PLA Blog

johnbeck
Originally uploaded by informationgoddess29.

I was taking notes on my Palm, because I wasn’t able to sit near a plug and my laptop battery was drained (again), and when I tried to save my file, it CRASHED. My notes are gone. Will you take my word for it that John Beck gave a brilliant and entertaining overview of differences in attitudes about concepts like global awareness, competition, risk-taking, and multi-tasking between those born before and after 1970?

If not, library school student Jami Schwarzwalder took excellent notes, posted on the YALSA blog.

It was a presentation very similar to the one he did at the OCLC symposium at the 2005 ALA Midwinter Conference
(notes: http://www.plablog.org/2005/01/name-that-tune.html, http://www.plablog.org/2005/01/gaming-continued.html).

A few highlights from this year:

• 80% of those under age 34 , surveyed for Got Game? said they played video games.
• 81% of teens say they play games onlinem in a recent Pew Internet & American Life report.
• 100% of teen on the Harvard campus (theoretically the best & brightest young minds of the time) know the theme song to Super Mario Bros.
• games led to reading for his son, who used cheat codes to get through Tony Hawk’s Underground
• Gamers don’t like level bosses - librarians must learn to be strategy guides
• The best games, best ads, best LIBRARY SERVICES command all six attention types
• Try Brain Age for the Nintendo DS - SUnday paper style games that are mental calisthenics

Questions from the audience raised concerns about violence in games, games and literacy, and game ratings; a member of the LibGaming listserv invited attendees interested in continuing the conversation about games & libraries to meet up at the Sheraton bar at 8:30 on Thursday night. over 20 people showed up, including vendors, to exchange ideas, concerns and success stories.

More resources for libraries interested in gaming:
Game On! Games in Libraries Blog
Gaming in Libraries (symposium schedule for December 3-5, 2006)
LibGaming Listserv
Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki
Manga, MP3s, and MMORPGs, Oh My! Simmons GSLIS CE class
The Video Game Librarian
“Video Games as a Service: Hosting Tournaments at your Library” by Erin Helmrich and Eli Neiburger (VOYA, February 2005)
YALSA Gaming Discussion Group log in with ALA # & password, then access through Divisions/YALSA/

bpl
Originally uploaded by informationgoddess29.

A town crier announced events, attractions and the local time, greeting guests entering the foyer of the Johnson Building of the Boston (MA) Public Library’s main branch in Copley Square on Friday evening March 24, 2006.

The entertainment included colonial cosplay (I swear I saw Sam Adams!), live music, young Irish step dancers, human statues, library tours, and museum quality exhibits on Joan of Arc and the work of Tomi Ungerer. Librarians admired the art and architecture of the adjoining McKim and Johnson buildings while swilling wine, nibbling appetizers (the artichokes were my favorite) and enjoying a delicious repast of hearty New England fare, catered by their in-house restaurant, Sebastian’s. Dinner included clam chowder, turkey, and a salad with our famous native fruit, cranberries (dried, in this case).

BPL staffers were on hand to welcome visitors and answer questions, recognizeable in their snazzy new red baseball caps.

The BPL party started to wind down around 9 PM, and no doubt continued in many local watering holes and fine dining establishments as the conversations and netwoking continued. What happens in the library (conference) stays at the library (conference).

Whether your Friday night included margaritas and shaking your booty on a dance floor on Lansdowne Street until 1AM or simply reading a bestseller and lights out by 10 PM, I hope it was a fun evening! More pics on Flickr - search under the pla2006 tag.

“I don’t have handouts I tried to write them out last night and my hand got tired.”
~Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Ford Memorial Library

“Libraries are not the warehouse for books, but a place for people to interact.”
~Dr. David Liroff, WGBH

“You don’t want any problems with teenagers at your public library at 3:30? One word: Padlock.”
~Patrick Jones, on the inevitableness of avoiding after school behavior/noise issues at the library

“What’s Unshelved?”
~10,000 librarians who didn’t get an Unshelved banner for their badges

“We need to get video games.”
~an assistant manager, to her director

“Congratulations, Mr. President!”
~librarian to Bernie Margolis, director of the BPL, on the successful all conference reception

“[We think that] marketing is given out keychains and pens – we’ve got to get beyond that.”

