{"id":1018,"date":"2009-06-24T09:14:09","date_gmt":"2009-06-24T00:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2009-06-24T09:14:09","modified_gmt":"2009-06-24T00:14:09","slug":"getting-deeply-local-at-our-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/24\/getting-deeply-local-at-our-libraries\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting deeply local at our libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In April I was at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ugame-ulearn.com\/nl\/index.asp\">an event<\/a> where I used the phrase <em>get deeply local<\/em> to describe a key strategy for\u00a0 libraries that want to survive. It was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ustream.tv\/recorded\/1421339\">picked up <\/a>by a couple of\u00a0\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/themwordblog.blogspot.com\/\">other<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/librarybytes.com\/\"> speakers <\/a>there, so I thought I would elaborate.<\/p>\n<p>In a world of generic best sellers available in supermarkets, music and video downloadable by bittorrent and university libraries getting best bang for buck with large &#8220;one size fits all&#8221; journal database subscriptions , I think that to best way to serve our communities libraries need to shift our resources toward a greater focus on the deeply local.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/slimjim\/2297086416\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3072\/2297086416_4f2f6d72f8.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"deep #1 Uploaded to Flickr on February 28, 2008 by slimmer_jimmer\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">deep #1 Uploaded to Flickr on February 28, 2008 by slimmer_jimmer<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I think our strengths over large ubiquitous sites like Amazon, Google and Wikipedia are &#8211; or should be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>our deep, human knowledge of the people in our community who use us<\/li>\n<li>our deep, human knowledge of people in our community who do not use us<\/li>\n<li>our deep, human\u00a0 knowledge of the specific information resources needed by our community<\/li>\n<li>our deep, human\u00a0 knowledge of how our community wants to find and discover information<\/li>\n<li>our deep, human knowledge of locally produced information<\/li>\n<li>our human ability to provide many different services to the same individual by our knowledge of them as people<\/li>\n<li>our human ability to anticipate desires and to delight our local community<\/li>\n<li>our buildings as a social hub for our local community<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div style=\"width: 283px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/enil\/3566256677\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3401\/3566256677_a66a562ca2.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"The Deep Uploaded to Flickr on May 26, 2009 by eNil\" width=\"283\" height=\"336\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Deep Uploaded to Flickr on May 26, 2009 by eNil<\/p><\/div>\n<p>With this knowledge, we have the ability to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>connect people in our community with each other<\/li>\n<li>connect our community to local information<\/li>\n<li>connect our users to the outside world of information<\/li>\n<li>put local information where our community can best access it<\/li>\n<li>provide tools for remix of local information<\/li>\n<li>help our local communities to organise, publish and make findable their own local information<\/li>\n<li>connect our local information to the world for those outside our communities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_1052\" style=\"width: 449px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/remix.digitalnz.org\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1052\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1052\" title=\"Memory maker\" src=\"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/Memory-maker.jpg\" alt=\"http:\/\/remix.digitalnz.org\/\" width=\"449\" height=\"371\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1052\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">http:\/\/remix.digitalnz.org\/<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There are many methods to do this.\u00a0 Some examples of\u00a0 things that Google, Amazon and Wikipedia cannot do what we can do &#8211; and that maybe we should give more resources &#8211; are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Institutional repositories of publications in academic libraries<\/li>\n<li>Digitization projects for ephemera and special collections held by libraries<\/li>\n<li>Local history projects<\/li>\n<li>Community information<\/li>\n<li>Homework clubs<\/li>\n<li>Homebound services<\/li>\n<li>Events designed to be intergenerational &#8211; like a grandparents vs children&#8217;s wii tournament<\/li>\n<li>Job clubs that help locals support each other in finding information and upgrading skills to find jobs<\/li>\n<li>Partnerships with other local groups or institutions, like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sirexkat\/3383337733\/\">Health Bags<\/a> in Topeka Shawnee County Public Library in partnership with a local hospital.<\/li>\n<li>Online initiatives to promote local discussion of reading, like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yarraplentyreads.blogspot.com\/\">Yarra Plenty Reads<\/a> blog or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mosmanreaders.net\/\">Mosman Readers<\/a> Ning<\/li>\n<li>Projects like <a href=\"http:\/\/horowhenua.kete.net.nz\/\">Kete Horowhenua<\/a> that allows community members to create an online repository of locally produced content important to the community<\/li>\n<li>Providing remix sites where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powerhousemuseum.com\/dmsblog\/index.php\/2008\/12\/02\/digitalnz-api-access-to-new-zealand-collections-launches\/\">users worldwide can mashup local data<\/a>, like Digital New Zealand&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/remix.digitalnz.org\/\">Memory Maker<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalnz.org\/widget-gallery\/submit\">Widget Gallery<\/a> .<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In April I was at an event where I used the phrase get deeply local to describe a key strategy for\u00a0 libraries that want to survive. It was picked up by a couple of\u00a0\u00a0 other speakers there, so I thought I would elaborate. In a world of generic best sellers available in supermarkets, music and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BXdd-gq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}