This final presentation I attended at Computers in Libraries 2013 was one of the best. Jeff Wisniewski of the Univesity of Pittsburgh presented this talk on how to effectively use Google Analytics to get relevant results. It tied in beautifully with the metrics session I attended on day one and I wonder why they weren't in the same track. Both emphasized the need to have statistics that mean something, and to get statistics that mean something you need to establish clear criteria of success. Establishing clear criteria of success means you need to model out some set of individuals whom you are trying to target, either with your statistics or with your website, or for both.
In the case of Google Analytics many people (myself included) grab some numbers that look good and chart them out for reporting purposes. Most of the time there is some bureaucratic agency that is asking for those numbers, so you make sure you have them so they will be happy. However the numbers that are skimmed off of Google Analytics can be flawed to the point of uselessness. Unique visitors can be skewed by individuals who use different devices or clear their cookies. Average time on page can be skewed by one person who spends an age there because he got up to go to lunch or something. Bounce rate may be important or it may mean nothing. If you have a page redirecting people away from a website (like to a catalog or databases) you might really want a high bounce rate since you're running the website to provide access to those services.
Instead of relying on these canned numbers which are easy to obtain but likely meaningless, a better approach is to carefully determine what you want to look for and then figure out how you're going to get it. Wisniewsky used the acronym of S.M.A.R.T. to enumerate the criteria your goals should meet : Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. To get these goals we need to talk to users, find out what broad types our users fall into (high school students going to the web page for research, moms going to the web page to find out storytime hours, active citizens who want to know information about how their money is being spent, etc.) and then figure out where we want those people to be going.
Google Analytics can be used to map out pages you expect these categories of user to want to go to and the paths they are likely to follow on your website to get there. These pages and paths are called "goals" and "funnels" respectively. You can ask Google Analytics to provide reports for you then on how many people successfully navigated a path and attained a goal, and how much time they spent on a goal page, if the goal page is some kind of destination page that is worth spending time on. Following these steps will lead to a more comprehensive and useful analysis of your website that you can use to make it better and you can figure out what kinds of people are using your site and in what volume.
Then you have useful numbers that mean something, and the state can have the number of hits you had in 2013 if it really wants to know.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 3 - Staff Training : Experiments & Experiences
This three-part session covered quite a bit of interesting information about keeping staff educated about technology.
The first presentation was given by Leah White, of Northbrook Public Library, and Gwenyth Stupar, formerly of Northbrook Public Library but now of Barrington Area Library. As Northbrook is where I live (although not where I work) I was quite interested in seeing what they were doing there in the matter of staff education.
Leah and Gwyn described the multiple points and steps in their staff education program to make staff more comfortable in dealing with technology and helping patrons with technology. They emphasized the point that the best way to help patrons who are struggling with technology is to first train the staff so they can then help the patrons. It's necessary to get staff away from having an attitude of "Sorry, I have no idea how that works" toward an attitude of "No, I don't have one of those, but let's figure out what we need to do to get it to work."
They found that it is important to invest in devices for their staff to use so staff could become comfortable with the devices in low-pressure situations on library time. They also attached staff training to an existing routine of staff education, such as staff meetings. They made it into an event that their staff could get excited about and created a detailed workbook that staff could use to go step-by-step through the process of using a device, even if they were intimidated and completely flummoxed by the devices. They recommended creating a different workbook for each device and making the training of staff with the devices mandatory.
After piloting the program, they then rolled it out at Northbrook, eventually setting up a table at the train station at regular intervals so they could demonstrate downloadable ebooks to residents who might not come into the library.
Pamela Carson of Concordia University Libraries followed Leah and Gwyn with a presentation on lifelong learning and technology. This was a more general talk about lifelong learning, what benefits it has, how to foster it, and what kinds of people are more likely to gravitate to informal learning. As someone who as been learning many things informally for a long time I didn't find a great deal of new information in this presentation, but it did provide a nice overview of the subject and helped me consider that many people need to be encouraged to pursue this kind of informal education.
The final presentation of the session was by Michael Sauers of the Nebraska Library Commission. Michael briefly described the history that the state of Nebraska has had with the 23 things project that was extremely popular a couple years ago. In 23 things, 23 different kinds of tasks were explored with library staff at the many different libraries that implemented the project, all of which had something to do with Web 2.0 concepts. For instance staff had to use Facebook and Twitter, experiment with YouTube, and complete many different kinds of social networking tasks, writing a blog post about each experience. The goal was to keep staff up-to-date with technologies that patrons were using so they would be better equipped to assist them.
