We heard about some really interesting programs at our recent meeting of BCR’s Public Libraries Advisory Group. 

Sweetwater (WY) County Library System is holding their 2nd annual Zombie Walk and Prom (?! what a combination).  Sioux City (IA) Public Library got a grant to help seniors with internet literacy via Generations on Line and on Halloween there, kids practiced their reading skills on Reading Dogs in full costume. 

Appropriately, Clifford the Big Red Dog

Slacker Pirate Dog

One library will soon install a vending machine with 300 items at a public transportation hub.  (I’d love to hear how these types of machines are doing – if you have one, please send in your comments.)  Bitterroot (MT) Public Library is heavily promoting downloadable audios and their virtual reference service.  Both these efforts have the added advantage of helping the environment since they reduce the number of cars driving to the library. 

It was great to hear that Multnomah County Library won the highest award for community service.

King County (WA) Library System is opening an unstaffed Library Express at a shopping center in an area far from any branches.  Customers can pick up holds, browse a small collection and get phone reference help.  They’ve also purchased five Sprinter Vans which house materials and computers.  Smaller than bookmobiles, staff can take them into neighborhoods or park them at transit stations.  Since staffers working the Library2Go service will know what their patrons need, they’ll make the decisions about where the vans should be and what items will be on them.

On a darker note, almost everyone is seeing or anticipating budget cuts and reductions, though luckily most libraries have avoided laying off staff so far.  Even the normally flush WY libraries seem to be affected as Sweetwater took a 13.5% cut.  Washoe (NV) County Library System has been devastated – they’ve lost half their funding in the last two years.  Let’s hope the customer testimonials their advocacy group is recording help their funders see how important a well financed library is to the community.  And King County will be able to help libraries reduce costs.  They got an IMLS million dollar grant to assist other libraries with implementing the Evergreen open source ILS software. 

We also discussed how to help libraries retain and increase funding.  It seems libraries that get the biggest budget cuts are the ones competing for funds with other public entities.  We need to know how to articulate to local government and politicians that the library is a service worth funding.  We also felt that in many states, we need to lobby for new laws or models that allow libraries to be funded independently, so they don’t have to compete for monies with police and fire departments.

We had our third meeting of the Public Libraries Advisory Group (click on the tag to see other posts on this group) this week and I’d love to get feedback from you on the discussion we had about involving the community in the library.  This isn’t library outreach into the community but rather getting the community to give input to the library on their needs and concerns via planning sessions, focus groups etc.  With reduced budgets and economic stress, we all want to serve our communities as well as possible with the money we have, so their participation in our planning processes is essential.

One of our members lamented that they had a library planning event which despite promoting heavily, had only 20 outside attendees.  She was wondering how successful others have been at creating an interest in library planning in their communities and what methods they used.

Food is often used as a lure, but other members have found that inviting community leaders and asking them to represent their constituencies can be effective.  Others contact people they hope will attend right before the meeting to remind them.  One library is extremely involved in their community – their staff are members of many local groups and they have a great relationship with local media - and these preexisting relationships mean that many community leaders attend planning sessions.  Since the library has shown an interest in their group, they’ll show an interest in the library.  I attended one of them and was amazed at the turnout and how vocal and helpful attendees were. 

We also thought that using trustees, Friends, volunteers and Foundation members to spread the word and garner feedback might work.

So how do you get input from the community for your strategic planning?  What methods do you have the most success with?

We also discussed how to make our expensive databases more popular.  Low database usage is common in public libraries and it’s painful to spend money on them when their usage statistics just don’t seem to justify their cost, especially now when reduced funding means the money spent on them could go to more popular resources. 

Some members have had luck marketing databases to specific groups (e.g. showing auto repair shops the Chilton’s database), or putting bookmarks with access instructions near the physical auto repair books.  Others find classes with enticing names (Winning Web Strategies vs. Learning About Library Databases) have helped draw people in.  Some members go for the one on one approach by demonstrating them to patrons when the opportunity arises, which works well, but is very inefficient in terms of greatly increasing their use.  

We also discussed sharing database fees with outside groups that have a need for them as they would in turn promote them to their members.

Do you suffer from low database stats too?  What do you do to increase use of your databases?  What methods do you think work best?

Latter Day Saints Temple

When I was in Salt Lake City last week (I was training people on Friends groups for the Utah State Library), I stopped by to see Beth Elder, the SLC Public Library director as she’s a member of BCR’s Public Libraries Advisory Group. 

What an impressive library!  It’s an amazing building in its own wonderful square with a lovely garden, water features and fabulous views of the mountains.  The lobby is just astounding.  It has glass elevators (that gave me vertigo when standing on the fifth floor looking straight down) that let you see their mechanisms, especially from the beautiful roof garden

Roof garden

(with trees no less – talk about a green roof).  From the roof you can see all of SLC and the surrounding Wasatch mountains, and there’s a wonderful walkway leading six stories down to the square that can be accessed day or night for what I imagine would be incredible sunset views.

The spiral staircase takes you down to the fourth floor where a really neat fireplace (one of several) provides a great reading nook.  Art work abounds and there’s a changing art exhibition space.  There’s also an art gallery leasing space in the lobby.  The woman at the gallery credited the library with its existence as they invited artists to do a show in the space which evidently worked out so well that two of the artists decided to lease the space and 16 Utah artists display their work there.  The lobby

SLCPL Lobby

also has its own Friends library store with lots of great merchandise for readers, Scrabble fans etc.  Used books are only a very small part of their offerings. 

