Thursday was the day of flying and exhilarating talk about what a cutting edge library could do- meet the needs of gamer generation, have a website that reaches out globally, create a culturally diverse library or even look to new vistas for programming.
Friday and Saturday was more business as usual. How is my library measuring up amount others out there? Friday opened with Readers Maps- Blending Fiction and Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory Through Reading Maps. I found out that my library is at least on the curve if not a head of it as there was talk about bridging the “Dewey divide” by mixing non-fiction with fiction in displays. My library’s displays a mix of medias –books, video, and music. The majority of the displays show non-fiction and fiction items together. This session told me I need to take this idea to a new level by putting these displays on the web for on-line readers advisory. The idea of these readers’ advisory maps is that it reflects how readers may go off on tangents when they read a book. The more traditional readers advisory says we will get you similar books with similar plots. You like Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code well then you would like Steve Berry and the Templar Legacy. These readers’ maps focus on you like Dan Brown well here is Steve Berry, but if you want to know if what Brown writes about is true then here are the non-fiction written in support or against. It may also include the movie National Treasures as well. The idea is to combine our complete collections to help the reader select what they are interested in. I would definitely download this presentation from the PLA website if you want to see a different take on how to do readers advisory on the web.
The next session was about measuring success in the library. Normally we measure this by counting – number of books circulated, number of people of attendance at a program, number of people who walked through our doors, and number of people hitting our website. But none of these counts answers what difference did it make to the patron. We all have those great stories about how our personal libraries have changed somebody’s life but how do we take these out of the anecdotal realm and make it measurable. The session Demonstrating Results introduced the concept of Outcome Measurement. This is designed to answer the question, “What difference did our program make to participants?” It explained that this doesn’t work for all programming but something that is aimed at making a long-term change for people. The program needs a beginning and ending time. It also needs follow-up after the programming has ended. It works best with things like literacy or reading programs that may happen multiple times a year. It then surveys the participants on how the programming helped to change their lives. What I did learn is that the measurement may be the hardest part of things. The two speakers talked more about what they learned in creating their process for measurement then their successes in actual measurement. For me, this was interesting as my library has just started to ask the librarian’s when we proposal a program to go beyond just counting attendance numbers and ask how else are we going to measure success. If you are finding that there is more pressure go beyond number counting then you may want to download the great bibliography that came with our handouts. These gave some excellent guides on how to start doing outcome measurement.
Saturday was Booktalking in the Stacks. Here, I received confirmation that my library is definitely headed in the right direction. The speakers went over how to do displays, approach people in the stacks and do the 30 second talk about a book. I would highly recommend downing loading this presentation f for how to get to the essence of the book. What is the plot, the characterization, the pace – it is Mad Libs for librarians but really makes you think about what you tell a patron when you speak suggest a book.
From every session, I went to I learned something and have ideas that I want to take back to my co-workers who have stayed at home. I have also gotten to judge where my library is compared to others. It is fun to get a feeling that my library may be ahead of the curve. But it is also exciting if I think that we may behind as well. Why, you ask? Because, I get to adapt and improve on the ideas presented today and help to update and create a cutting edge library.
So if you see something in this blog that you wished you had been at, but you didn’t get to attend then go the PLA website, download the presentations, and see what you can adapt to improve your library.
(Please excuse any grammatical errors , missing words or typos – sleep deprivation has set in.)
