Future of Libraries | David Lee King

Additional Questions to Answer When Changing the Unchangeable

April 30, 2007 By David Lee King

Barbara Kelly, from the Manage This! blog, just mentioned my How Can We Change the Unchangeable post – and added some amazing stuff. She added two questions, and then included a short commentary that’s hugely important to this discussion.

First, her additional questions:

“What sort of leadership do we need from innovators and change instigators in librarianship and how can we as librarians learn the difference between leadership abilities and more traditional management/administrative skills?”
“Is there necessarily a generational (X, Y or Z) or graduate cohort (1976 or 2006) difference in what librarians expect from the profession?”

Great questions! What do you guys think? Can you answer these?

And the commentary: “… its not just innovations in technology that we need to be discussing. There are changes as well in our understanding of how people learn, use physical space, work together and expect to be treated that inform our library services and professional values.”

I’d agree. I tend to focus on the techie stuff – that’s where my interests lie. But the whole library 2.0 thing is not just about technology – it’s about the MANY changes that affect the way librarians and customers interact… participate… and help to collectively build and tell the story of our local communities.

Great post!

How Can We Change the Unchangeable, or David’s Rant

April 23, 2007 By David Lee King

I learned one other thing at Computers in Libraries this year, and I’d like to share it in the hopes of starting a healthy discussion (and hopefully to collectively start figuring out how to fix this problem).

Here’s what I experienced during my Change Management talk:

Personally, I thought this talk would attract a smaller audience – I was wrong. I believe I had over 200 people in attendance… it was certainly a packed room! When I saw how many people showed up to hear about change, I decided to ask a couple of questions.

First, I asked if attendees had learned something innovative or new at the conference that they’d like to take back to their libraries. Almost everyone raised their hands. Then I followed up with this question: how many will take that cool, innovative idea back to their libraries, and hit a brick wall with administrators when they try to implement that idea.

ALMOST EVERYONE RAISED THEIR HANDS.

This is not good.

Why? Well, during my Q&A time at the end of the session, the whys started coming out. Techie librarians are discouraged. Many have administrators and/or managers who don’t want to change, who refuse to learn new technology and who refuse to implement new ideas.

What happens to those discouraged techie staff? Probably one of two things:

They’ll realize that library customers want to participate online (which should be obvious – just take a peek at Amazon or eBay if you don’t believe me), but their library won’t be implementing online participation any time soon. So they’ll settle back, and either simply stop caring, or wait for the administrators to move on to other libraries or retire. Or worse yet (but great for libraries that actually WANT to innovate), they’ll…
Find a more innovative library, and move on. Some libraries (ie., Darien Library, McMaster University, and Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library are examples of this) are realizing that there’s a huge technology shift happening with online social tools and expectations, and will take steps to meet those changes. Some of those steps have turned into new, emerging jobs that are just waiting to be filled with an innovative thinker… who’s probably working at your library RIGHT NOW.

I have a question for the library administrators who sent staff to Computers in Libraries, but who also don’t plan to do anything with the new knowledge their staff gained from the conference. Why did you send them? Why did you pay good money for the conference, for the hotel, for the food, for the flight… probably $1000 or so – to go to a conference that’s geared towards sharing best practices for implementing emerging technology in libraries?

Why send them if you don’t plan to do anything with their new knowledge?

Now on to the final point of this rant… Readers – how can we change this? Does anyone have any ideas on:

Steps to take to convince administrators that the library world is different than it was in the 1970’s?
How to convince administrators that constant change and innovation is good, and that it’s also a necessity in our new millenial world?
How can we become change agents in a field that’s apparently not used to changing?

I’d like to hear your thoughts – comment here or blog your response. Either way, I think this is a hugely important topic, and I think it’s one we need to tackle NOW.

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Computers in Libraries 2007: Day 3 – The Library of the Future

April 18, 2007 By David Lee King

They wanted to be the first of the new libraries
two goals:
1. design and build an absolutely fantastic new library
2. use technology to be more efficient and effective – but it will meet our patrons’ demands

They have one rule – tolerate uncertainty

continuing vision:
eternal values
new technology

Next, Alan Gray talked about their library building…

ok… the speaker just said “for any of you who are fighter pilots know this…” Hmm. Not so much.

Skip the RFP process for RFID! it’s a waste of time and effort and money and time

have each competitor design to your needs, then compare and contrast. Cool.

No tech services and no circ back office
no cataloging
instead, workflow managers, not clerks
a small workplace to deal with exceptions

So, they’re allowing vendors to do the cataloging – they’re outsourcing EVERYTHING. They might have to catalog 50-100 books a year.

