Remaining Relevant

I was thrilled to host Social Media Breakfast - New Hampshire at the Library in September.  I met some fantastic people, learned some stuff, and even got on youTube talking about the relevant services our Library can offer to the technorati.

The morning really drove home for me that libraries are not alone in attempting to provide services and outreach online.  We’re just another business in a whole world of businesses - what we do isn’t that different.  I’ve learned way more networking with the Chamber of Commerce crowd than the library associations.

That said, I ran across a terrific primer this morning: 14 social media lessons we can all learn. Read it, live it, love it.

Always making NH proud, the Dover Public Library did a great series for Banned Books Week. Each day a stylized photo of a staff member posing with a banned book and an explanation for its offense.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss was banned by a California School district because it “criminalized the forestry industry”.

Quick, simple and interesting - programming designing especially for the online audience. Awesome.

I am thrilled to have organized the sixth NH Social Media Breakfast at the Library. As I’ve watched my colleagues bust out open houses and other outreach to our community this month, it feels great to host my people - the ones who share my interest in community and how to reach them.

The event was organized by the lovely Leslie Poston of Uptown Uncorked and co-author of Twitter for Dummies. Three speakers:

Heidi Duncanson, Marketing Director at the Children’s Museum of NH, will share tips for building community on a shoestring.
Make people feel invested in your success.
Generosity and the dollars follow it.
Who are you trying to reach.
Volunteer in the community you are trying to reach.
Be positive and be generous.

Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager for DimDim, on Simple Rules for Great Community Management
Be real. Do not be a bot.
Your customers are people and as people they want to speak with people.
Always be honest online and be upfront about who you are and what you are representing.
Be real and address the need.
People want to know someone is backing them up - [LJR - This could be the Library!]
Sometimes folks just need to feel validated. Someone to tell them that it’s okay.
Do not be a roadblock. The buck does not stop here. You are not the end of the line. There are already too many roadblocks.
Sometimes the directions are just confusing.
We need to be the ones giving the customers the clear path. [HELLO Libraries!]
Unless you are open and engaged you cannot be an active participant in the community.
Conversation goes both ways. You are not there to simply broadcast your message. It’s not called broadcast media.

Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable, on Eight Competencies to Socializing Your Organization
How to manage a community in an organizational context.
One person cannot manage this. You cannot be the only one managing your brand, you need advocates.
Pay attention to the cues - they are there.
You want a customer to be an enabler for you.
Expectations - Reality = Satisfaction. If you set high expectations and don’t follow through you are *creating* dissatisfaction. Marketing should be modest and then delight the customer.
Be Transparent, that may mean telling them why something is private. Don’t just hide it.
Be Authentic, show yourself.
Be modest, don’t overhype yourself.
Lead from the Back. We are used to telling people what we want. It’s much better to encourage and set boundaries from the back. Inspiring rather than forcing.
Tone, Formal tone and language creates a barrier between you and your constituents.
Communication Mode, people are mixing work and life. Know where your constituents are and meet them there.
Feeling of Power/Control, Customers can see their choices - they have them [even with libraries] and they know it. Ask them to partner with you.
Find your cheeseheads - the people who are really passionate about your organization.
Bring catnip - incenting people and encouraging them, especially when it’s an opt-in environmnet. [They are all opt-in]
Ride the waves.
Don’t ignore what is going on. You don’t have to fix the problem, but acknowledge it.
Be notable.
Keep a Regular schedule.
Be valuable. This is not free, invest money and time.
Have rules. Be clear about you are trying to do with your community. Be firm about how people interact. Rules are the codification of your culture, decide what that is and write it down.
Take risks.
Protect your base. Know what is risky for your constituent groups and know what will cause them to be fractured with you.
Find good tool.
Measure. Your efforts can be quantified.
Account and reconcile.

After two years of marriage my friend, Justine has still not been able to have a direct conversation with any of her Turkish in-laws. Her beleaguered groom has to do all the translating… and he is not a master of nuance. This morning, though, she cheerfully IMed me to say that Baki’s sister, Fatos, had discovered Google Translate and they were having their very first conversation. Fatos speaking English with Justine correcting and Justine speaking Turkish with Fatos correcting.