After their initial 23 things project, the Nebraska Library Commission decided to keep going. For some time now they've been adding a new thing every month and encourage librarians in the state of Nebraska to complete the newly introduced things in the period of the month when the thing has been introduced. If the requisite blog post is submitted within the month, staff get a credit towards keeping their librarian certification current. The Nebraska Library Commission has also started adding books to read to the list of possible things, rewarding credits for every 100 pages in the book (although the book has to be completed for any credits to be gained).
For libraries wishing to continue to push staff forward and keep them current, which was the whole goal of 23 things in the first place, it is wonderful that Nebraska keeps doing this. Many of the things in 23 things have now become less important than they were at the time, while other sites, such as Pinterest, didn't exist at the time the 23 things project was launched.
Their Things and BookThings can be found on the Nebraska Learns site (featuring a charming photo of Carhenge).
The first presentation was given by Leah White, of Northbrook Public Library, and Gwenyth Stupar, formerly of Northbrook Public Library but now of Barrington Area Library. As Northbrook is where I live (although not where I work) I was quite interested in seeing what they were doing there in the matter of staff education.
Leah and Gwyn described the multiple points and steps in their staff education program to make staff more comfortable in dealing with technology and helping patrons with technology. They emphasized the point that the best way to help patrons who are struggling with technology is to first train the staff so they can then help the patrons. It's necessary to get staff away from having an attitude of "Sorry, I have no idea how that works" toward an attitude of "No, I don't have one of those, but let's figure out what we need to do to get it to work."
They found that it is important to invest in devices for their staff to use so staff could become comfortable with the devices in low-pressure situations on library time. They also attached staff training to an existing routine of staff education, such as staff meetings. They made it into an event that their staff could get excited about and created a detailed workbook that staff could use to go step-by-step through the process of using a device, even if they were intimidated and completely flummoxed by the devices. They recommended creating a different workbook for each device and making the training of staff with the devices mandatory.
After piloting the program, they then rolled it out at Northbrook, eventually setting up a table at the train station at regular intervals so they could demonstrate downloadable ebooks to residents who might not come into the library.
Pamela Carson of Concordia University Libraries followed Leah and Gwyn with a presentation on lifelong learning and technology. This was a more general talk about lifelong learning, what benefits it has, how to foster it, and what kinds of people are more likely to gravitate to informal learning. As someone who as been learning many things informally for a long time I didn't find a great deal of new information in this presentation, but it did provide a nice overview of the subject and helped me consider that many people need to be encouraged to pursue this kind of informal education.
The final presentation of the session was by Michael Sauers of the Nebraska Library Commission. Michael briefly described the history that the state of Nebraska has had with the 23 things project that was extremely popular a couple years ago. In 23 things, 23 different kinds of tasks were explored with library staff at the many different libraries that implemented the project, all of which had something to do with Web 2.0 concepts. For instance staff had to use Facebook and Twitter, experiment with YouTube, and complete many different kinds of social networking tasks, writing a blog post about each experience. The goal was to keep staff up-to-date with technologies that patrons were using so they would be better equipped to assist them.
After their initial 23 things project, the Nebraska Library Commission decided to keep going. For some time now they've been adding a new thing every month and encourage librarians in the state of Nebraska to complete the newly introduced things in the period of the month when the thing has been introduced. If the requisite blog post is submitted within the month, staff get a credit towards keeping their librarian certification current. The Nebraska Library Commission has also started adding books to read to the list of possible things, rewarding credits for every 100 pages in the book (although the book has to be completed for any credits to be gained).
For libraries wishing to continue to push staff forward and keep them current, which was the whole goal of 23 things in the first place, it is wonderful that Nebraska keeps doing this. Many of the things in 23 things have now become less important than they were at the time, while other sites, such as Pinterest, didn't exist at the time the 23 things project was launched.
Their Things and BookThings can be found on the Nebraska Learns site (featuring a charming photo of Carhenge).
Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 3 - Inbound Marketing : Leading Edge Tools
After lunch I went to this rather dense, although well-presented, talk about the concept of inbound marketing made by John Heinrichs of Wayne State University. Before the days of the Internet I think there was no such thing as "inbound marketing" or if it did exist it was difficult to accomplish. Instead the primary means of marketing would now be called "outbound marketing." Outbound marketing is where there is some kind of interruption that attempts to draw your attention to a product. Television advertising, posters, and telemarketing are all outbound marketing; you are doing something (watching a program, walking, reading at home) and then someone stops you from doing that thing and presents you with something in the hopes of catching your interest.
