A great day in Nashville.

Generally, I try to let intensive workshops like today’s percolate in the brain a little while before I write much about them.  My mind was turned to mush today after this event.  Larry Nash White was a particularly good presenter.  Here’s a few side notes I took that got me thinking; forgive the stretchy images.

1) FedEx

This started the gears turning.  FedEx tracking, originally just an assessment piece, is wildly popular as a service.  I’ve never tried it myself, but apparently you can log in and see where your package is on a map.  How could libraries make assessment and data collection transparent and entertaining for our patrons without compromising privacy?  Like I say in the tweet, there’s ideas coming… they just aren’t there yet… maybe you have some?

2) Surveying Non-users

This is so simple, it kills me I didn’t think of it before.  It is a challenge to get input on how we could make library services more responsive to the needs of non-users since these people don’t actually come to our buildings.  Where to meet them and ask for their thoughts?  Wal-Mart.  Or Target.  Maybe even Old Navy.  ‘Going to where the people are’ is the oldest trick in the librarian playbook, but it never occurred to me that just offering a couple of pieces of candy for some honest feedback at a local shopping center could be good data collecting.

3) Think Time

This note came out of a story Joe Matthews was telling about a library director who used to set aside 2 hours a week to just sit and think about how to communicate with his board of trustees.  As I understood it, nobody was to bother him during this time, he just sat behind a locked door and thought.  While this was a real hoot for all of us in the room, it struck me that this is more than just funny- in fact, it just might be brilliant!  Never mind the specific subject of his thought, I imagine that if anyone sat down for 2 hours (or even 1 hour) of the week and thought about their job they would do it better.  Consider it part of the workplan for anyone who works for me in the future.*

*maybe.