virtually a librarian

This post started out as a comment on Kathryn Greenhill’s latest post, Like a Virgin? If you haven’t read it, you should. In it, Kathryn talks about the concept of ‘fast’ - in a recent post, David Lee King identifies a number of services that are direct competitors for libraries, and Kathryn astutely points out that the defining characteristic of these competitors, and the characteristic that makes them such strong competitors for libraries, is that they get the idea of ‘fast’. Customers want what they want, right now, and the competitors that David Lee King lists get that.

I think what our customers want often goes beyond fast, into the realms of immediate. As the hyperconnected generations become independent library users (ie users in their own right, rather than kids brought along to libraries by their parents), they’re going to want immediacy, because they’re used to it in every aspect of their lives. I think that’s going to extend to the physical items we hold, too. If they have to go on a long hold list to get a popular book, as David Lee King suggests in his post on competitors, are they going to be willing to wait? Will they actually care about format at all, if they can get something in one format faster than in another?

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is agility. My greatest concern for the future of libraries is that I’m not sure we’re positioned as an industry (or as individual organisations, in some [many?] cases) to be agile in meeting the challenges that face us and the opportunities that await us. We’ve been playing catch up for too long. We need to take some giant leaps. This goes hand in hand with Kathryn’s notion of fast: we need to be able to act fast when opportunities or challenges arrive. We often just can’t do that.

So how can we address this? We need to kit our staff out with the skills they need to drive web based services and non-traditional service delivery and collecting models. We need to build the infrastructure required to sustain robust online services. We need lightweight policy frameworks that allow wriggle room. We need leaders that value innovation. Without all of this, we’ll never have any hope of being agile.

Kathryn also talks about marketing our strengths to ensure our future. I agree, we need to sell ourselves, to our funding bodies and to our customers. Public libraries, for example, already have some of what our customers are looking for: downloadable media, fast and free wifi, latest release dvds… but how many people in our communities actually know all of this? Do our funders even know what a rock-star job we do on some of this stuff?

For me, the keys to ensuring the future of libraries are agility, good marketing, and the ability to immediately satisfy customer needs. Becoming an agile industry is perhaps not an easy task, but it’s certainly something we can aspire to. When it comes to marketing - well, that’s not easy either, but how many libraries exist within larger organisations that have their own marketing departments, and how many of us make use of them? How many of us willing talk ourselves up, both as individuals and as organisations, by going after media, speaking at conferences, writing articles? Perhaps the hardest thing of all is going to be the immediacy issue: with limited funding, how can we satisfy our customers’ desire for immediacy? It’s not always feasible to buy more books, and how else do you meet demand? But even here, there are things we can do: think outside the square, like mpow has, and put in place programs designed to ensure the latest and hottest titles are on the shelves. Or run customer programs that teach people about how great eBooks are, so demand increases for this lower-priced format.

So, be agile, talk yourself up, and give your customers what they want, right now, then the future of the library is guaranteed. Piece of cake, right?!

David Lee King posts a closing thought for the year and asks us to ponder the physical library in the 21st century: is it’s demise looming? Prompted by comments on his post about Ignoring our digital community, DLK asks his readers to consider how we might bring people back into the physical library.

This is an important topic. We do need to provide programming and services that bring those people who like using the library in person, but have stopped doing so (for any number of reasons, including that we’re not offering them the things they want) back into the physical building.

How do we get people back into the physical library?

I think the answer is fairly obvious: we need to offer services and programming that are relevant and appealing to them, and promote them using the channels our users tune into. To do this, we need to consult with community members and groups and ask them what they want. We need to look at the communities around us and the activities that are happening in our areas and seek out synergies for service development and delivery. And then we need to be responsive - ready to tweak or redevelop services as the community demands it. And we need to evaluate, review, reshape, over and over again.

Not an easy task, but surely we can get the people who want to be in the library back into the library, with some careful planning and programming?

I know this is a tad simplistic and this is a a much bigger issue, deserving more attention than I’ve given it here… But what I’d like to focus on in this post is something a little different…

Should we really be so hung up on getting people back into the library?