Inbound marketing focuses instead on fitting into the flow of someone already headed in your general direction. Rather than focusing on interruption it focuses on getting permission and earning the interest of the person being marketed to. Social media, white papers, and search engine optimization are all inbound marketing techniques. You have something that is of interest to a group of people. There are other people who are competitors who have similar information and you are all competing for the attention of some target group. Your goal is to get the permission of these people to send them more information about what you can do for them, but you don't know who they are, so you do things to try and make it more likely that they will find you, find that you may have something of interest to them, and then provide a means for them to give you their information so you can give them more information. The goal is to build a trust relationship between yourself and the person who is a prospective client.
Doing all of this requires some interesting tools and techniques, and that is something I found of particular interest in this presentation. Heinrichs demonstrated a kind of relationship graph indicating where the students at his school were going for information that was created using an add-on to Excel called NodeXL as well as analytics data from the school website. He apparently uses a service called HubSpot for the lion's share of the interesting analytics data that he is able to use, with a lesser amount coming from Google Analytics.
I particularly found it interesting how he was able to determine links and layouts that were more effective by randomly presenting different versions to people as they enter the site and then using an analytics project to keep track of which links or layouts were more effective at capturing the attention of the people whose attention he was pursuing.
It was a fascinating presentation and maybe a little over my head (especially after lunch) but I'm quite glad I went.
Inbound marketing focuses instead on fitting into the flow of someone already headed in your general direction. Rather than focusing on interruption it focuses on getting permission and earning the interest of the person being marketed to. Social media, white papers, and search engine optimization are all inbound marketing techniques. You have something that is of interest to a group of people. There are other people who are competitors who have similar information and you are all competing for the attention of some target group. Your goal is to get the permission of these people to send them more information about what you can do for them, but you don't know who they are, so you do things to try and make it more likely that they will find you, find that you may have something of interest to them, and then provide a means for them to give you their information so you can give them more information. The goal is to build a trust relationship between yourself and the person who is a prospective client.
Doing all of this requires some interesting tools and techniques, and that is something I found of particular interest in this presentation. Heinrichs demonstrated a kind of relationship graph indicating where the students at his school were going for information that was created using an add-on to Excel called NodeXL as well as analytics data from the school website. He apparently uses a service called HubSpot for the lion's share of the interesting analytics data that he is able to use, with a lesser amount coming from Google Analytics.
I particularly found it interesting how he was able to determine links and layouts that were more effective by randomly presenting different versions to people as they enter the site and then using an analytics project to keep track of which links or layouts were more effective at capturing the attention of the people whose attention he was pursuing.
It was a fascinating presentation and maybe a little over my head (especially after lunch) but I'm quite glad I went.
Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 3 - SharePoint & WordPress
This second session of the last day was a good one and covered some topics I've wanted covered.
I will be the first to admit that the internal use website that we have for staff leaves a lot to be desired, but I have not either had time to find or time to implement something to adequately take its place. This session had two presentations suggesting alternatives, and has pushed me a little more in the direction of using SharePoint, which we can probably get in a hosted form at relatively low cost to boot.
Patrick Nunez Rauber from Broward College gave the first presentation of the two which was about SharePoint. Rather than providing a case study or the story about what happened at his library, he provided a nice overview of features from the standpoint of a user to make a case for using SharePoint, which is kind of what I was looking for in this session anyway.
Patrick began his presentation with this quote:
“The 19th century culture was defined by the novel.
The 20th century culture was defined by the cinema.
The culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.”
He proceeded by saying that SharePoint solves an interface problem, or more specifically the problem of organization and clarity. SharePoint is a collaborative web-based solution for any spreadsheet, any Word document, any web site, essentially – anything MS Office. It makes heavy use of metadata in files to make it easier to find things. It makes it easier for people in different departments or locations to collaborate on files and projects,.
The nature of using SharePoint in an organization means that important files wind up being organized and put into a system where they are accessible to others. It makes migrating data from one person to another, in the case of their leaving an organization for example, a much smoother process. By establishing documents like agendas in SharePoint you avoid making many duplicates that get emailed around and if changes are made in a document like an agenda it is unnecessary to send the file a second time to the intended recipients.
