PLA Blog

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) annual meeting and President’s Program was Monday afternoon. Although there were envelopes stuffed with program handouts, there were only 100 copies of most items, and there were well over 125 people in the room. I was fortunate to snag an evaluation, a copy of the annual report, and the program handout by scavenging at the end of the session. This was the 4th meeting that I attended that we ran out of handouts.

Outgoing president David Mowery and Executive Director Beth Yoke provided some statistics at that I’d like to share:

• YALSA is the fastest growing division in the American Library Association; membership has doubled in the last five years and in April 2005 membership stood at 4,541.
• One in four members are student members
• YALSA now operates free of ALA subsidy
• Registration for Teen Read Week (TRW) 2005 Get Real @ your library has already surpassed last year’s enrollment of 1,300
• Donations for TRW 2005 total $30,000, up from $8,000 last year
• There are now over 100 Serving the Underserved Trainers
• There are 40 mentors in YALSA’s new mentoring program
• We have more volunteers than slots, but committees will likely be expanding to meet the increased demand for services

Other highlights: the Graphic Novel Selection List was approved, and will become a real committee at Midwinter ‘06.

The meeting introduced current and incoming board members and acknowledged the work of the local arrangements committee. The winners for YALSA awards and grants were announced, and recognition was given to Jana Fine for her work on YALS before Mowery passed the gavel to incoming president Pam Spencer Holly. Her theme will be “Growing YALSA,” and she has a special interest in audiobooks.

Mowery’s theme this year has been literacy, so it seemed fitting that he would put together a program called “Teen Literacy is a Four Letter Word: Reading Equity of Access, Advocacy Diversity.” Panelists addressed financial literacy, traditional literacy, humor and overcoming adversity in literature, and boys and literacy.

Robin Willard of the Chicago Public Library, along with Helen Roberts and Tom Smith, talked about her partnership with the Center for Financial Freedom, and their educational workshops for ages 12-18 (and their parents and teachers) teach kids how read credit card statements and contracts, how to balance a checkbook, how to prioritize spending, how to manage money by saving spending, donating and investing, how to read a job description and find a job, and much more. They recommended Thomas J. Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door: Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy (Longstreet Press, 1996) and stressed that they display books on money management at all of their programs. This is a wonderful replicable program, as Roberts said, “We’re part of a nationwide network, which means there’s a Tom and me near you.” These three presenters really made the program interactive by having the audience try a few of the exercises they do with teens such as opening with some true/false questions about millionaires and having us guess a job description for a prize.

Sandra Tobias and Paul Winston of Chicago Public Schools brought along two teen participants to talk about Mayor Daley’s Book Club, which ties in to One Book, One Chicago and provides 6 titles a year, a battle of the books, and a spring symposium with author visits, book discussion and more battle of the books. Now in it’s fifth year, 75 schools participate and offer limited extra pay to librarians and teachers interested in running an afterschool club. Fifty books are given out at each school, and 20-25 teens participate in each meeting. They meet monthly even if they don’t have a specific title to talk about. The club is advertised at the activities fair and approximately 25% of the kids who express interest join. “We get to meet authors and have them sign our books and tell them what we thought,” said one teen about the annual conference that the mayor attends. “Reading is just, passion.”

Joan Bauer, author of, among other novels, Rules of the Road (1998), Hope was Here (2000), Stand Tall (Penguin Putnam, 2004), and the forthcoming Best Foot Forward (2005) talked about humor and pain in her novels, and finding inspiration in variety of places, some dark. In relating a story about her 8th grade experience of having a group of kids tease her, she said “the only armor I had was my sense of humor… we have to learn the kind of humor that isn’t laughing at someone, but bringing someone along.” As she talked about the writing process and how she gets her ideas, her examples held up her statement that her books are a mix of her own experiences plus a current cultural phenomenon.

Jon Scieszka, author of, among other books, the Time Warp Trio Series (Viking, 1991-), the Stinky Cheese Man (1992), and most recently, Guys Write for Guys Read (2005), talked about the steadily declining reading scores of boys and what we can do as librarians to change them. “I think you really have a chance to change this world,” he challenged, and gave us a handful of things we can do to accomplish it:

1. Recognize boys and girls are different. Give boys a special display or section in the library with guy books in it, and ask them for their recommendations. It harkens back to cave man days, explained Scieszka. “Put in a little area so they can go and kill it right there and drag it back to the cave!”