There’s a proportion of our user base that doesn’t come into the library, and doesn’t ever want to. For those library users who only want to interact with us online (users like - I have to confess - myself), no amount of in-library programming or redefinition of in-library services is going to get them back into the library. And we need to accept that it’s perfectly fine if they never, ever walk into a library again - so long as we’re supplying them with what they want and need online.

We don’t want to neglect our physical library customers… because then we’ll end up with no physical libraries!

For the forseable future (always?), some people are going to want to visit the physical library in person, and we should absolutely cater for those people. We don’t want to get into the situation where usage is so low we’re forced to stop providing physical library facilities and services – at least not while there is a demand or a need for physical library services. But I don’t know that usage is going to drop to that degree any time soon. (Especially not if we offer the right services and programs.)

But all this talk about getting people through our physical doors makes me think we’re worried about the wrong issue. Is it really all about the number of people we get through the door?

DLK’s post was written in response to this comment on a previous post:

David, this is all great, but - really, I’m serious - what happens to the physical library? If Topeka Public mails the holds to patrons and they can drop the returned item at boxes, and the patrons need not come to the physical library, we may have crowds online and remote access and whatever, but an administrator comes in and sees the empty library and orders it closed, the librarians fired and a small studio in the country to be opened in the library’s stead that can be maintained by two technicians.

To my mind, we need to revisit the reason we do what we do. We provide physical libraries because people want or need physical libraries. We don’t provide physical libraries simply for the sake of providing physical libraries. We shouldn’t be hung up on getting people through the door for the sake of justifying our physical libraries. We should be hung up on providing the services people want and need. Right now, there’s a demand for physical library services. But if, at some point in the future, there’s a broadband connected computer in every household and a majority of people choose to use libraries online rather than in person, will we still be harping on about getting people back through our doors?

I don’t want to see our physical libraries closed because they’re underpopulated any more than the next person. But success in library service provision should not be measured by door counters and full car parks (or, for that matter, numbers through our digital doors). We should be measuring success by (at least in part) asking our users if we’re providing the services they want. The door count is not the be all and end all. If Topeka can make it easier for people to access library collections by mailing them their holds, then hallelujah for Topeka! Seriously, I’d love to see what this does for their circulation statistics and customer satisfaction levels.

Getting the people through the door… Are we asking the right question?

DLK asks how we get our customers to visit the physical library. The answer is pretty straightforward: provide the services and programs people want, deliver them the way they want them delivered, promote ourselves through the channels that reach our customers, and be prepared to evaluate, review and change constantly. Simple, right?! Ha! What a challenge!

But let’s not focus only on our physical buildings. I would suggest that we need to invest proportionate amounts of energy in both our user camps: those who want to come into the library, and those who want to interact with us in other ways. If we’re looking at ways to get our users back through our physical doors, we should also look at ways to entice our digital communities through our digital doors.

To my mind, DLK’s question is not the one I think I should be worrying about, because as I’ve said, I don’t see bums on seats as the one and only measure of successful service provision. If we’re looking to just increase numbers through the door, then we could just stick free wifi in all our libraries and forget about programming. But, I’m not looking for bums on seats as justification for our physical libraries (plus, where I work, we don’t have any lack of people coming through our doors - maybe this colours my POV on this issue a little).

So, as someone whose job is concerned predominantly with online library services, the questions I’ll be refocusing on as I head into 2008 are: What are the needs and wants of our in-library and online customers? How can technology assist us meet those needs? What suite of services should we offer, and how do our customers want to access them? With any luck, if we get the answers to these three questions right, the issue of getting people through the doors (both physical and digital) should take care of itself.

[Did I just talk round in a great big circle?]

Sarah Houghton Jan has posted slides from a presentation she gave at a recent conference, called 20 Steps to Building a Thriving eBranch. The whole presentation is incredibly useful. I spend a lot of time talking and thinking about what I call our “online branch library”, and it’s great to see all the threads come together in a comprehensive, practical presentation. I’ll definitely be referring my colleagues and team to this. Indeed, it’s the first item I’ve added to our team’s new del.icio.us account - and i’ve tagged it MustRead.

What really stood out for me was this quote:

The library’s website, and by extension its entire web presence, is no longer an ‘extra,’ just another PR outlet, or an add-on to your other ‘real’ library services. It is its own branch. Treat it as such, or perish.

Something to ponder…