PLA Blog

Great session this afternoon on being cutting edge.  Here’s what I learned.

The session I went to this morning was on Library 2.0. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, “we have Helene ( Blowers with us now in Columbus, Ohio, we don’t need to hear other folks talk about this.” Not true! It’s not going to be a reality for CML unless we all hop on that same train, my friends!

Points I gleaned:

• Design for uncertainty - you never know what is going to happen, and you should be ready to shift if needed to better serve the customers
• Keep experimenting! There is no right or wrong, there is just experimentation - if it works do it more, if it doesn’t work, try the next idea.
• In Boston they have Youtube vids of teens booktalking - on their website!
• Learning 2.0 is amazing (GO HELENE!)
• Web-based activity (i.e. on a teen website the library runs) is higher when it’s associated with a program.
• “Reminder me later” feature on their events calendar. They can program themselves to get a reminder 3 days before the event is going to take place.
• Michael Stephens is really as much fun in person as his blog would indicate.
• Speak in a human voice - remember that your customers will respond to this better than to another lecture.
• Circ staff is blogging about books for customers - and they’re sending circ staff to Book
• Expo to help them! They’re our front line - if they don’t know about the books, and they’re the ones who are known, we’re losing and opportunity.
• The library should be transparent, meaning we should allow comment in the catalog, etc.
• Throw out the culture of being perfect.
• Aim to satisfy the hearts of your customers.
• Learn to learn.
• Adapt to change.
• Scan the horizon.

Ideas I had while listening:

• Start a FlickR site where kids and adults and staff can post pictures of library events.
• Start a “1000 readers” project where we get a series of photos of people - maybe all reading the same book? Maybe each reading their fave. Why not even maybe use those things for our promotions? Our customers using the library!
• Stop worrying about controling the content of library blogs, and just let it go.
• If you haven’t read it yet, go read Tame the Web’s post on the library that disallows MySpace and Facebook. Pay particular attention to the comments - there is a good discussion going.