David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Tinkering in the Techie Toybox at NEFLIN

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The second presentation I gave at NEFLIN in Jacksonville, FL was Tinkering in the Techie Toybox – here’s the Slideshare version and a couple of links included in the presentation. Enjoy!

Tinkering in the Techie Toybox: Staying on top of Consumer Technology

View more PDF documents from David King.

Links to other Techie Toyboxes I mentioned in the presentation:

Who Are Your Competitors?

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Library Rentals?Who are your competitors? Umm … David … we don’t have competitors … we’re a public library. I think you DO indeed have competitors. You probably have more competitors than you ever did, for that matter.

Think about it for a sec.

If I want a book, where can I go? The public library… unless it’s a popular book. Then I’m put on a waiting list. Or, I could just visit Barnes & Noble or Amazon and buy the book. I could even hang out at a Barnes & Noble for awhile, and read it there without buying. And drink a latte while reading, for that matter.

How about movies? Well, some libraries don’t carry blockbuster hits, so there’s really no competition there – come get your old documentaries here!

But my library carries new popular movies. And we have competition. The local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video rental stores are certainly alternatives. Also those Redbox movie dealies that are installed a couple places around Topeka. And Netflix. Which delivers to your door for a small monthly fee. You can even rent a movie from iTunes. Why spend any money? I can simply visit Hulu or YouTube for a quick video fix.

Music? Same thing. iTunes, blip.fm, last.fm, Pandora. Etc.

Gaming – surely that’s something we have down better. Possibly. Unless you have a mega-church in town. They probably have a better gaming setup than you.

Hmm … reference. That’s what we do well. Unless you venture online (see previous posts). Here, we are usually the last resort – people go to friends, family, and online services before us (read the OCLC Perceptions report for more info on that).

OK – so libraries have competition. What can you do about that? Here are some thoughts – please add more:

  • What do you do better than everyone else? Focus on that. Prioritize that.
  • You’re a natural community gathering place. Focus on your community. Feed it. Grow it.
  • Ask people why they don’t use your library. Use that information to improve your services.
  • Find your largest population segment of “potential patrons” and focus on growing patrons there.
  • Don’t focus on yourself or your stuff – instead, turn your focus on your customers and their needs.
  • Maybe it’s something as simple as rearranging your stuff so normal people can actually find things. We can do better than LC or Dewey call number order. Really.
  • Work on improving the experience at your library – both in the library and digitally.

What are you doing to compete for your patrons’ attention? And … since it’s a competition – what can we do to win?

The Destination Web is Morphing – Pay Attention!

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I’ve been reading and thinking about websites lately (oh really David? Who would have guessed?). Organizations simply don’t have one nice, tidy website to manage anymore. First, take a gander at these three articles:

OK – read those? Good. I think these guys are on to something. Some people are finding tools that work better for them. More social tools are appearing. Take blogs, for example. Some people were just blogging for the interaction, which they were getting, in a convoluted way, from comment boxes and RSS feeds. Twitter and Facebook status updates meet those needs much better – the interaction is there, it’s easy, and they can pass on fun remarks and pass URLs back and forth easier than through blogs and comments.

But the end of the destination era, like Steve Rubel claims? I’m not so sure about that. Instead of saying “it appears the destination web era is drawing to a close,” I’d say it’s morphing. Our traditional destination websites are not as important anymore. Why? Well… assuming you’ve placed your organization in all the current social media tools that your customers use … there are now more options. Want to find out about something at the library? You can go to our website. Or our Twitter tweet. Or our Facebook event. Want to read a post? You can visit the website to do that – but that’s not the best way to read blogs. Much better to subscribe to the feed.

Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, SlideShare … those sites are created so you don’t have to visit the actual destination page. Instead, through RSS and embedding tools, it’s really pretty easy to subscribe to the content you’re interested in. Your destination isn’t the organization’s website – your destination is your feed reader.

But I said “I’m not so sure…” The destination site is still there for some things. Want to create a YouTube account? Gotta go to YouTube. Want a new library card? Have to fill out our form … on our website. Want to buy a book at Amazon? You can certainly browse elsewhere, but when it comes time to put in your credit card number, you’re (hopefully) doing that at amazon’s actual website.

