Here’s a link to the presentation I gave at Computers in Libraries, titled Making Time for Web 2.0
Enjoy!
CIL2008, Day 2: Transparency, Planning & Change: See-Through Libraries
Speakers:
Michael Casey & Michael Stephens
This session is a standing-room only session!
Organizations are starting to let their staff blog – huge change from not long ago
Not always easy to implement new things
Quote: “Every time people really like something, we get rid of it.” real quote from librarian at PLA. Ouch.
Showing signs from libraries – bad signs from libraries! People are talking about us. What stuff are you giving them to talk about?
Asking – What are your roadblocks?
inability to use open source software
we’ve always done it this way
control-freak IT support
No admin priviledges
only making cosmetic changes
budget
no time
The excessive love of process
Luddite trustees
Road map to transparency
open conversation (aside – nice slide!)
visit the front lines
cross train, provide learning for all staff
consider the role of anonymity
what would you add?
Don’t ask staff for input if you are not going to use it
Going to the field:
bring them out (managers)
visit the front lines
examine different staffing models
develop big picture understanding
administrators should understand everyone’s roles
get out of the office!
decisions are not made in a vacuum
crucial if administrators are not librarians
Circ staff at Darien Library:
they are blogging
they are buying books for the collection
they are going to BookExpo (a conference)
They are trusted and encouraged
Face to face is important!
Casey – taking an academic approach with office hours – once a week for 3 hours, anyone can come in and meet with him, off the record if need be, but face-to-face.
Say “Yes!
CIL2008, Day 2: Innovation Starts with “I”
Speakers: Helene Blowers, Tony Tallent
How do we get the innovation and change to occur? This track is about that – how to move our organizations forward.
Talking about the ingredients of innovation
What’s innovation NOT?
process improvement
strategic planning
best practice
benchmarking
etc…
What is it?
it’s an intersection
a pivotal point
Creativity is thinking up new things.
Innovation is doing new things. It’s action.
Book to read – the seeds of innovation by elaine dundon.
Innovation is Fresh Practice! (rather than best practice)
4 components of I:
creativity
strategy
implementation
profitability
Creative is I
I am an innovator:
i have ideas
i have done my homework
I’ll do the initial legwork
i am capable of more than my job description
i am a leader, too
i take risks with you
More:
I offer you a framework
i put \resources behind my expectations
i create growth opportunities
i SUPPORT your work
i celebrate your success
i take risks with you
Create alliances – get others on board with your ideas – sell them
prototype your idea
Don’t ask for permission – ask for support!
Sell your vision personally – don’t do it on paper. Actually, I’d say it differently – sell it multiple ways. On paper (BRIEF), person to person, via presentation, etc.
People need to SEE something, so prototype it
What’s wild success look like?
IT will not feel like business as usual.
It’s also about failure – if you’re not failing once in awhile, you’re not being innovative enough.
CIL2008, Day 2 Keynote: “The Dutch Boys”
Two years ago, Delft bought a mobile recording facility – to teach kids how to tell their own stories via sound and video.
These guys do a fun presentation. They talked about the documentary they made, visiting libraries across America. Their first stop was New York – so Eric asked if anyone was in the audience from New York Public Library – someone raised her hand, so she was invited onstage to site with the speakers… and was offered a cookie, too (she was actually from Georgia…).
They showed snippets of their documentary, then spoke, then more snippets, etc.
Next, they invited Matt Gullett on stage and talked about PLCMC’s story-making initiatives
At Imaginon, they measure the creative things that come out of it in addition to things like door counts. And they tell and share stories to show usefulness.
Then they showed a clip of library science students, and invited a library science student on stage…
One skill all librarians need – from the MLS student – “the ability to adapt to change.”
CIL2008, Day 1: User-Generated Content
Speaker: Roy Tennant
Why?
more content is better
more access is better
can help provide personalized service
Kete
kete.net.nz – not heard about this. Looks like a web app for housing digitized stuff, that’s more social than the usual. EX – some people can create ads on the site…
Descriptive Contributions
ex – allowing customers to add content to old photos (ie., who are the people in the photo?)
WorldCat
Customer reviews seen on both worldcat and worldcat local
Library of Congress Flickr feed – getting good tag additions and comments
they got more than 10,000 unique tags our of 55,000 total!
also got more than 11,000 friends/contacts
more than 3,500 comments posted by more than 1,400 users
Even cooler – LoC is using Flickr community content to add into to the LoC records in their catalog. Nice.
What has LoC accomplished?
– higher profile of its collections
– community engagement – in this case, their “community” is the world…
– some corrections and additions to metadata
– sparked discussions and elicited personal histories related to photos – started conversation
– Higher visibility for the LoC Blog
Boston Public Library – doing a similar thing
Exploiting the knowledge of the Masses
– many eyes increases likelihood of getting things right
– library staff are often distant from localized knowledge of items in tehir collection
– web can provide a feedback loop
Contributions to discovery
– bookspace – Hennepin’s thing. They do a good job at connecting people and content
Tags:
user terminology – people using what works for them
LibraryThing – tagmash – powerful tag mashup search in LibraryThing
Third Party Providers
LibGuides
LibMarks
(both from SpringShare)
LibraryThing for Libraries (put the pig in a dress!!!)
ChiliFresh.com a review engine for your library
What to Know
Our idea of content may not be theirs
Going to be messy (and that’s ok – it falls to the bottom)
Issues to consider:
– what are your goals?
– are you set up appropriately to meet those goals? Human and back-end tech stuff?
– can you maximize benefits? ie statistical evaluations of tags?
– will you need to moderate?
– how to distinguish between user and library content?
– is the potential impact worth the investment?
where to from here?
– user engagement is a good thing
– need to get up to speed on how to foster engagement in our systems
– need to get savvy about how to use things like tags most effectively?