I’ve been lurking on a listserv that’s been discussing holds ratios.  Books still have an inordinate preference.  While I understand that DVDs and other media may have shorter checkouts, if we’ve learned one thing in the last year, it’s that we need to serve everyone in our service areas, even those who’d rather be couch potatoes – like me at times – and lazily watch movies instead of actively engaging their brains with books.  Yes, libraries as institutions of education are the public’s ideal, but they work just as well as publicly sponsored swap meets - effectively reducing costs (and material waste) for our whole community.

A colleague of mine, Lisa Holmberg, recently gave me some data from a small study by Horizon High School library staffers, Jennifer Alevy and Sara Poinier, showing huge increases in students’ use of reliable resources after library instruction.

I’d originally considered being a school media specialist, in large part because of the 1990’s study by Keith Curry Lance and others, The Impact of School Library Media Centers on Academic Achievement, which showed how having a librarian in the school helps kids excel.  Keith continues to investigate this topic – here’s a (summary).  The sad fact is that in these days of budget deficits, many schools are cutting library staff.

With all the jobseekers in the library these days, and the hoards of people using us to replace the entertainment/educational materials/events they used to have the money to buy, there’s so much to do in the library that it’s tough to contemplate starting new services to schools.  But if your area has seen media specialist reductions, giving library instruction classes at the beginning of the semester can do so much to help youth academically that we have to try to squeeze it in. 

Just what we need, another area where government cuts result in increased library use.  Why can’t all our legislators see how important it is to give sufficient funds to libraries?

Digital library services guru, David Lee King, gave  an enlightening presentation Tuesday, Building the Digital Branch for the 21st Century.  He pointed out that many libraries’ websites focus on the physical building, so aside from providing access to electronic resources, their sites are basically just online brochures.  Virtual reference makes them a little more interactive, but provided there’s adequate staffing, we should strive for a lot more interactivity online. 

This can be labor intensive, as producing blogs, podcasts, reviews, exhibits, online programs etc. is time intensive, but if you open your website to patron created content, customers can do a lot of the work for you.  While you’ll probably want to monitor patron input, creating spaces for users to hangout (e.g. online forums and meetings, social networking opportunities, online bookclubs, patron generated reviews, live feeds, patron produced videos…) will make your web presence much more dynamic.

To reinvent the digital branch at his library, King talked to patrons (especially people whose library use was mainly virtual – people in the physical library may not be the primary users of your online branch).  Despite having staff working for the digital branch, meeting with all staff was essential – he needed their ideas, contributions (getting written commitments from staff in advance ensures features like blogs have postings and someone overseeing them), and buy-in to make it work.  He then set goals so he’d know what success would look like.  Making sure there are ways for people to learn about digital features (e.g. podcasts on how to use Twitter or the RSS feed) is also vital.  

Then, just make sure your website is intuitively navigable and you’ll be ready to serve your online customers. 

Of course, this is a lot easier when you have staff dedicated to the process, but even small library websites can garner a lot of content just by allowing customer contributions and videoing some programs and storytimes or moderating online book discussions.  Just make sure local media promotes your new features so the community gets excited about being part of the library and does the content creation work for you.

Death Track Dolls

Talk about eliminating barriers to service – lack of parking is not an issue at busy Houston Public Library branches, they’ll deliver materials right to your car.  Seems like they are very committed to their patrons, but I’d really like to see them strap on roller skates (why do I have a vague recollection that this is how pages at the Library of Congress used to get around the stacks?).

There are skating librarians out there.  Jan Dawson is a Death Track Doll and Beth Hollis is a Rubber City Rollergirl.  So much for the meek librarian stereotype.  Now if they could just coach the Texans, HPL could halve their response time.

9/16 – Wow, roller derby librarians are not as rare as you’d think.  This was just on the DIG_REF list serv -

Does anyone working in your library participate in roller derby?  If so, please forward them this email.

Do you work in a library and skate, coach, ref, or volunteer for a roller derby team?  If so, we need your help!  Jennifer Hughes (aka Bout Girl) and Casey Schacher (aka Wikibleedia) are roller derby librarians, and will be presenting a paper entitled “Profiles of Librarians and Roller Derby Girls” at the south-regional Pop and American Culture Conference.

Please help us by completing the following survey:

http://sas.coastal.edu/snaponline/surveylogin.asp?k=3D125296064956 (enable cookies first)

Please direct all questions or requests for more information about this study to:
Jennifer Hughes jhughes@coastal.edu or Casey Schacher cschache@coastal.edu…

12/2 I recently heard about libraries that have drive up service windows like banks that let you pick up holds.  You can even call them to make sure an item is there and then pick it up at the window immediately.  And some Nebraska libraries will bring materials out to people’s cars just like Houston.