And all that is not taking one big thing into account – our customers. Yes, at my library, some of our customers tweet. Some use Facebook. But right now, anyway, probably a majority of our customers still need to visit the website to do stuff (and I’m not even mentioning those that only walk in to the physical library).

You’ve heard it many times – go where your customers are. For libraries, the majority are still on our destination websites and in our buildings. But that is definitely spreading out. Some parts of our websites were really never intended to be destinations (conversations better suited to Twitter or a forum, for example). And those parts are going where they’re better suited. But some parts ARE still destinations. Why? Because those are places you can do the stuff of the organization (checking out, signing up, buying, filling out, etc).

photo by bitzcelt

Be Nice to Customers – Even Online

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Remember all that Domino’s Pizza craziness of a week or so ago? This video, originally from the Today Show, explains what happens after the fact when employees do stupid things online – in this case, the employees were apparently fired (among other things – watch the video to find out more).

Thankfully, that type of sheer stupidity towards customers would NEVER happen in a library, right? After all… we’re trained professionals. We paid for two years of grad school to be able to work with people! And we hire para-professional staff who ALSO love to work with the public. Right?

Well. Check these tweets out:

Good customer service?

or:

Good customer service?

… and one more:

Good customer service?

Now, of course I realize these tweets weren’t meant for the actual patron to see – the librarians in all three screenshots most likely really DO have great customer service skills, and were simply frustrated … so they decided to vent via Twitter (in Twitter’s  public feed. Oops).

But still.

I think there’s a HUGE GRAY area right now in the online world. Many of us are using these tools for work AND for non-work stuff. And it’s confusing! Some people set up two Facebook accounts/IM accounts/Twitter feeds. Some (like me) blend them all together. My Twitter feed flows into my Facebook feed, sometimes with some unintended consequences (well ok – usually I just get something like “David, I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about” from an old high school chum).

But still.

What happens when said “dumba**” in the screenshot above decides to use Twitter, wants to connect with people … so he/she does that “find everyone within 20 miles of this zipcode” search, and discovers the librarian virtually hollering at him/her?

In some cases, these lovely little quotes can be found pretty easily … and can also be traced back to the owner of the words (and the library that person works for).

Then what? Does the library director have to issue a statement (like the CEO of Domino’s did)? What happens to the librarians above when their library director discovers Twitter?

What do you think? Do you vent about your patrons online? Do you keep separate personal/work accounts in the social networks you frequent?

We’ll Answer Within Two Business Days

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is this your electronic reference service?Here’s a pic of the reference desk at Anywhere Public Library in Fakeola, USA. As a service to their customers, they decided to create a sign letting their patrons know that their questions might not be answered right away.

After all, some questions simply aren’t answered instantaneously – staff might need to wander out in the stacks to find an appropriate resource, or the question might lend itself to a lengthy reference interview. And once in a great while, questions really DO take up to 2 days or so to get answered, so it seemed like the right thing to do to post this sign.

When asked about their sign, here’s what library staff said:

  • “in my experience, most questions do NOT take 2 days to answer, but isn’t it better to give a max time in the event that a question needs more thorough research? Librarians actually DO have other things to do with their time after all.”
  • “While it’s nice to say “We’ll get back to you as soon as possible, some patrons want a definitive time frame.”
  • “We posted the actual limits and the 48 hour turnaround to buy ourselves wiggle room and to avoid the open-ended questions”
  • “Why does every question have to be answered right NOW? Honestly, if you need an answer right away, there’s this lovely invention called a telephone.”

OK – obviously, I’m fudging a bit. My reference desk pic is fake (my Photoshop skills astound no one). But the answers from “library staff?” These are all quotes from real librarians, commenting on my two previous posts about electronic reference service needing a reboot.

Some readers who thought my post was a bit over the top said one of three things:

  1. you have to give patrons a time frame [even though we mostly answer these questions pretty fast].
  2. you simply can’t answer lengthy reference questions via email or IM.
  3. We’re not discriminating and how dare you suggest we are! [OK, you’re right. I used that word on purpose – made ya look! 🙂 ]

So – what do you think? Do you have to give patrons a time frame online? Are most of your email/electronic reference questions answered pretty fast? Do you think that long or detailed reference queries can be handled online?