Each floor has loads of internet stations (there are 163 in the library), plus tons of wired study tables (all with great views) where you can plug in your laptop to take advantage of their wireless internet access.  There’re self check units on each floor, and many shelving units have display cases and catalogs on the end.  The architect really took advantage of the scenic location as little balconies are inserted all over the place.

The children’s area is by itself on the lowest level, so no sound worries there.  It has loads of displays – currently, different artists are displaying dioramas that look like they are meant for children as gentle touching is encouraged and some have relics of the “ancient past” (I love the one showing a 33rpm record, an old can opener, and a part of a child’s telephone toy – amazing that these items are now antiques).  There are also all sorts of shadowboxes using inventive tactics to produce cool sounds from a variety of ordinary objects like toys (The Sound of Art by the Visual Art Institute).  Alcoves abound with a wonderful Attic room with wood beams and multi level seating – perfect for a family reading a book together.  Other nooks have smaller kid sized doors

Kid sized doors leading to internet nook

that lead to computers or just weird white geometric spaces

Geometric nook in Children's Area

perfect for privacy when you want to call a friend (as a young customer was doing when I went in to check it out). 

Little wonder that the people of SLC are in love with their library.  Beth told me that despite the economy they just got permission to open two new branches in the Glendale and Marmalade areas (so if you have any great ideas for opening new branches, please let me know).  Obviously, SLC citizens realize the important part libraries can play in the recovery and how vital they are to helping people find jobs and prepare for new careers (to say nothing of the free entertainment and enrichment opportunities they offer).  In fact, the mayor was thinking of putting a new police, fire and emergency services complex next to the library, but after more that 400 comments about this potential blight to the Library Square setting he’s decided against it.  Just what we all need, our residents fighting our battles and advocating for us!

We had the second meeting of the Public Libraries Advisory Group at the end of April (for more information on this group see my 1/30/09 blog post).  After the first meeting, we did a survey about potential topics and the top two topics we were concerned about involved;

-Marketing our resources and finding meaningful ways to show how important we are to our communities, as well as the value we provide to them and how we serve all comers equitably

-Finding ways to measure, compare and benchmark usage of our websites and online resources

We’re all concerned about funding, and being able to advocate effectively will help the people who hold the purse strings understand how vital we are to a healthy local economy.  And of course, since money is so tight, there’s more concern than ever that our expensive databases earn their keep.  Plus many libraries have as much online as in-person use, so organization of our websites is just as important as the way our physical buildings are laid out.

Some of the issues we identified for marketing were assessing the needs of our customer bases (including non users and untraditional users), making our resources surface first in a Google search and what to do when a service becomes too popular (some of the member’s libraries mail holds to patrons’ homes – wouldn’t you just love that if you weren’t already working at the library!).  

We also discussed Pivotal Points – times when residents are most likely to use the library (e.g. when they’re new to town or have a baby).  Since high school freshmen don’t get much mail and are entering a new and challenging educational phase, Betsy Thompson told us how the Sioux City Public Library sends a letter advertising their homework and job search resources and offers a clean start – all fines on their account will be waived if they bring their letter to the library!

Re online usage we’d love it if there was an easy and reliable way to see how effective our databases are and to analyze our websites for ease of use.  Vendors all measure database usage differently so it’s often impossible to compare statistics from one to another. 

We’d also like a cheap and easily customizable Amazon style library catalog, federated searching that can quickly search across all our resources, and to eliminate barriers like patron authentication (or at least make it so users just need to login in once to use everything).  There, we’re not asking too much are we?

The meeting was a great chance to hear about some really cool stuff.  When King County Library System realized the kids who participated in their summer reading program would be reading anyway they partnered with summer schools to get their at-risk students involved.  And Julie Williams also mentioned that since getting to the library was a barrier to use, KCLS has a cybermobile with computers and a children’s librarian that goes around to family day care centers.  Another system advertises their auto repair databases on NPR right before Car Talk comes on.  Washoe County Library System is suffering under severe budget cuts but Corinne Dickman reports they have drive-through holds pick up windows at four of their branches.  Since less staff is needed, the windows can potentially have longer hours than the building.

David King said that Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library got the phone company to print their url on the front page of the phone book.   Caleb Tucker-Raymond makes sure Oregon’s statewide virtual reference services’ online resources are designed so they’ll come up quickly in web searches.  

Some members’ libraries are helping the environment.  Barb Brattin told us that Wilkinson Public Library is installing a solar electricity system in June that includes an electricity meter for customers to watch as the meter goes backwards.   And Multnomah County Library is viewed as an innovator in their city because of their green roof.

Wow, where do we get all these ideas from?  What are you doing that’s new and different?  And are you concerned about marketing and online usage?

The first meeting of BCR’s Public Libraries Advisory Group was held at Midwinter this Monday and we’ve got a great group of people.  Public librarians from all of BCR’s eleven member states will be listening to the buzz in their regions and bringing forth important issues and concerns which the group will address and BCR will use to create more training, services and product offerings for public libraries.  Their vast experience covers a wide range of areas and services and will be invaluable in helping BCR assist public libraries.  Some of the topics we’d like to examine include fundraising and budgets, strategic planning, collection development, programming, reader’s advisory and display, marketing and the public’s perception of libraries, collaborative partnerships, helping staff accept change, digital services and new technologies, electronic resources access and marketing, resource sharing and community involvement.

Whew!  That’s a formidable list, but I’d love to hear from public librarians about where you think your greatest needs lie and about areas we’ve overlooked.  We know you’re incredibly busy and we want to help make your job just a little easier.