Patrick suggested the use of materials by Dux Sy, particularly his SharePoint for Project Management, as helpful resources in using the software. In the case of public libraries, Patrick felt that the tracking of virtual reference and the creation of knowledge-bases (such as a wiki) are ideal applications of SharePoint. Annual review and outreach documents also work very well on SharePoint.
Michelle Mizejewski of the University of California, San Francisco, provided an overview of a project they did to remake their staff network into something that was more heavily used and to try and address weaknesses in their existing network. Since they already had WordPress running on site they make a system that used WordPress, saving time and resources. They customized the WordPress environment using a theme called P2 that turns WordPress into a kind of Twitter-like forum, except without the 140 character limitation.
Although elements of the system have worked well, it has been hard to overcome elements in the work culture and get all employees to actively participate using the system.
I will be the first to admit that the internal use website that we have for staff leaves a lot to be desired, but I have not either had time to find or time to implement something to adequately take its place. This session had two presentations suggesting alternatives, and has pushed me a little more in the direction of using SharePoint, which we can probably get in a hosted form at relatively low cost to boot.
Patrick Nunez Rauber from Broward College gave the first presentation of the two which was about SharePoint. Rather than providing a case study or the story about what happened at his library, he provided a nice overview of features from the standpoint of a user to make a case for using SharePoint, which is kind of what I was looking for in this session anyway.
Patrick began his presentation with this quote:
“The 19th century culture was defined by the novel.
The 20th century culture was defined by the cinema.
The culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.”
He proceeded by saying that SharePoint solves an interface problem, or more specifically the problem of organization and clarity. SharePoint is a collaborative web-based solution for any spreadsheet, any Word document, any web site, essentially – anything MS Office. It makes heavy use of metadata in files to make it easier to find things. It makes it easier for people in different departments or locations to collaborate on files and projects,.
The nature of using SharePoint in an organization means that important files wind up being organized and put into a system where they are accessible to others. It makes migrating data from one person to another, in the case of their leaving an organization for example, a much smoother process. By establishing documents like agendas in SharePoint you avoid making many duplicates that get emailed around and if changes are made in a document like an agenda it is unnecessary to send the file a second time to the intended recipients.
Patrick suggested the use of materials by Dux Sy, particularly his SharePoint for Project Management, as helpful resources in using the software. In the case of public libraries, Patrick felt that the tracking of virtual reference and the creation of knowledge-bases (such as a wiki) are ideal applications of SharePoint. Annual review and outreach documents also work very well on SharePoint.
Michelle Mizejewski of the University of California, San Francisco, provided an overview of a project they did to remake their staff network into something that was more heavily used and to try and address weaknesses in their existing network. Since they already had WordPress running on site they make a system that used WordPress, saving time and resources. They customized the WordPress environment using a theme called P2 that turns WordPress into a kind of Twitter-like forum, except without the 140 character limitation.
Although elements of the system have worked well, it has been hard to overcome elements in the work culture and get all employees to actively participate using the system.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 3 - Rethinking Digital Literacy for All Ages
This first session of day three featured two talks on the subject of digital literacy.
The first talk had a youth services perspective and was presented by Michele Farrell of the Institute of Museum & Library Services and Enid Costly of the Library of Virginia.
The talk started with a brief overview of the history of the role of public libraries in literacy in general and children's literacy in specific. As computers and Internet technologies have become a more important part of functioning in society it has become more important to make sure children have access to such equipment and learn to properly use it, and in some cases use it for improving more conventional literacy skills. The focus here is largely low income children as a statistic mentioned in the talk indicated that 83% of low income children who have completed third grade have not reached the ability to read at the third grade level.
The speakers mentioned a variety of resources that have been found useful with digital literacy and children:
StoryBlocks – a collection of 30-60 second videos to model songs, rhymes, and finger plays for young children
DaybyDay – Different activities each day that have been put together by different states (daybydaysc.org, daybydayva.org, daybyday.id.org) Virginia will be translating DayByDay into Spanish.
Colorin' Colorado – A bilingual site from Colorado.
In addition to sites like this, libraries are doing a lot of work with iPads. Casa Grande Library in Arizona is doing interactive storytimes with a tablet and in many places iPads are replacing the AWE Early Literature Station computers.