The internet, bringing families together.

With all of these fancy widgets, plugins, apps, oh my! at my disposal, leave it to me to let tab after tab of things I want to blog to collect in my browser. Over 20 means it’s time for a link dump. Stop me if you’ve heard this:

Do Your Research Before Asking for Help [Lifehacker]
As a librarian I have some reaction to this. I’m just not sure what it is. Territorial - research is my thing, hands off? Excited to learn people still ask for help? Not sure what it is, but I like it.

Long Time Listener [Cat and Girl]
This reminds me of my favorite snarky comment when someone says something stupid like, ‘Oh, Libraries have computers?’ I smile sweetly and say, ‘You obviously haven’t been in a library in a looong time.’ I once looked for a new dealership when the salesman said that his librarian just sat around ‘and stamped cards all day.’ Sheesh.

How Do You Share Links Over the Internet? [Lifehacker]
I thought I was going to be all smug and use this as evidence that we need to invest more in providing services via IM, FB, Twitter, etc. But, joke’s on me - the result was email. Followed closely by IM & Facebook. Twitter was a distant third. Color me surprised.

When You Leave Our Library [Michael Stephens & David Lee King]
We should *all* have this on our doors. Well, actually, first we should all be providing some remote services.

Facebook Pages basics - a Screencast [David Lee King for the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase 2009 at the Annual ALA Conference. BTW, I'm wearing the tshirt reward from my 2007 offering at this very moment.]
This is a fantastic primer for anyone thinking about starting a library facebook page. I’m not a beginner, but I didn’t even know I could add a username. Yay! David gives fantastic advice - watch it!

Is there a Red Box DVD machine in your library’s future? [PAFA.net]
Fantastic idea. Anyway to provide services after hours is brilliant. If I had my way we would have installed one outside the children’s room last month. Unfortunately, and this may come as a surprise to some, I don’t always get my way.

• 7:30a: Staff meeting. I warn them about an upgrade to XP that I’m working on (The city is currently running Win2000, believe it or not).
• 8:30a: Add instructions to the staff support wiki about how to find Remote Desktop if someone has erased the shortcuts.
• 8:45a: Discussed complaint with two staff members. (Our circ staff are awesome.)
• 9a: Emailed staff regarding patron troubles logging into Userful.
• 9:05a: Setup laptops for staff webinar on downloadable.
• 10:30a: Work with Mark to do a quick n’ dirty digitization of some historic slides to illustrate a blog post.
• 12:30p: Covered the Information Desk.
• 1:30p: Lunch.
• 2:30p: Processed photos taken from slides, uploaded them to flickr, and scheduled the blog post.
• 3:30p: Work on the Art Room Information desk.
• 5:30p: Home!

I was out yesterday and did nothing librarian-ish at all, so we’ll just skip ahead.

• 8:15a: Arrive.
  • Notice the OPAC is down on my way in and report it.
  • Meet with Director about yesterday.
  • Meet with VISTA to be sure he’s not getting derailed.
  • Instruct Page on replacing ancient CRTs with new flats and update inventory.
  • Review emails collected from yesterday.
• 10a: Meet with Director to review stimulus so far.
• 10:30a: Enjoy a latte while updating Twitter and reviewing @manchlibrarys
• 11a: Back to the stimulus package. Director was unimpressed with bad news. Interruptions:
  • Patron can’t login to public computers
  • Guide Page to finding a replacement workstation for one that has lost its ports.
  • Diffused an irate patron situation.
  • Troubleshoot staff photocopier and phone the company for support.
• 1:25p: Finished stimulus draft (yay!) and sent to director for additions. Prep for lunch.
• 1:30p: Go home for eggplant curry.
• 2:30p: Meet re: this morning’s patron.
• 3p: Review and approve the new draft of the stimulus package.
• 3:30p: Work on technology inventory.
• 4:45p: Set up some workstations for staff training tomorrow.
• 5:30p: Home again.
  

