning 2.0 program at my library. It isn't because we want the Library to have a YouTube account, gather friends on MySpace and look cutting edge. The program is running to allow staff to get an understanding of the hyperlinked environment in which libraries now exist.

The skills gained as a result of Learning 2.0 are just there to allow library staff to tell better stories to their customers in new ways and in new places.