And by the way, why not outsource paging too?

What would a library be if it needed no booktruck…

active items back on the shelf in 20 minutes!

They plan to direct order and ship the book to the patron, overnight…
other stuff:
everyone out in front of their desks
circ staff become reader advisors
information staff at remote reference points
technology staff work in partnership with patrons
we’ll have a virtual library, too

Reference:
video chat, webex, etc…

Kinkos model – they want to be a regional collaborative digitization space

etc.

Much of this stuff was “here’s what we want to do.” If they REALLY do these things, they’ll be a hip library. Now, I want to know how they plan to do it – especially how they plan to get the book checked in and back on the shelf in 20 minutes.

cil2007

Computers in Libraries 2007: Day 1 – Information Design for the New Web

April 16, 2007 By David Lee King

Ellyssa Kroski, Reference Librarian, Columbia University

She blogs at infotangle

Looked at msn’s website circa 2000 – your eye doesn’t really center on anything
About.com – same type of thing

Google – early example of simple design – now the gold standard of web search

kodak from 2004 – it’s a photo sharing site, but it’s not apparent to the user. It’s not clear where to go if you want to share photos. Contrasted this with flickr – easy to see the photo sharing stuff

New Web
user experience is changing, user expectations, technology change… all resulting in information design

Guided by three principals:
simple
social
alternate navigation

Simplicity:
a more focused approach is better than lots of choices
many web 20 sites are leaving off certain functionalities to make the user experience better (showed Word with all the toolbars displayed, them showed google docs – only has what’s necessary)

necessary features only
les is more philosophy
low learning curves – users can start using these in less than five minutes
no software to install
no manual needed
no registration
It’s a DIY service model

Healia – focused and simple search engine
del.icio.us – social bookmarking – it’s obvious what this is for
43 things, too – it does one thing, and strives to be best at that one thing

design style responds to changes in application functionality – clean and simple design

Today’s websites:
centered design – more practical, more compatible with different screen resolutions
current trend – rounded corners – nothing too sharp or severe – reflects casual tone of new web
sans serif and lowercase fonts – related to rounded corners stuff
large fonts – points out important info
simple persistent navigation – often found running across the top, tends to be separate from page content
Bold logos
strong colors – highlights key concepts, creates distinction
complementary color schemes, not monochromatic
subtle 3d – drop shadows, mirrored surfaces, gradients
simple icons
whitespace – adding it instead of crowding page – this results in a fresh looking websites
starbursts – usually denotes that something is free

advances in user interface design:
AJAX – don’t have to reload the whole webpage
large tabs – easier to toggle between pages
drag and drop – netvibes, flickr, etc
autocomplete – the tags thing in del.icio.us as an example

advances in UI – Maps, WYSIWYG, previews (the nasty pop-up thing like Snap)

Social:
two trends:
1. socialization of media and applications
2. social for social’s sake

Socialization of Media and Applications
videos, photos, books, etc
Google Docs

Expectations:
Commenting: available pretty much everywhere
Rating and reviewing – users now expect this
send to a friend functionality
Share – sharing calendars, for example
subscribe – on the spot
Save

Websites can no longer be islands…

what are others saying? You can show this now
Sharing discoveries – ie., Digg
Creating New – people want to mashup your info

Social for Social’s Sake:
Ning, MySpace, etc
User profile is most important
User profile is a home base or a jumping off point
friends lists – critical functionality. Can be a badge of honor, can be a way to meet people you wouldn’t usually meet
Comments – function in a different way – these are the shout outs and chatter left on user profiles
communication – IM, LiveTalk, internal messaging system
Subscribe to users
groups – formation of subcommunities
Tools for personal expression – journals, blogs, uploading photos or videos, etc.

Alternate Navigation
new ways to navigate web content
visual representations of what’s important
we don’t read pages, we scan them…

Navigate by…

By User
Tag Cloud
The Top – most emailed, most blogged, most popular – interesting ways to slice up data about what’s interesting. Also provide an at-a-glance digest of what’s going on
The Zeitgeist – snapshot of what’s happening in a community – a dashboard of what’s important
related information – ie., related blogs and articles
heat maps – shows what’s hot and what’s not visually
relationship maps – shows visual connections between items
Time tools – relations by when something was uploaded to a website
Maps – Etsy’s geo-locator
widgets – a “what I’m watching” widget
mashups – users creating their own way to navigate information

Ellysa’s Principles of information design for the new web
make them simple
include necessary functionality
clean efficient design
make it social
offer alternate forms of navigation
Can you make it visual?
Evolve (everything is beta)
Be willing to respond to changes

cil2007