Photo from Flickr by Lyndi&Jason

Change can be scary. Moving to a new city, having a kid, getting a dramatically different haircut – we often fear the unknown. What if I can’t make friends? What if I am a bad parent? What if my hair looks stupid? Fear can often hold us back from great experiences and doing great things.

Sometimes in libraries there is also a fear of change. Most readers of this blog are likely embracing change and see it as the only constant, but I am willing to bet they have colleagues or directors who are less than excited about all the rapid change taking place. These co-workers likely have done things the same way for a long time and may not see the value in new technologies.

Through some discussions and reading that I’ve recently done, I have found a few things that are useful to remember when trying to help people get over their fear of change:

• Play and have fun – Don’t take yourself to seriously. Libraries are fun places and the work we do is fun. We’re not brain surgeons. No one will die if we use the wrong subfield in a MARC record. We need to be able to have fun. Failure is going to happen, and that’s good because it leads to learning. Learning a new technology is all about failure and play. Instead of already knowing how a new technology works, you have to just start playing and clicking on things until you understand it, failing multiple times in the process.
• Listen – Listening to people is an important tool in getting people over the fear of change. Instead of talking about how great a technology is or how much it will benefit people, try listening. Often through the simple act of shutting up you can better understand people’s concerns. In fact, sometimes people just want to be heard. You don’t have to do anything, but they want to at least know that they have a voice. As Epicetus said, “We have two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk the less.”
• Tell stories – Well reasoned arguments are great, but when trying to change someone’s mind they often fall flat. Stories are much more effective when you’re trying to make an impression on someone. Instead of saying “this widget will increase your productivity 77%,” say “I was using this widget the other day, and boy did it make life easier!” Stories will get you further than facts and figures.
• Make use of a group – People are much more comfortable in a group setting. If some people may be hesitant to learning a certain technology, perhaps try it in a group setting. Groups are powerful. The peer pressure and the idea that “we’re all in this together” can help people get over their fear and improve themselves and gain new skills.

I’d like to thank Margot Price, David Lee King, and my library school bud Becky Canovan for discussing this with me and helping me clarify my thoughts on this. Are there other things that you have found helpful in getting people over their fear of change?

The response from the library community over this project has been mixed. They have over 2500 fans on their Facebook Page. There has also been a more critical response on Annoyed Librarian (the comments are especially interesting). Whatever your reaction is, I think that this is an opportunity for librarians as a community to think about the future and moving forward as a profession.

The list of 101 skills on their strangely named 101 RTK are links to good resources, but a bit contrived. I think that as librarians we don’t need to focus on whether or not we have Hulu as a skill. We need to focus on the larger issues that they mention like lifelong learning and the ability to quickly adapt and change.

Change is the norm these days. Having the ability and the aptitude to strategically navigate change is the real skill that all librarians need to have. Having the “ability to type” or “handle ourselves during a conference call” are not things that libraries should be focusing on. These skills will constantly change. Hulu is moving to a subscription model. Twitter and Facebook won’t be around forever. Not all librarians need all these skills. There are a variety of skills that people need for their different positions in public, academic, and special libraries. It would be more helpful if we could focus the discussion on which skills all librarians need.

The best part of the Library 101 project in my opinion are the essays. Most of them focus on those basic, overarching skills and bring up some really good points. My question now is “what is the next step?” Now that we have some of these basic skills spelled out, things like fearlessness, marketing, unlearning, and even math, how do we change people? How do we influence cultures of fear at our libraries? How do we help our colleagues develop these skills necessary for a successful vibrant library profession?

I started a discussion on the Library 101 Facebook Page. Let’s come up with some answers.

Photo by Fozzman on Flickr

People are talking about your library in both the physical and virtual world. It is difficult to know what is being said in private conversations without being omnipresent, but it’s easy to discover what’s being said online. You just need to work on your listening skills. Using tools like RSS, alerts, and saved searches it is possible to hear most of what is being said about your library online.

Twitter Alerts

To find out what users are saying about your library on Twitter, first go to Twitter advanced search. From there you can run any number of searches for your library using either exact phrases or including certain words. Use your librarian chops to run searches that might be about your library. For example at my institution our building is called the Miller Information Commons, but people may just refer to it as the Champlain Library. So some searches may include: “miller information commons,” “mic,” “champlain college library,” and “champlain library.” After you run each of these searches you’ll see a link on the right that says “feed for this query.”