I’m on the night shift tonight, but I ran across two interesting links in my morning ramblings. Looking for a cocktail to serve at your lawn party this weekend? Try the Darien Librarian. Yumm, whiskey. Chris pointed out Bibliotherapy to me - ‘just what I’ve been looking for’ - but don’t librarians do this for free? It does look deeper than simple reader’s advisory… maybe we should do it?

• 12:30p: Arrive.
  • Review emails and voice mails. Review final draft of the City’s web site content policy and requests for Library exemptions.
  • Check on a public computer that didn’t come back up after yesterday’s stormy power flicker. Report dead computer to city IT.
  • Report another software problem to Userful.
• 1:20p: Tackle the stimulus application. [I had been hoping to do something more exciting for my readers, but boss lady wants to review my progress on Thursday. Better have something to show!] Deal with interruptions:
  • Contacted Leslie Poston [@geechee_girl] to invite her to come talk about Twittering for Dummies.
  • Fax invoice for new monitors to City IT.
  • Make copies of the class materials for tonight’s Intro to the Internet.
  • Make plans to celebrate Brian’s birthday tomorrow.
• 4:15p: Break before dinner to write piece for the newsletter about Twitter program.
• 4:30p: Home for dinner - cuke salad and curried eggplant.
• 5:30p: Greet our volunteer and help her set up the laptops for tonight’s class.
• 5:40p: Have to leave the volunteer to help a patron connect to our wireless network.
• 6:30p: Flip that the wireless thing took a whole hour. Send a trouble file to vendor for bug investigations.
• 6:40p: Go back down to the computer class to replace the cable on the projector. Then return to trouble shooting the file for a vendor.
• 7:15p: Send file and hang my neato computer hardware chart poster.
• 7:20p: Return to the stimulus… for five minutes. Then comfort a staff member whose cat died today.
• 7:45p: Another attempt at the stimulus.
• 8:30p: Collect money from registers and close the building.

I am a little slow on the uptake here, not sure how it got away from me. But I’m always up for some navel-gazing and I have a fairly decent memory so I’ll participate in the Library Day in the Life Project 2009. If I understand correctly I’m supposed to live blog every day this week.

• 8:15a: Say a brief hello to my VISTA who is spending the year organizing a staff training program.
• 8:25a: Leave almost immediately to go to a City IT department meeting.
• 9am: Meet briefly with the Director regarding our stimulus application.
• 9:30a: Escorted technician to a sick computer.
• 9:15a: Crack open the tome that is the stimulus application. Spend the next three hours filling out the first three pages.
• 12:30p: Rush home for lunch and spend 20 minutes reading Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare (good stuff).
• 1:30p: Back to work and begin the executive summary for the stimulus application.
• 3p: Can’t write more. Start reviewing the technology inventory my Page has been doing and begin making a list of tasks for him for Wednesday.
• 3:30p: Start worrying about my presentation to the Board of Trustees. Months ago they asked how many publicly accessible workstations we ’should’ have, the information didn’t exist so I did an informal benchmarking study.
• 4p: Join the Trustee meeting and present the results. Conclusion: we are at the low end of the range of the appropriate number of computers.
• 5:15p: Leave the meeting just in time for the power to flicker in the middle of a fantastic thunderstorm. Canvas the building to be sure the computers come back up.
• 5:30p: Head home.

It’s awesome that most of us enjoy state libraries that provide centralized job listings, but the reality is that most of us would like that kind of information in RSS. Am I right?

I’ve been taking an informal survey of North American library job listings and happy to find out that most are, especially in the fine New England states. I was especially impressed with the Calgary Public Library who is always accepting applications for

Librarians (Full-time, Part-time and On-call) If you’ve got lots of energy and ideas, leadership skills, and a MLIS, we want to talk to you. Our preference is for candidates with good general experience. Knowledge of current and emerging technologies and their best use in public libraries will make you stand out from the crowd.

Unfortunately, my beloved home is not among them. But luckily, I am a can-do type of girl so, it’s with great pride that I present you with the new NH Library Jobline, now in RSS! Yay! This is all brought to you after a few ridiculous hours, some geeky fun, and Feed43. A pretty neat tool