Thy also mentioned a few literacy sources for different audiences. Everyone On (www.everyoneon.org) and www.digitalliteracy.gov are general audience sites. There's a site called
Project Enable (projectenable.syr.edu) which is a project to train school librarians to create effective library services for students with disabilities.
Following this talk was a talk I found more interesting and specific to my interests and the needs that I perceive at the library at which I work. Matt Mongomery and Jeremy Snell from Mechanics' Institute Library gave this presentation.
Mechanics' Institute Library is a membership library in San Francisco with 4500 members. They have many people who have historically come to the reference desk for assistance with e-readers, gadgets and computers. In May 2012, in order to better serve people with these needs, they made themselves available for an hour on a regular basis and patrons could make a 15 minute appointment. They rapidly discovered that for most issues, 15 minutes was not enough time. They modified the program and in July 2012 they started a monthly 6 hour run with 30 minute appointments.
They created a schedule in a Google Docs spreadsheet and entered into the spreadsheet the topic on which the patron needed assistance. They have so far assisted 69 people for a total of 38 hours. Their members like it and they are getting unsolicited “thank you” emails from members.
They have found the following benefits from their program:
We already do some things like this, but I think we could learn from this program and start doing a broader kind of thing than what we are currently doing, which is either limited to discussion of library resources or not advertised and is scheduled on request by patrons that know we will help them will all sorts of things if they ask.
The first talk had a youth services perspective and was presented by Michele Farrell of the Institute of Museum & Library Services and Enid Costly of the Library of Virginia.
The talk started with a brief overview of the history of the role of public libraries in literacy in general and children's literacy in specific. As computers and Internet technologies have become a more important part of functioning in society it has become more important to make sure children have access to such equipment and learn to properly use it, and in some cases use it for improving more conventional literacy skills. The focus here is largely low income children as a statistic mentioned in the talk indicated that 83% of low income children who have completed third grade have not reached the ability to read at the third grade level.
The speakers mentioned a variety of resources that have been found useful with digital literacy and children:
StoryBlocks – a collection of 30-60 second videos to model songs, rhymes, and finger plays for young children
DaybyDay – Different activities each day that have been put together by different states (daybydaysc.org, daybydayva.org, daybyday.id.org) Virginia will be translating DayByDay into Spanish.
Colorin' Colorado – A bilingual site from Colorado.
In addition to sites like this, libraries are doing a lot of work with iPads. Casa Grande Library in Arizona is doing interactive storytimes with a tablet and in many places iPads are replacing the AWE Early Literature Station computers.
Thy also mentioned a few literacy sources for different audiences. Everyone On (www.everyoneon.org) and www.digitalliteracy.gov are general audience sites. There's a site called
Project Enable (projectenable.syr.edu) which is a project to train school librarians to create effective library services for students with disabilities.
Following this talk was a talk I found more interesting and specific to my interests and the needs that I perceive at the library at which I work. Matt Mongomery and Jeremy Snell from Mechanics' Institute Library gave this presentation.
Mechanics' Institute Library is a membership library in San Francisco with 4500 members. They have many people who have historically come to the reference desk for assistance with e-readers, gadgets and computers. In May 2012, in order to better serve people with these needs, they made themselves available for an hour on a regular basis and patrons could make a 15 minute appointment. They rapidly discovered that for most issues, 15 minutes was not enough time. They modified the program and in July 2012 they started a monthly 6 hour run with 30 minute appointments.
They created a schedule in a Google Docs spreadsheet and entered into the spreadsheet the topic on which the patron needed assistance. They have so far assisted 69 people for a total of 38 hours. Their members like it and they are getting unsolicited “thank you” emails from members.
They have found the following benefits from their program:
- More one-on-one time with your service population
- Learn about the unique digital literacy needs of your community
- Grow your formal classes to address some of these needs
We already do some things like this, but I think we could learn from this program and start doing a broader kind of thing than what we are currently doing, which is either limited to discussion of library resources or not advertised and is scheduled on request by patrons that know we will help them will all sorts of things if they ask.
Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 3 - Keynote : Uncertainty & Imagination
The final Keynote for Computes in Libraries 2013 was given by Daniel Rasmus. I liked this presentation and even though Rasmus was introduced with the term "futurist", he quickly disabused the attendees of any notion that he was going to have any kind of certain vision of the future. This keynote actually made nice counterpoint with the keynote of the day before which had an overwhelmingly positive vision for the future.
Rasmus identified himself as an "anti-futurist" indicating that he is rather critical of making predictions as we have no data from the future, only data from the past.