2. Give them short books they can look cool reading, and let them know they don’t need to commit to finishing it, write a paper on it, sit around and discuss it, or answer questions. A good place to start, of course is http://www.guysread.com

Browsing the trade show/exhibit hall today, I across a booth for a company that specializes in children’s books on deafness and deaf culture. I began signing (I learned American Sign Language in college) with one of the men at the booth, who told me he was the illustrator for the books, while the man behind the table was the author. These books are well written and beautifully illustrated, and really do speak to the issues of deafness and deaf culture in a way that children will understand.

After some discussion of where I learned sign language, and what I do for a living, the men told me that the booth across the way was staffed by Alice Hagemeyer, the first deaf librarian in the United States. They urged me to go introduce myself, and after some hesitation (my sign language is a bit rusty, and she’s a really important person), I did. Turns out, a proposal before ALA passed yesterday to urge the President Bush to declare March 13 through April 15 as National Deaf History Month, and Alice has been quite motivating force in making that happen.

Another librarian was there chatting with us, who had been an American Sign Language interpreter for 20 years before getting an MLS and becoming a librarian. Alice decided that she wanted to show us a book from Harvard University Press which was released last year titled Inside Deaf Culture. Unfortunately it wasn’t there, because it was a title from last season, but the booth representative took Alice’s postal address, and told her she would be sent a complimentary copy of the book.

Then Alice wanted to take us to the Greenwood Publishing Booth, because she is hoping that the publishing company will pick up her manuscript for a book on deafness and the history of deaf culture, and she’d like it to be published in conjunction with the first National Deaf History Month in 2006. She also wanted the publisher to meet me, her new hearing friend who is a librarian and a draftee/volunteer to help her promote the history month, and the other librarian, her new hearing friend who was so kind to help her by interpreting for her until she could find one of the ALA assigned interpreters.

The hope is that National Deaf History Month will raise awareness of deaf culture, deaf communities, and the library needs of deaf patrons, and Alice will have a booth at PLA 2006 to promote the cause, and I will be there to help. I’ll keep you posted here on the PLA Blog when the National Deaf History Month web site goes up.

Yesterday (Sunday) was the World Book Cart Drill Team Championship. Our library (St. Charles PL, IL.) participated as the Bookettes. We had some incredible competition! First place winners were students from Madison, WI who did a routine to Hewey Lewis and the News music, plus one of their members performed two backflips and The Worm across the floor in front of the judges. (I can imagine the rug burns on her tummy.)

Although our mystery theme seemed to go over well with the BIG crowd, the gold, silver (Thousand Oaks Library of Newbery Park, CA) and bronze (Batavia, OH PL) bookcart prizes went to very talented - and synchronized - teams. Hope we have another chance next year! (Pictures to hopefully follow.)

Note (added 7/8/05): There are some pictures of the Book Cart Drill Team Championship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s SLIS Laboratory Library.

The PLA Blog has a policy of not blogging vendors, and with very good reason, since it can get messy if it seems too much like an endorsement, and avoiding those shades of gray is best. We will, however, allow posts that include vendor information if it relates directly to a particular library project.

While I’d like to talk about the audiobook trends session I attended on Saturday, June 25, it really was too much of a vendor presentation session to say too much about it. In general, I would much rather hear about what libraries are doing with vendor products, since that tells a way better story about the product itself than yet another vendor presentation. The most valuable (and bloggable) bits were presented by Jenny Levine, of The Shifted Librarian fame, and Scott Brick, a library book narrator.

Jenny spoke about her work with the Listen Illinois program, which was based on and created in partnership with the Listen Ohio program. Both programs provide access to a large catalog of digital audiobooks to participating libraries in the state.

Audiobooks are loaded by the library staff onto specific players owned by the library, and patrons can then check out the players. The audiobooks cannot be downloaded to patron players, since the players must be registered with the service and owned by the library. These limitations do seem to be on their way out, Jenny says, because Audible (the vendor they work with) sees the writing on the wall from the competition, and how consumer demand is for home download and self-service features. Jenny did say that she’d love to see a kid’s letter writing campaign to JK Rowling, encouraging the author to license the Harry Potter books to a digital audiobook service, because she could see such a popular series from a rock star author making waves and changes in favor of libraries in the audiobook industry, and I agree.

Working with Listen Ohio was a wonderful mentorship/collaboration relationship, since it helped the Listen Illinois program get off the ground really quickly, and they are able to share collections, making the selection of audiobooks more appealing. I would even say that it could give them clout in negotiations with Audible.

There have been some issues with the web site, and with the software (the software is more a consumer model than a library/patron model), but these are issues that aren’t hindering the success too much, and will be addressed in the future. However, the program continues to be very successful, which is encouraging to hear. Patrons who use the service love it so much that they follow the rules carefully to make sure their privileges aren’t revoked.