Handouts for this session are online at http://www.ivylibrary.com; please contact presenters for the password - http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/libraries/index.asp

Montgomery County PL got a grant to work with marketing firm to design a new logo and create taglines:

• Where the County Reads
• Where the County Learns
• Where the County Meets
• Where the County Gets MOR (Montgomery Online Resources)

Added branding to bookmobiles – graphic standards with all publicity to make library PR clearer (flyers, brochures, posters, bookmarks, etc)

Strategic marketing initiatives – includes marketing databases/online resources specifically

Implementation:

• Train staff
• Reformat existing publications
• Respond to staff concerns (in house graphic artists)
• Include marketing initiatives in strategic plan

One Year Later:

• Passion & vision can start something; buy-in is critical
• Ongoing resistance threatens the project
• Have process in place before roll-out

(Note: these three lessons can be applied to any project or idea! Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is a great resource for learning how to reach critical mass.)

Next steps:

• More marketing experience & training
• Investigate our library’s marketing strengths
• Add marketeing to strategic plan
• Recognize difference between marketing and merchandising

One board member said “You don’t need a grant, why don’t you just put up a website?” Library response: “Sir we’ve had a website for three years…” obviously, the website wasn’t working.

Goals of Staff Training:

• Background
• Into to new
• Production standards easier & faster
• Staff buy-in key – 15 people cannot change a huge system.

Factors to consider:

• Various skill levels
• Branches dispersed geographically
• Many staff to train
• Timetable for training
• Naysayers

Plan: Make it as easy as possible to eliminate excuses for not participating!

• Small group training/demo
• Training approved for re-certification credit
• Small group of trainers sent to branches
• Training materials online ahead of time – pre assignment (familiarity = more buy-in)

Class Sessions:

• Informal
• Included overview of grant process, library needs and overall goals
• Examples of good/bad flyers
• Walkthrough creation of a flyer
• Evaluate pre-assignment together
• Handouts:
• 10 steps to a fabulous flyer
• Flyer Checklist to match graphic standards
• It’s PHAT! (Program Handout Aid for Templates)
• It’s PHAT! Checklist
• Good/bad flyer examples

Graphic Standards:

• Logo
• One of two design elements
• 80 different graphics/icons
• 9 approved fonts
• 35 different borders
• 8 paper color choices
• Use of other graphics allowed
• All icons & logos black and white so they can be printed on colored paper
• Items available only though intranet

Successes:

• Training model proved efficient
• Ongoing support after the class (a set of questions/prompts beginning with “Are you sitting at a computer with MS Publisher?”
• Visiting branches helped get the word out to the frontline staff
• Staff had hands on opportunities
• Graphics archive an ongoing area of contention

How to Make a Flyer:

1. Start with a template (forms, flyer, etc)
2. Download publisher template
3. Use Publisher & Internet Browser to create form
4. Save your flyer with a name you’ll recognize
5. Add design elements
6. Personalize with your branch
7. Choose a border for the upper left corner
• Click download (process easier than browsing MS Publisher clipart)
• Right click and copy
• Go to Flyer
• Right click and paste
8. Choose an icon for the upper right corner
   (icon options include design element and outline)
• Click download
• Right click and copy
• Go to Flyer
• Right click and paste
9. Add headline in selected font
10. Add body text in selected font
11. Select logo
12. Type in “housekeeping info”

Time: 10-20 minutes

One attendee suggested looking for partnerships to pay for marketing materials or agencies in the community who are willing to do probono work for the library.

Good-by now to the streets and the clash of wheels and
locking hubs,
The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs.
The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy
haunches,
Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle,
The smash of the iron hoof on the stones,
All the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street–
O God, there’s noises I’m going to be hungry for.
- Carl Sandburg

I completely agree with Sarah: this being my first PLA conference, and having been to other state conferences, I was amazed by how nice everyone was, how easily conversations were initiated; I felt very comfortable. I also wanted to add a quick note about the Placement Center: I’d never interviewed at a conference, and was nervous about doing so, but it was a great experience! You can check out a library’s booth in the Center, grab some information to take with you, and make an appointment to interview there. Mine was Friday. It lasted about 30 min, and was a basic “informational” exchange, just getting to know more about each other. Very wonderful and recommended. (Just make sure you don’t do what I did and ignore the hotel phone call, only to wake up later realizing you have a mere 45 min to get ready and grab a cab, with no time for coffee!)