The first and main section of his keynote outlined eleven specific uncertainties that we have going forward:
Uncertainty 1 : How Will We Access Information?
Uncertainty 2 : How Will We Represent Books? (PDF, Scroll, tablet, e-ink, HTML 5, cuneiform)
Uncertainty 3 : How Low or High, Can We Go (media size and data storage density) You can now get 128 GB on a microSD card when a few years ago 128 MB was state of the art. 54% of people claim to never use cloud computer yet 95% of them actually do
Uncertainty 4 : How Will We Find Stuff? Will we be using statistics, metadata, semantics, or will stuff somehow look for us?
Uncertainty 5 : What Do We Hire a Library to Do? (Learning Experience, Leisure/Pleasure/Shopping Experience, Outlet to Piracy, Memory, Internet Service Provider, Cultural Experience, Community Meeting Place, Source of data, Digital help desk?) Only about 4,000+ books are in a lendable e-book form right now but 1.7 million books are in a lendable form in paper.
Uncertainty 6 : How Will We Represent Knowledge? (Does your ontology have an epistmology? Too Big to Know by Weinberger)
Uncertainty 7 : What will we need to know? What jobs will exist that we don't even have right now?
Uncertainty 8 : What will be the role of place?
Uncertainty 9 : The Measure of Success (Productivity vs. Serendipity). Does the efficiency of forcing customers to use self-check stations really outweigh the inefficiency of maintaining a checkout staff that engage people in conversation and can make suggestions. Sometimes we make investments that we can't quantify very well because we are looking at them through the lens of industrial age thinking.
Uncertainty 10 : Who Will Document the Trust, Who Will Censor?
Uncertainty 11 : What Rights Management Model will Predominate? (Digital Rights Management vs. Digital Restriction Management)
Following the outlining of these certainties, Rasmus described what he saw as four possible futures toward which we may be headed.
Corporate lifeline – where we live to work and work to live. Corporations are the dominant social entitiies.
Trial Separation – Globalization has fractured; countries and regions are turning inward to shore-up their own societies and infrastructures. Nationalism and state control predominates, the world slowly dis-integrates.
Falling Skies – The old rules have stopped working completely. Local networks manage where national policy fails. People feel numb and there are loud calls for a constitutional convention in US
Freelance Planet – Large corporations have largely become holding companies. Value-webs have taken the place of supply-chains. Individuals create their own, contextual work environments. Technological innovation is rampant and chaotic.
Rasmus ended with these recommendations for dealing with the uncertainty of the future:
- Don't think about the future in a linear way
- Document the uncertainties you face – put the uncertainties on the door so you constantly see it and think about them. Correct answer for “what is going to happen with computers” is “I don't know but I have a robust way of thinking about it.”
- Consider the “ultimate” use or utility of a consumer technology an uncertainty until it becomes obsolete. You can't know that something is obsolete until it's gone.
- Actively engage with the uncertainties when making strategic decisions
- Use scenario planning to help think about possible ways the future may turn out, plan for contingencies and mitigate risks
Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 2 - Innovative & Awesome Tech
This session was, and historically has never been, an average session. This is the Tuesday night session which is a mixture of raucous, irreverent fun and serious discussion. This one was probably one of the better ones I've ever attended.
There were a total of 6 short presentations made by a total of 8 people in the evening. The first was different from all of the rest and was made by veteran keynote speaker from prior years Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. He has a new book coming out titled Networked and he whipped through a bunch of details that Pew has learned about library use, just as he might in a keynote, but in a tiny fraction of the time.
The findings he reported were:
1. Libraries are beloved
1a. Libraries stack up well vs. others (the military, firefighters). At least on one statistical measure
2. People like librarians
3. Libraries have rebranded themselves as tech hubs
4. E-book reading is growing; borrowing is just getting started
5. People are open to even more tech at libraries
6. African Americans and Latinos are esp. enthusiastic
7. The public invites you to be more engaged in knotty problems
8. Libraries have a pr problem / opportunity
9. There is churn in library use
10. There is a truly detached population out there that matters to libraries
Rainie finished his presentation with a request for libraries to sign up to participate in Pew studies at http://libraries.pewinternet.org/participate/
Following Lee's presentation were the typical Tuesday evening presentations which were a mix of humor and infrormation.
Sara Kelley-Mudie from The Forman School presented on her frustration with the TTWWADI (That's The Way We've Always Done It) attitude and things she's done to get past this attitude.
