A change is a-brewing

Almost one week since ALA’s annual conference ended and I’m just now catching up to some ALA-related posts that I’ve been meaning to put here.   Before I go on to more session-specific postings, however, I wanted to write about the most important element of ALA and, for that matter, any conference:  the people.

My primary mission at the conference was to meet my fellow library folk, talk to them, find out what was buzzing through L-y-wood, and this mission was fulfilled beyond my expectations.  The most exciting part was finding out how many people were feeling the same way I did – that something’s gotta change.

To all the fresh new library students, librarians, library staff out there who are asking themselves “is this all there is?” please allow me to introduce you to some restless natives, of all ages, who are ready to get the New Librarian Party started:

Karin Dalziel, librarian and artist, as well as the creator of lisstudents.ning.com where library students can get together and compare notes.  Just before the conference she had a great post about marketing in libraries, which hits at one of our biggest issues.

Cindi Trainor, techie librarian, blogger, mama, and model.  Cindi wrote about change in libraries and how we need to, you know … do it already!

Nathan Bomer talked me into the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. lecture, for which I am very grateful.  He’s also musing on the state of ALA and what we can do about it.

I met Michelle Boule at the OCLC Blogger’s Salon.  She did a great job on the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase, which has been lauded across the blogosphere several times over.

Forward thinkers like these can be found in droves at some great wiki spaces such as Improve ALA and Library Society of the World.   But if this desire for change is going to go anywhere, we need to get together and really start throwing some ideas around.  These wikis are great places to start and I’ll be keeping tabs on both of them.  Hopefully we can all have our own little New Librarian Party organized in time for Midwinter … whaddya say?

The Ultimate Debate: Do Libraries Innovate?

Karen Schneider
Joseph Janes
Stephen Abram
moderated by Andrew Pace (standing in for Roy Tennant)

Bullets from the discussion –

Innovation comes from individuals, not institutions so perhaps question should be, “do *librarians* innovate?” which would be answered “yes” but to ask about institutions is a non-question. Institutions either “facilitate or get in the way of the individual” per the panel.

Stephen Abram — we have innovative people but very poor *diffusion* … when there’s a good idea in the business world, it spreads quickly; when there’s a good idea in the library world, hardly any one knows about it. Fix our diffusion, our communication. Start bragging.

Library culture is one of victimization, creating self-fulfilling prophecies of failure, but truth is that libraries are doing just fine, even as some libraries close, many other libraries have increased budgets. We have a doomsday culture right now. Why?

Karen Schneider — Changing the terms of how we succeed — Flickr was originally intended to be a gaming site by founders, but they looked at how the site was getting used and changed gears.

Stephen Abram — innovators vs. slugs … slugs are the ones with a long silver trail behind them

Joseph Janes — San Jose’s Second Life school might not work, but at least they’re *trying* it; public library in Arizona that dropped Dewey in favor of bookstore-like genre browsing has had zero complaints from users. Library community beats up on those who try new things without waiting to see how it turns out.

My impressions: The culture of librarians came up a lot in this debate. Our stereotypes, our self-perceptions, our obsession with the status quo. The panel members were terrific and dynamic and almost seemed to be calling for a sort of library revolution… but not quite. I can’t really put my finger on what exactly they were calling for, but it would be a change from what we have now, whatever it is. Change in many directions, from the way librarians negotiate to the structure of ALA itself. I think this is a conversation that needs to continue and develop into action, not just conversation. Do we, as librarians, already have a centralized place to continue this discussion? Perhaps our diffusion problem is as symptom of our fragmentation. But then, what form could this imaginary conversation venue take in order to accommodate the most librarians and the greatest diversity of librarians?

Libraries2Go: Handheld Devices and Libraries

Bradley Faust, Ball State University, Mobile Library Page
Markus Wust, NCSU MobiLIB
Michelle Jacobs, UC-Merced

The speakers did a fantastic job showing the ins and outs of converting a library’s web presence into a simple, Javascript-free, handheld-friendly interface. North Carolina State went one step further and made the information dynamic – for example, clicking on the “Library Hours” link from the cell phone interface would show today’s and tomorrow’s hours rather than a list of all variations on the library’s hours. University of California-Merced emphasized the use of text messaging as a virtual reference tool.

The biggest thing missing from all the presentations on handheld library services – for me – was numbers. How often are these mobile pages getting hit? How deep do visitors go into the links? Have any surveys of mobile users been conducted? In the academic libraries where I’ve been working this past year, I see web statistics almost completely ignored in considerations of web site usefulness. I would think web stats would be constantly monitored and evaluated … it’s an easy, instant source of feedback about an important presentation and interaction element of the library. The ideas presented about adapting the library’s web presence to handheld devices is very interesting and certainly hip, but how is it really being used by patrons?

Overlapping

Due to my cell phone/Flickr settings, my phone posts still go to the blog at epist.wordpress.com. So I have a couple posts there recently on the Library of Congress and international library partnerships. The full, fleshed-out posts about ALA Annual stuff will be appearing here soon.

Before I left for the conference, I was really starting to wonder why I was coming to an ALA Annual. I’m still just a library student, I’m still figuring out what kind of library I want to work in … I started thinking Annual would just be too big and chaotic for me to really get anything out of it.

But now that’s just about over, I’m really glad I came. The cliche rings true – it’s all about the people. The social events alone have been worth the trip, and I’ve met all sorts of people with whom I hope to keep in touch. I even reunited with some folks from my former library homes, which was an extra special bonus. It’s ironic to me that there would be a conference pass strictly for the exhibits, as that was the least rewarding part of the conference to me (unless, of course, I win that iPhone). But I don’t have any sort of purchasing power and I think that’s what the exhibits are really designed for.

One last meeting and then I’m on the Metro to the airport.

Librarians get shushed

Just kidding – we didn’t get shushed.  But I have met a lot of librarians who can really live it up.  One young woman I met today was out the night before till 6am, when she got back to her hotel in just enough time to shower, change and head to a morning meeting.  Don’t worry, she took several naps throughout the day.   And last night, despite many of us saying that we were too old for that sort of thing, Librarians from Facebook gathered at RFD here in D.C. and had a great time.  This photo was taken near the beginning of the evening… one of the many creative ways librarians use to break the ice with people they don’t know:

Celebrity Meets Library

Halfway through Day 2 of ALA Annual and I’m noticing an interesting … mm, what to call it… clash? conflict? dual interest? … in the programming here.  Things seem divided between the Celebrity events and the Real Library Work events.  For example, this morning I was fortunate enough to see Ken Burns speak and present a preview of his newest documentary.  But later today and tomorrow I would be missing pretty valuable-sounding library sessions if I went to see Susan Wise Bauer in the Exhibit Hall or Julie Andrews at the Author Series.   I will, however, be happy to see Garrison Keillor on Tuesday since there won’t be any conflicts with that.

But it makes me wonder — why is there such a strong presence of celebrity at – of all things – a library conference?  Who would ever make such a connection?

Colorful Types

I am eight hours into my first ALA Annual Conference and delighted to see how colorful, beautiful, and stylish my fellow librarians can be.  I’ve seen fellow conference goers with blue hair, pink hair, and wonderful crazy outfits.  Love it.  I also volunteered at the International Visitor’s Center and within an hour I met librarians from Germany, Estonia, Trinidad, and Japan.  Despite our predictable stereotype, we can be wonderfully unpredictable creatures.

Things I’m still trying to figure out … where to eat.