You can then grab this feed and save it to Google Reader or your feedreader of choice as a saved search. Whenever someone says something using those words you’ll be notified.

You can also set up searches by location. For example, I have set up a search for the word “library” within 25 miles of my city. I get some unrelated hits (which are still pretty interesting), but I also get many that I may have missed otherwise.

Google Alerts

Another useful tool to know what is being said is Google Alerts. This tool gives you “updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.” Once again, you can set up variations of searches for your library. These alerts can be delivered once a week, once a day, or as they happen. You can then get them sent either to your email or again create a feed for them and have them go to your feedreader. I actually have a folder in Google Reader that is all saved searches and alerts for my library.

Blog Alerts

It’s also possible to set up alerts for what is being said in the blogosphere about your library. If you go to Google Blog Search you can run the same searches as above and find blog posts about your library. After you run a search there is once again the option on the left side of the results screen to subscribe either via email or feed.

Social Search

In addition to these searches, both Bing and Google will be adding social searching capabilities within the coming weeks. This will make it even easier to find out what people are saying on Twitter, Facebook and possibly other social networks. Once these features are rolled out try setting up alerts on these services as well. I know I’ll try it.

Once you know what is being said you can address people’s concerns, respond to compliments, and ultimately understand your users better.

Kelly Dallen and Chris Brogan both have good information on this topic as well.

• Pictures – Posts can get stale if all you are giving your audience is text or links to more text. Set up an account through a Twitter enabled photo-sharing service like TwitPic or Yfrog. Services like these allow you to easily upload photos from anywhere and share them to your library’s Twitter account.
• Retweet other people’s stuff – An easy way to make friends is to promote content that other folks are sharing. Perhaps one of your friends just shared an interesting fact or video or article. By retweeting that piece of content you’re complimenting the friend that shared it because it shows them that you think they share good things. You’re also passing on interesting information to your followers. Retweeting is win-win and really easy to do.
• Community Info – Going along with retweeting, you can also pass along information of significance to your community. When there are events going on on campus, even if they have nothing to do with the library, I’ll post about them. Libraries are community centers and central hubs. It’s only fitting that you share information of interest to your community.
• Encouragement – People are often trying to accomplish something at your library. Let them know that you’re on their side and ready to help. It’s important to include the personal touch when you’re tweeting.

• Announcements – Keep your followers informed of anything that comes up. If your website crashes, post a quick tweet about it letting people know you’re aware of the problem and working on it. Snowstorm? Alert people of sudden library closings. Twitter is where people go for real-time information. Make sure that they can get it.
• Links to cool library content – You’re doing other cool things besides Twitter, right? Maybe you have an awesome Flickr stream, or perhaps you just shot a really fun video about ninjas and laptop lending. Twitter is a great way to link to and promote the other content that your library is creating.
• Respond to criticism – I can’t stress the importance of this one enough. People are saying things about your library whether you like it or not. If they’re talking about the library online, you should definitely be addressing their concerns in a positive manner. You have power online to influence conversations about your library, and the worst thing you can do is ignore people.

Figuring out the problem of what to post as a library is easier if you think about what interests you as a consumer of social media. What kind of tweets do you read or click through? What are interesting tweets? Not all of your tweets have to be related to the library. The measure of your tweets should be, “Is this interesting or useful to my specific community?” If you think it would be, then post away.

Are there other thoughts? I’m always trying to come up with good ideas. Tell me about some of your favorite library tweets.

I just wanted to share this awesome dinosaur display I put up. You can view all the pictures on our library’s Flickr page. Don’t forget to share what you’re passionate about…even if it’s dinos.

Image from svale on Flickr

In a previous post I talked about creating a great experience for patrons. But how do we go about doing that? In addition to getting them great information, how do we make them want to keep coming back to the library for an experience they can’t get other places?

Thinking back on good experiences I’ve had lately, I’ve noticed a common thread: I was made to feel special.

Last week I was sitting at a bar watching the Twins.  The bartender remembered me from another night (when I was watching the Vikings), and he asked me if I wanted my usual. The fact that he remembered me made the experience stand out. It made it special. Sure it made my order slightly quicker, but  I was no longer just another customer. I was a real person who he remembered interacting with and wanted to help. It’s like walking into Cheers and everybody knowing your name.

Another good experience happened last Saturday morning. I went out to breakfast with a friend to Penny Cluse Cafe because others had highly recommended it. I waited for an hour to be seated (something I have never done for breakfast), and it was completely worth it.