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.)

Amy

The overall theme: marketing books to readers. Since I’m horrible at RA and, like many librarians, am not great at marketing, this was a useful session.

Neal Wyatt
Spoke on articulating the appeal of a book to readers. “Appeal drives RA work.” The appeal may be based on a number of factors, such as pacing, characterization, setting, emotional/psychological tone, level of detail, type/genry, etc.

“You don’t have to believe that Danielle Steel and Margaret Atwood are equally engaging to a reader; you just have to pretend you do.”

At the desk, say as little as possible. Talk about the pace and tone (which tend to be really important to readers) and throw in a couple more details about plot and special features.

Georgine Olson
Spoke on “Booktalking in the Stacks.” I’ve always been a fan of actually approaching patrons in the stacks. (My tip: Never ask “Do you need help?” Much better: “Are you finding what you want?”)

Olson emphasized the low stress involved, since doing walkaround RA doesn’t feel like an obligation. “It’s one of the most fun things you can do, because you don’t have the pressure of being the expert behind the desk.”

Joyce Saricks
Spoke on book displays. “Spend your time choosing the books” rather than constructing an elaborate display. Although the display does need to look inviting.

“I don’t belive that any library doesn’t have room for a display. … You can put up two bookends and a dozen books, and you’ve got a display.”

“The best marketing tool and reference tool, hands down, is a friendly staff.”

Comment from an audience member (in response to my question about how to apply the techniques to the proverbial high school senior who doesn’t like to read, doesn’t want to read, but has to pick a 300-page book for a school assignment): Reading Rants is a great RA website for teens, especially guys.

I have been to a number of different library organizations’ conferences over the years (6 at last count) but this is my first PLA. I have noticed a few things that are different about this conference:

• There are a zillion publishers here. There is an entire floor in the exhibit areas for publishers, plus more up on the second floor. Wow. It kind of makes me wish I did print collection development.
• The librarians here are very customer-service oriented. Every session I’ve been to was user-focused. What can we do for our users? What can we change to do our jobs better? Good for us.
• No librarians were shopping at Ann Taylor Friday afternoon at 1:30. At the same time, 17 librarians were shopping at Ann Taylor Loft (the more budget conscious version of Ann Taylor). Who would have thought librarians were thrifty?
• There are more young librarians at PLA than at other organizations’ conferences. Is this because more young librarians work in public libraries? Or public libraries are more willing to send their young employees? I don’t know.
• PLA attendees are courteous. I have had more doors held open for me, more elevators held for me, and more friendly conversations than at any other conference.

Public libraries and public librarians rock.

When Jon Scieszka is speaking at a conference, it doesn’t really matter what it’s about – you should go listen. Today he assembled several author/illustrators from his Guys Read anthology to talk about guys and reading in the interest of exploring ways we can work to close the gender gap in reading and scholastic achievement. Erik Kraft talked about his favorite books from childhood, the importance of comics in his development as an artist and reader, and his longtime fear of the wolf in Disney’s Peter and the Wolf story book. Jarrett Krosoczka also talked about how his love of comics as a child led to his interest in writing and illustrating. Timothy Basil Ering talked about how exploring the world and art led to his career in children’s books. And, last, Tony DiTerlizzi talked about the importance of a fifth grade teacher telling him to draw pictures from books for extra credit when he was struggling with longer stories. At the end of the presentation, Scieszka asked the panel questions and then invited questions from attendees.

Several themes ran through the presentation. More than one of the guys talked about the importance of reading and making comics as kids. They also talked about actually making books. Kraft even brought scans of some of his early stories, including “The Curse of the Church.” A couple of the authors talked about loving the Choose Your Own Adventure series. (So did I, incidentally. Why don’t they put them back in print? Kids would sooo read them.) Scieszka talked about the importance of adults recognizing the validity of reading nonfiction, comics, and just generally things that aren’t novels. It’s sad to me that people still need to hear this message, but they really do. Ultimately, as Scieszka also noted, public libraries can be the place that fills gaps and has all the high-interest things that might interest guys and, ideally, any reluctant reader. If you didn’t get to see the session and haven’t spent some time reading about this issue, you should check out the Guys Read web site.