I did a free webinar last week called Recession Relief that covered ways libraries can help patrons during these tough economic times, and you can watch the archived session and access my PowerPoint slides and notes (which include all the links I mention in the presentation). 

BCR does these hour long Free Friday Forums fairly regularly, and if you miss one you wanted to see, you can always view them later by going to the archive.

9/24 Just saw a newspaper article on the eTrain Mobile Training Lab – a partnership between my local workforce center and library.  Cool!

Back in the days when libraries weren’t quite so busy, if I didn’t have a constant stream of questions at the reference desk, I’d get bored and start trawling the stacks for people who looked confused.  I was delighted when we got a tablet computer as I no longer had to drag the patron over to a PAC or run between them and my computer for call numbers and answers.  Having the internet with me at all times helped a lot when I needed to show the customer searching the art books for Van Gogh’s Starry Night how easily she could find it on Google Images, but while I could see the same catalog interface as our patrons, there wasn’t a way in to the staff side of our materials database.  That put a damper on my speed as quick, powerful searches and circulation functions still had to be done from the reference desk.

So I was intrigued by three of the products in the May/June 2009 issue of Public Libraries.  EnvisionWare now has a LibraryPDA(TM) that can evidently do all staff side functions (plus inventory).  And for those of you with a SirsiDynix ILS, there’s Horizon PocketCirc 1.0 with functions similar to the LibraryPDA but with remote access also available, so you no longer have to write down titles and barcodes while checking out books at a school, offsite program or town event.

The third product would be great not only for visually challenged patrons, but also for commuters wanting to make effective use of travel time.  ReadSpeaker works with WilsonWeb’s many full text databases and converts articles into audio for immediate listening (will wonders never cease – let’s hope all our database vendors follow suit).

Have any of you tried any of these products yet?  Do they work as promised?  Or have you found other ways to do check out and powerful searches on the fly?  What about alternative ways of changing text into speech?

I just attended, The Customer Focused Library, a very illuminating Web Junction session. 

Three public libraries and an academic in the Chicago area had Envirosell, a company specializing in retail environments, study their physical spaces and customers’ behavior.  Of course, all libraries have differences, but among their surprising findings;

- Over half the library users got help from staff

- Around half the users come in once a week

- Half of borrowers check out audio visual materials

- Fewer than one in ten of those age 14-24 visit the book sections

- Many patrons spend 10 minutes or less in the building

- Two thirds of visitors didn’t come in for anything in particular

It’s great that staff is interacting so much with patrons, but unfortunately the biggest reason people needed help was because they couldn’t find things on the shelves.  The libraries are addressing this by putting lots of explanation on the shelf end signs (Self Help, Health…) and (oh the horror!) forsaking Dewey in favor of descriptive spine labels that actually say Organic Gardening and the author’s name instead of 635 ROD.

I was also fascinated by the density map (page 69 of the report), which shows where everyone is (different colored dots distinguish kids, teens, staff, adults…) at 10 minute intervals.  Obviously the computers get loads of use, but, except in the children’s area, the staff is almost all clustered at desks, with very few patrons near them.  Hardly anyone was out in the stacks helping frustrated customers find materials.  The time to start practicing roving reference is now!

Since so many people visit so often, our marketing and displays need to be fresh, so change them monthly or weekly to keep users’ attention.  Take advantage of the bright colors of our items.  One branch that had spine out picture book shelving increased their circulation 60 percent immediately by replacing shelves with face out bins so kids could flip through them like we used to do at record stores. 

With so many people borrowing A/V items, DVD or Playaway displays by the checkout desk will lead to impulse borrowing, and a note indicating there are loads more DVDs in the East Wing may convince patrons to spend more than 10 minutes with us.  We know it’s important to put your best foot forward, so cater to these brief encounters by putting your newest materials right out front.  And consider changing the book bias so that more of the budget can be devoted to popular materials like music or films.

There were also a lot of great tips on signage, probably the bane of every librarian’s existence since no one ever seems to pay attention to them.  Turns out we’re right – generally just 12 percent of people look at signs, especially when they are small and homemade.  Put signs people need to read where you have a captive audience – bathroom stall doors and by checkout lines.  Lure teens to books with enticing graphics by the computers.  Since two thirds of visitors don’t have a specific item in mind, pique their interest with great visuals like best seller or staff recommendation or featured author displays.  I love the book drop idea from a Swedish library – there are two book drops, one for regular books, and one for amazing books.  Amazing books are put in a special display.

So check out the full report and start using retail concepts to excite and delight your customers.