When we were seated we felt special (it was OUR turn). After ordering, there were three different people who warmed up our coffee, smiling and bantering while doing so. In fact, everyone in the place was smiling. They had created an atmosphere that was completely positive and welcoming. The food was simple but very delicious. Much better than many breakfast places I’ve been.

It was a solid product (the actual food) combined with making the customer feel special (in this instance happy because of the positive environment) that made for a perfect dining experience.

How can we replicate this for libraries? How do we make our patrons feel good, smart, happy, special, etcetera? How do we make people wait in line for our services and tell all their friends about us?

What about libraries? We too often get caught up in making it through the day. Making an update to the website, answering an email, going to a meeting. We sometimes lose sight of where we’re headed. What is our vision for ten years from now? Why don’t we dream this big? What’s your vision for 2019?

Photo by jisc_infonet on Flickr

Libraries used to be the place to go for free information. We no longer have a monopoly on that. The web now allows people people to freely access information from nearly anywhere at anytime. So what do libraries do now? What’s the purpose of libraries?

In a recent blog post from In the Library With the Lead Pipe I came across this quote:

“The nature of libraries has changed enormously. The physical building is less important. Books are less important. Due to these changes libraries will become obsolete in today’s current market where information needs are created and fulfilled by (my favorite “frenemies”) Google and Facebook. People purchase books from Amazon, they read blogs, wikis and other online commercial (and non-commercial) information sources. But libraries have what they don’t and we need to let our users know this. We have the ability to be in our communities, to engage them and offer specific targeted services. Our engagement with our communities can be the defining aspect of what a library is to any given community…”

I like this. Being able to engage our community is what libraries are offering. Google doesn’t sit with you for 45 minutes to answer a difficult reference question, tailoring the information perfectly to your problem. Amazon doesn’t read to your children or “kindle” in them a lifelong love of learning. Libraries are a part of their communities, and as such, can create a customized experience for their users. And this is what I think libraries need to be focusing on: the experience.

The very perceptive Steven Bell recently wrote an article in American Libraries entitled From Gatekeepers to Gate-Openers. He argues that “our future lies in designing meaningful library user experiences.”

“Pre-Starbucks there was no coffee experience; most retailers sold nearly identical or indistinguishable coffee products at a similar price. Starbucks created an entirely different approach to selling coffee that focused on the quality of the beverage and the ambience of the location. Certainly offering new coffee drinks to the American public created some differentiation, but the crucial factor was the experience of the Starbucks store: It was about more than just buying coffee.”

The library is more than just access to free information. We no longer have a monopoly on that, but we still offer a certain way for users to experience and interact with information. We are in their communities and know their needs better than a web service does. We are perfectly positioned to create an experience that keeps patrons coming back for more and telling their friends.

I want people to say “yeah, I could go to Google, but I just love going to the library so much. It’s my favorite way to get information.”  This may be a bit “pie in the sky” thinking, but that’s what we’re looking for — creating a great information experience.

How do we do that? I’m not quite there yet. I’ve been thinking a lot about it though, and something’s brewing. When it percolates I’ll share.

What do you think? How can we make people love their experience at the library?

Social media is no different. Your success needs to be measured just like anything else, so you can either improve what you’re doing or reveal that your efforts are paying off. Social media is a little difficult to measure, but there are still things you can track, such as fans and followers or interactions.

Tracking Twitter

Twitter Counter – The best tool I’ve found to easily track your Twitter follower count is Twitter Counter. It graphs your followers each day going back three months. You can track back even further if you pay for a Pro account. This is great for seeing is specific marketing initiatives are working. If you put up fliers and your follower count shoots up around the time you do so, there might be a relationship between the two.

TweetStats – TweetStats allows you to see your information about how you’re posting. It gives you information about the frequency of your posts, what times you most often post, and even what tools you use. It’s another helpful tool to understand how you’re using Twitter.

Tracking Facebook

Facebook makes it easier on their fan pages. They give you all the stats you can handle on their “Insights” page. They show you how many comments, wall posts, and “likes” you’re getting on your content, giving you a good understanding of how people are interacting with your page. They also measure your fans. They give you a graph over time and also a demographic breakdown by gender, age, or location.

When you look at these statistics over time a picture begins to emerge. You can examine weeks when you had a lot of interactions and see what sort of posts received the most attention. This will improve your post quality and ultimately help you develop a better relationship and understanding of your audience.

What other tracking tools do you use to understand the effectiveness of your social media efforts?