I’d love to see more services like Listen Illinois and Listen Ohio, since I think they’re good for patrons and libraries, and the more programs there are, the more the audiobook industry will need to listen.

Scott Brick has an excellent voice, and once upon a time he was an actor looking for work. As an audiobook narrator, he gets to pick which books he reads, and has an excellent time going to work. He also has fans, which is just plain cool, and not something the everyday person would think is a perk of being an audiobook narrator.

He told several funny stories about having fans. One really entertaining anecdote involved a guy in bar (who happened to look like the lead singer from Men At Work) who is desperately trying to stay awake, so he starts a conversation with our narrator friend, asking him questions. When Scott mentions that he’s an audiobook narrator, the guy’s eyes get big, and asks his name. After Scott introduces himself, the guy shouts, “I’m your biggest fan!” And since the guy looks like lead singer from Men At Work, Scott says, “I’m yours!” Turns out that this guy in the bar is currently listening to 5 of Scott’s titles *simultaneously*. Rockin’.

My recommendation all audiobook fans out there: send a fan letter to your favorite audiobook narrator, if you have one, and let them know they’re a rock star, too.

All sorts of fun (it’s what happens when you get a bunch of bloggers together, and leave a laptop out at their disposal :D). It was neat to have so many smart librarian bloggers in one room (which started out feeling very big, then quickly felt tiny because there were *so* many bloggers), to finally have names to go with some of the faces, and to see old friends. It’s also an indicator that the librarian blogger community is vibrant and still growing, and that blogs are slowly finding their way into libraries not just as the latest tech toy, but as useful tools. A big thank you to OCLC for setting up the “salon” for all of us to hang out!

(This post is a little delayed due to spotty internet access in my hotel)

Chris Anderson spoke in more detail Friday on his Wired article (and upcoming book) “The Long Tail” at the OCLC Symposium. I had to leave after he spoke for another event, missing out on the followup speakers and Q&A. But here’s a bullet point style overview of what I did see:

• Library collections ARE long tails
• Anderson noted that in the community of folksonomies, the Dewey Decimal System and the like are considered “evil”
• The tyranny of geography
• In the old method, physical items (”atoms” as Anderson dubbed them) had to be shipped to stores and consumers. So popular products had to be produced to justify the distribution costs.
• This resulted in a “Lowest Common Denominator” of products - one which appeals to a little bit of everybody.
• Now, we have bits instead of atoms
• Infinite shelf space
• Insignificant cost of production/distribution
• Google is a Long Tail advertiser via the AdSense program
• Ebay is a Long Tail seller of goods
• CapitalOne is a Long Tail credit card provider, due to their extensive customization of each card for the user
• An explosion of variety requires an explosion of information about the choices
• Librarians are necessary filters of the tail
• Without filters, long tail is just noise
• Further down the tail you get, the more you need good filters
• Thanks to filters, we are moving from:
• Editors to peers
• Studio execs to word of mouth
• A&R guys to recommendations
• buyers to buyers (no change there)
• Fragmentation: too much choice, not enough people choose any one option
• Death of the water-cooler effect
• iPods are becomming niche radio stations
• 1 rock station a week is changing their format to something else, like talk radio
• Rise of the Amateur
• Their aim is a reputational advantage, not financial
• Our children won’t understand the phrase “out of print”

• What happens when scarcity becomes 0? Fundamental equations of economics no longger work due to divide by zero errors.

• What happens when (virtual) shelf space is free? We need to find a way to make this improve usability.

My thoughts:

Although Anderson admitted he knows very little about libraries, his talk and some of the points listed above can definitely be interpreted as lessons for our profession.

In one of the cooler features he showed off, Anderson combined the Firefox browser with the Greasemonkey extension and a script I think was called “LibraryLookup”. The result: When you look at a book on Amazon, the page tells you information like whether your library owns it, when it is due back, etc. I need to try this out!

The way Anderson spoke about librarians as filters really spoke to me. Someone will have to be the filter for the content explosion - while automated ones are getting better, they’re far from perfect. Librarians are ideal solutions.

How do you demonstrate the impact of library services and programs? If you receive any federal funds (LSTA) to support projects you either are now, or will be soon, using outcomes based measures to do so. This morning I attended the ASCLA President’s Program “Advocacy is Not Enough: Using Outcomes Measures to Demonstrate Library Impact.” Texas State Librarian, Peggy Rudd, provided some basic definitions and information on how outcomes are used to support a program.

