In about an hour I will be giving a presentation at U Game U Learn called “What Kind of Better Than Free is your Library”. I will be recording the audio on my iPhone, so if I get time I will make a slidecast or post the audio on this blog entry.

It is partly based on these posts on my blog about Chris Anderson and Kevin Kelly’s ideas about “free” – What kind of “better than free” is your library service? and
What kind of free is your library service?

Until there is audio, here are the slides:

I will be speaking at U Game, U Learn at GMT+1 on Thursday 23 April 2009 – in a few hours.  This is the second year of a conference that was all about gaming in libraries last year, and this year is more focused on New Media, marketing, libraries and education. It is a joint effort of the local public library, the DOK Library Concept Centre and the academic library at the local univerisity, TUDelft. There should be more cooperation between these kinds of sectors.

My topic is:

What kind of “better than free” is your library?
Kathryn Greenhill looks at new marketing models where “free” services are the basis of making money, and at how libraries can use the same techniques to grow social capital. She examines how libraries can give value to their communities with the “better than free” qualities of trust, immediacy, personalisation, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage and findability.

Door: Kathryn Greenhill

It turned more into a jazz riff on libraries and free, than any serious disucussion of social capital. I’m arguing that the stories that we tell about our library value – which often consists of number of books issued or people counted on door counter – should be expanded to include other values to our community.  There are new marketing models that incorporate elements of no cost to the consumer, where people pay for what they could get for free. We need to look at some of the things that people value in these transactions and see whether we can argue that the library, that provides a “free” service to users, should continue to be funded due to the new values it can bring within a reputation and attention economy.

I will embed the slideshare set here when I have given the talk.

I’m going to be part of the “Battle of the Babes” in the afternoon. No idea what it involves other than four of us women with passionate views arguing over a number of theses about the future of libraries, plus some audience SMS voting. It *may* involve jelly, but I don’t think so.  Erik promises some surprises that it  will top the Storm Troopers from last year’s conference.

I will be recording my live tweets of the sessions via libsmatter and using CoverItLive again: