marketing

Libraries in peril? Blow those trumpets.

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Do you think libraries are becoming less relevant and that we need to take radical action to stop this? Whether you answered yes or no, now think whether your work colleagues and library users would answer the same as you did.

Blame that John Blyberg for my impertinent question. In his latest post, My ALA baggage , he identifies two camps growing among librarians – “those that believe libraries are in peril and those that don’t”. He continues with:

This dichotomy yields some interesting implications for discussions about the future of libraries and what we should be doing now and in the future. For instance, if you’re inclined to think that libraries are in danger of becoming irrelevant, you’re probably going to be more open to many of the more radical proposals and developments we’re seeing and hearing of today. Purists, of course, are just as vehement and passionate about libraries, but want to see the core values of their libraries shored up. To them, good old fashion reference and circulation is what libraries are all about.

So the question is, how do these two groups find a middle ground that will not compromise us into mediocrity? I’m skeptical about the prospect of creating more excellent middle-of-the-road libraries. That’s what most of us are right now.

He made me think about where I fit on the “Libraries in Peril” continuum. It’s not changed much since library school 18 years ago. Back then, I wrote a compulsory essay about “The Role of the Library in Today’s Information Society“. I concluded that librarians have extremely valuable skills in identifying, organising, accessing and providing information – essential and relevant skills to most organizations. BUT – unless we blow our own trumpets to vigorously market our skills and our library services, we will be ignored and cease to be funded.

Yes, we are in peril. Yes, we do need to take radical action…and a very good place to start should be to ensure that our users and our funding bodies value us for what we can do and become our active advocates. If we are no longer reaching our users with our traditional brand – which was “trusted, unbiased information and free books” – then we need to update or re-market it.

We have a culture of excellence, but not of promoting our role rather than our work. We’re used to modestly doing excellent work and letting that speak for itself. Today, Google is shouting louder.

Here’s some “trumpet blowing” ideas that go beyond “we do it good” brochures:

  • If our users are forsaking our reference collections for Google, run classes in “how to use Google better“. Or “20 other places to look when you can’t find what you want on Google“.
  • Repackage our traditional reference desk services as a “homework club” or “one-on-one assignment research help” sessions.
  • Emphasize to our users the financial benefits of library membership.
  • Academic, school and public libraries can find ways to support the administrative function of their organizations – become “go to” people to evaluate social software, subscribe to materials and provide research support to executives who administer the organization, offer meeting rooms in the library building for the organization’s use.
  • Seek working partnerships with other people in our organizations or our communities. Intertwine their fate with ours. Records managers, PR folk, local hobby clubs, businesses, educators are all possible partners for joint projects.
  • Conduct a survey of library “non-users” from our target client group. Provide a small promotional gift for answering the survey, one that needs to be picked up from the library front counter.
  • Target new audiences with traditional services. Review the “homebound” delivery service to include mums with kids under 5 as well as the infirm, or conduct a storytelling session aimed at senior citizens. Create a “leisure reading” collection in an academic or special library.

Connected Ventures “Flagpole Sitta” viral clip on Vimeo

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Bronwen mentioned this video on twitter maybe a month ago.

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo

We did this video one night after work. We are a company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker.

This is posted on the Vimeo video sharing site, which I hadn’t heard of until – you guessed it – I was pointed to this cool and entertaining video.

What do I think of it?

  1. I feel much older, less creative and fatter.
  2. It perked me up.
  3. Millenial geeks are cute.
  4. If they can produce something like this with equipment I have lying around my house, how can movie makers and mainstream media hope to impress this generation?
  5. I hope that it is, as I suspect, just a viral video produced by Connected Ventures to promote Vimeo, or else that the kids were paid heavy bonuses for the traffic it brings to the site.
  6. I hope that they were also paid bonuses by Busted Tees, another company they work for and whose product many of them are wearing.
  7. Oohhh look…what does Defunker do…?
  8. Hmmmmm…. game set and match to clever marketers.

What if we hired some millennial geeks to weave through our library services, lips syncing and looking cute. Could we go viral?

Spot the librarian

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No, I’m not talking about this:

spot_book.jpg

…but about our visibility in our own buildings.

With the push to meet our users where they are, both online and in our communities, we need to take a look at how close we get to our users in our own buildings. It affects how well we serve our customers and how well people understand what we do.

In most places I’ve worked, the majority of library staff who were in the front line and greeting people each day weren’t librarians. Well – they weren’t librarians to those of us who know that a librarian is someone with a formal tertiary qualification in librarianship. But – to our customers, I’m sure that they were the librarians. Not us. We were probably “the bosses”, or – even worse – they didn’t even know we existed.

Yes, some libraries had a reference desk with a librarian sitting at it, ready to use that degree to provide tip-top 100% certified researching accuracy. But did the customers know they were any different to the staff elsewhere? And – here’s the clincher – did it matter? Is it actually important that our customers know the difference?

Probably not for many simple enquiries. Most libraries have clear guidelines about when a question gets redirected to a “professional” (a term I HATE ). Most clerical staff I’ve met are caring, intelligent folk who would redirect sensibly. Do we need our customers to know the difference for any other reason?

Well, yes. If we want political support from our users to ensure that our jobs are funded, they should understand what we do. If we want them to understand that our back room is full of people with different and useful knowledge and skills not possessed by the intelligent, caring folk they interact with each day.

We are paid to know about new web tools, children’s literature and the best way to retrieve an item. We can purchase items on their behalf, are able to design programs to suit their needs, can arrange outreach services for parts of the community to which they belong and are able to partner with them to provide mutually beneficial services. We can create resource guides or training classes. We can redesign areas of the library to better meet their needs. We can act on the changes they want in the services.

How can we ensure that a customer on the floor of our library, playing “spot the librarian” actually sees some of us? It’s hard to come up with any ways, because so much of what we do is back room work. I’m disallowing moves like “keep a blog outlining what you do”, or “put events on your website” or “write an Ask a Librarian column for your campus newspaper”. How about locating some of our offices near where the users are and putting a “please ask me a question” sign on our doors? How about an “open house” kind of class where people know they can get help with web tools at the public PCs during certain hours a week? There must be more, but I’m baffled if I can think of many.

If people think of libraries as “places where books are”, then with the shift in definition of content, our libraries may be in trouble. But, if our customers define libraries as “places where librarians are”,  then libraries may survive longer.

Library Lovers Day – sing along

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Wednesday may be Valentines Day for some, but for Australians, it’s Library Lovers Day.

ALIA and the New South Wales Public Library Network have a site devoted to Library Lovers Day. There’s even a competition with REAL chocolate at the end. Just answer 7 reading questions to fill up your vitual choccie box, print out the receipt and take it to a participating library to claim some real chocolates. Yum!

The arrows of library lurve have pierced Andrew Finegan‘s heart as well. He’s written, recorded and illustrated his own Song for Library Lovers Day. Hoik up those pelvic floor muscles before you watch it. I liked it so much, that I just nominated it for an Info Tubey.

(Video embedded below)

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