Outcomes are the benefits for participants during or after their involvement with a program (increased knowledge or skills, changed attitudes, values, behavior, condition, or status.) Basically, it’s a change from telling how many participants were served to explaining how their lives are better because of it. It’s a move from reporting raw data, to sharing anecdotal stories that demonstrate the value.

It was explained that collecting this type of information means we have to be more observant of out customers, and we need to engage in dialogues with them.

A copy of the presentation from the program will be available on the ASCLA Website after the conference.

I was immediately interested in this program as soon as I saw the title. I felt that this specific community was always lumped together with gays, lesbians, and bi-sexuals, yet they have certain information needs that are completely different from the other groups. I was happy to see a fairly large turnout and a very knowledgeable panel.

Many important issues were addressed, but the ones that related the most to public libraries were the following:

Jamie Taylor’s list of “How to make your library trans-safe”

• Allow patrons to state what name goes on their patron record.
• Have at least one bathroom that is unisex; many times these are called “family restrooms.”
• Respect the gender your patron is identifying with.
• Use the correct pronouns with patrons (he, she, his, hers)
• Don’t gossip about someone’s gender or trans-situation (respect privacy)
• Remember there is a difference between GLBT and gay/lesbian
• Acquire and promote GLBT materials

Adam Davis’ collection development tips:

• Get VHS/DVD materials on transgenderism (it’s an easier way to let family and friends understand what this person is going through)
• Make sure all groups are representative in materials (male to female transgenderism is very different from female to male)
• Get a wide variety of materials (anecdotal, health, political)
• Have a bibliography of physical and electronic resources
• Get periodicals with trans-inclusive materials
• Have a list of local community organizations that help transgender people (especially with doctors who are trans-friendly)

I really enjoyed this program because it showed not only how to help this specific community, but how to show respect and have sensitivity for any patron group at your library.

For more information, please go to the GLBTRT website: http://www.ala.org/ala/glbtrt/welcomeglbtround.htm

My day has been interesting. After getting lost in McCormick Place, and putting about a half mile or more on my gymshoes, I managed to catch part of the RUSA/PLA program, “Taking the Guesswork out of Non-Fiction Readers Advisory”. By the time I got there, all of the handouts were gone, but I heard that they would be putting them up on the RUSA CODES page. Part of why I got lost is because when I first went by the room, I thought it was the 3M Six Sigma presentation as there were people spilling out of the room (think mini-banquet room), and that was the signage that I saw. After the ALA staff reassuring me that was the correct room, I hoofed it back in time to hear the recaps of each tables assessment of the, let’s say, genres that they were assigned. I’ve been to other workshops where non-fiction readers advisory (NFRA) was either the only topic or one of the topics that was discussed. I had not realized how popular a movement it is turning into. I think librarians already do NFRA, but they don’t think of it in terms of RA, and may think that the idea of applying skills that you would use for fiction RA is somehow incorrect. A lot of librarians who are already into fiction RA, are excited about NFRA. I think we need to not only work on our skills, but also work on the librarians who are already heavily into non-fiction to think of what they do as readers advisory. There is a lot of thought and research going into NFRA right now, and ideas and concerns that are a bit long too big to condense at this point (there is a line of people behind me at the Internet Cafe), so if you’re interested in NFRA, talk to people in your area, read Joyce Saricks in her different venues, and look for the book coming from ALA next spring (?) on the topic.

Here’s my favorite soundbite: You’re getting something right when they’re sleeping in the library.

This session looked at some recent academic library building projects, but the design principles are relevant for public libraries, too. Lots of emphasis on collaborative spaces, modular furniture, natural light. The computer workstations weren’t crammed one on top of another. Instead, there’d be one computer, several chairs, and glorious space so that people could meet, spread out, and work together. They’ve mostly done away with the dividers that split up tables and formed carrels for the sake of privacy. There are private study rooms for people who opt for quiet or privacy. Otherwise, the library is a place to see and be seen. And, it’s comfortable (one of the libraries was packed with Aeron chairs). One model for a learning/research workstation had a computer that was low to the ground, and several large, comfy looking footstool-type seating elements. There was a wall divider that arced overhead that defined the space as separate without closing it off.

As for technology, the goal is for it to be fully integrated with the facility. The only way to do that in the face of such rapid change is to build in flexibility — furniture and spaces that can be easily reconfigured (by your users, even). Moreover, the devices people use are getting smaller. Don’t expect your users to bring in their laptops when they can carry around something the size of an iPod. And why carry anything at all when you can store your information on a server?

View the Ferris State University and the JDB Thinktank (password ala0605) presentations.