Michael Peter Edson from the Smithsonian Institution recited from memory a poem he wrote about museums which was at the same time touching and hilarious (can be found at http://tinyurl.com/JackTheMuseum).
Caroline Jobe & Linsey Henley gave a more serious presentation on the history of the Village Learning Place in Baltimore as well as their involvement in the Little Free Library project (birdhouses for books).
Jason Griffey of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga gave a fun and highly interactive talk about the LibraryBox Project, an open source hardware/software project to create low cost (~$35), battery powered, off-the-grid wireless devices that can be used to distribute documents (although not explicity stated, it was implied that this would be used for legal or legitimate freedom of speech purposes -- they are in use in places in China for instance -- rather than the illegal distribution of copyrighted media for which no exception has been given).
Finally Sheli McHugh and Kristen Yarmey of the University of Scranton gave a charming and funny presentation on the future promise (and to this point largely unfulfilled expectations) of NFC (Near Field Communications) titled NFC : From the Peak of Inflated Expectations to the Trough of Disillusionment.
It was a great evening session and provided lots to think about.
There were a total of 6 short presentations made by a total of 8 people in the evening. The first was different from all of the rest and was made by veteran keynote speaker from prior years Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. He has a new book coming out titled Networked and he whipped through a bunch of details that Pew has learned about library use, just as he might in a keynote, but in a tiny fraction of the time.
The findings he reported were:
1. Libraries are beloved
- 91% say libraries are important to their communities
- 76% say libraries are important to them and their families
1a. Libraries stack up well vs. others (the military, firefighters). At least on one statistical measure
2. People like librarians
- 98% of “ever” library visitors say interactions are “very positive”
- 81% of library visitors say librarians are “very helpful”
3. Libraries have rebranded themselves as tech hubs
- 80% say borrowing materials is important
- 77% say free access to computers and the Internet is “very important” service
- 76% go to libraries for quiet spaces
4. E-book reading is growing; borrowing is just getting started
- Growing awareness that this is a library feature (31% realize it's a feature)
5. People are open to even more tech at libraries
| Service | Very Likely | Somewhat | Not too |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online research service | 37% | 36% | 26% |
| Cell app | 35% | 28% | 35% |
| Program to try out devices | 35% | 34% | 29% |
| GPS app to find stuff in the stacks | 34% | 28% | 36% |
| Personalized accounts to recommend new materials based on past reading | 29% | 35% | 34% |
6. African Americans and Latinos are esp. enthusiastic
7. The public invites you to be more engaged in knotty problems
- 85% want us to coordinate more with local schools
- 82% want free literacy programs
- 61% separate spaces for different services
8. Libraries have a pr problem / opportunity
- 22% say that they know all or most of the service their libraries offer
9. There is churn in library use
- 26% say they have increased use (many of those have kids)
- 22% say decreased use (the Internet is a primary reason)
10. There is a truly detached population out there that matters to libraries
Rainie finished his presentation with a request for libraries to sign up to participate in Pew studies at http://libraries.pewinternet.org/participate/
Following Lee's presentation were the typical Tuesday evening presentations which were a mix of humor and infrormation.
Sara Kelley-Mudie from The Forman School presented on her frustration with the TTWWADI (That's The Way We've Always Done It) attitude and things she's done to get past this attitude.
Michael Peter Edson from the Smithsonian Institution recited from memory a poem he wrote about museums which was at the same time touching and hilarious (can be found at http://tinyurl.com/JackTheMuseum).
Caroline Jobe & Linsey Henley gave a more serious presentation on the history of the Village Learning Place in Baltimore as well as their involvement in the Little Free Library project (birdhouses for books).
Jason Griffey of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga gave a fun and highly interactive talk about the LibraryBox Project, an open source hardware/software project to create low cost (~$35), battery powered, off-the-grid wireless devices that can be used to distribute documents (although not explicity stated, it was implied that this would be used for legal or legitimate freedom of speech purposes -- they are in use in places in China for instance -- rather than the illegal distribution of copyrighted media for which no exception has been given).
Finally Sheli McHugh and Kristen Yarmey of the University of Scranton gave a charming and funny presentation on the future promise (and to this point largely unfulfilled expectations) of NFC (Near Field Communications) titled NFC : From the Peak of Inflated Expectations to the Trough of Disillusionment.
It was a great evening session and provided lots to think about.
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