The Relevance of Libraries

I am sharing this article because I think it's important.  It also speaks well of my library...

Thanks to WAFB, Channel 9.  Baton Rouge, LA.

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Woman says library gave her second chance at life

Posted: Jan 27, 2011 5:29 PM CST Updated: Jan 27, 2011 9:19 PM CST

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By Tyana Williams - bio | email
BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - The main library on Goodwood Boulevard will have a brand new building in two years.  But until then, one woman is speaking out to make sure those plans aren't getting taken off the table.  Sharon Bell says with all the crime in her neighborhood, the library became her second home.
The Goodwood branch is by far the busiest library location.  Librarians say the main branch sees around 1,500 people a day.
Sharon Bell is what you might call one of their regulars.  "I can literally walk you through this library and tell you where every book is," she said.
Bell says the books were a blessing.  She says her neighborhood has its share of criminal activity, so when things got crazy she gathered her son and went to the library.  In fact, she says she began visiting the library six days a week and staying for about eight hours a day.
Bell came to Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home.  She says initially she was trying to fill out FEMA paperwork, but realized she needed to do more to better herself.
"My first day of college was here at the library.  I enrolled in college here, I attend college here," Bell said.  She says librarians began to take notice she was spending all day in the building.  But as soon as she told them her story, they began pointing her in the right direction for research help.
Now that the branch expanding, Bell says she's hoping to encourage others.  She wants to help someone else find a way out of a situation similar to hers.
"I am a single mother.  My husband got murdered in New Orleans.  So coming here changed my life. There was a lot of help here for us, if you wanted it," Bell said.  "It's all been through a book, a simple book."
Construction on the new library should break ground in the spring.  As for Sharon Bell, she says she's set to graduate from college in May.
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On Being a Personal Librarian

I'm a reference librarian.  I find information.  I show people how to use databases.  I solve puzzles.  I am not a Readers Advisor. 

For one thing, my own reading is pretty narrow.  I hate mysteries.  Bodice rippers bore me anymore.  The most popular authors in the most popular genres just don't do it for me.  My non-fiction reading is totally devoted to food.  I do read science fiction and fantasy -- and the occasional thriller.  I also read chick lit, but I'm getting over it.  But unless you like to read what I like to read, I'm no help to you.  Reading is personal to me and I'm not going to read stuff just to be useful.

That said, for the last 8 months, I've been my mother's Personal Librarian. 

That she even trusted me to pick books for her says a lot about my mother's belief in my abilities as a librarian (or maybe she was just using me).  She wasn't quite as narrow in her reading as I -- but she did hate mysteries, was bored with bodice rippers, and indulged in the VERY occasional thriller.  However, she did NOT read science fiction and fantasy.  She liked Danielle Steele!  She liked Southern fiction -- but none of the authors you'd expect someone who liked Southern fiction to read.  She liked historical novels, but no Elizabethan settings (what did she have against Elizabeth??).  I could go pre-Eliz and post-Eliz, but Eliz herself?  Anathema!!  She read Christian fiction, but I had to be careful with that.  If it was too... sappy, she gave me the stink eye.  She did like a good adventure story every now and then, and I managed to find a few that didn't get tossed back into the bookbag immediately (that was the definitive sign of choice failure).  I will have to give her credit, though;  if I did find a good one, she bragged on me Big Time -- throughout her reading of the book.   I think she was worried that I'd stop trying if she didn't acknowledge my successes.

At first, I hated being responsible for finding Mama's most important entertainment avenue.  Reading was so much a part of who she was and it was her biggest act of daily living.  It freaked me out, and I dreaded the Tuesday night book pull.  But as the weeks wore on, I started to view it as a reference question -- a puzzle to be solved for a favorite patron.  I found myself making her book choices in much the same way I would approach constructing a search for a difficult topic.  I didn't look for similar authors -- that blew up on me early on.  But I looked for similar themes.  I read a few pages of possible titles and considered how the book "read" -- would she find the writing style compelling or would she throw it in the bag by paragraph 3?  Setting was often hit or miss (Elizabeth I was a good example of a miss), but I got pretty good at  figuring out that a book set in Montana in 1843 would not go over, but that a book set in Missouri at the same time would probably make the table rather than the bag.  Being Mama's Personal Librarian started to be fun.

Now that job has ended.  I'll miss the Tuesday night book pull and trying to second guess her reading taste.  I'll miss the disappointment of seeing 10 out of 12 books stay in the bookbag and the  feeling of accomplishment that 6 books on the table brought.  In some ways, being her librarian made me feel closer to her.  It brought us together on a level that was more "friends" than "mother and daughter."  It gave us something to talk about other than her health and the boredom of being homebound.  I think my efforts to keep her in good books was successful overall.  I know she'd say they were.

Reference Catch-22

Tonight I was directed to Library Journal to read Jean Costello's unsettling blog post about her experience with local reference services, Why I Don't Use Libraries for Reference Anymore.  I try to remain upbeat about the future of reference, but this post kind of did me in.  I was going to respond to her, but decided to post my response here instead:

As the head of a reference division in a public library, I cringed as I read your post.  And I live in fear that one day, a patron just like you will visit my staff and have a similar experience.  But one point your post brought home to me was one I've been concerned about for awhile and am not sure how to address. 

Back in the day, when we used books (almost exclusively) to answer reference questions, we were answering more questions just like yours.  The staff was familiar with that kind of question and was better armed to answer it -- not because our resources were deeper then, but because the staff's experience was.  As I look over the questions we are asked today, I find very few that require the kind of knowledge of resources that yours did.  In fact, I'm not sure how many of my staff would even know look for poetry explication sources to answer your question.  I know that some of them would, but the younger/newer ones might not think of looking for an explication resource unless they had been lit majors.  They may not even know the term to start looking for it.

This isn't entirely a matter of poor training -- if it were, I wouldn't be as worried about it.  It's a matter of using knowledge of resources plus acquiring more knowledge over time -- and that's just something that isn't happening like it used to.  I can train staff to use databases and books, but if they rarely have the need to use them after training, they lose what they learned.  (Reference work ain't like riding a bicycle.)  I can also send out a tough weekly reference question as a training tool, but even that is only putting a tiny band-aid on an ever-growing sore.  If our reference staffs don't get constant reinforcement and regular challenges (the kind that can only be had by assisting patrons like you on a regular basis), they won't grow into knowledgeable critical thinkers, and reference service will slowly atrophy into the the kind of service described in your post -- a source of pleasant conversation and general information.

The LibGuides Conundrum

Why don't more public libraries use LibGuides?  I don't get it.  They aren't expensive.  You can make as many of them as you want.  (You could base your entire library website on them.)  They're really easy to create. 

I can understand that small libraries with no budget might find them cost prohibitive, but if you have just a tiny bit of money to spend and you need to show a return on your reference/database/popular title/CD/audiobook, etc investment, it seems to me that you NEED LibGuides.  They are a quick and easy way to promote your resources and collections -- and patrons use them!   Our Great Reads for Teens guide averages over 700 hits a month and it gets no promotion.  Sights & Sounds (CDs, DVDs,  music etc) averages over 500 hits/month. We do a little promo via our blog, but generally our patrons manage to find the guides that they need and they seem to keep coming back to them.

LibGuides can take a couple of hours to put together.  (Big Whoop!)  But once you get one made you can update it in no time.  Plus, you can reuse content by copying or linking -- so you don't have to recreate the wheel every time you need the wheel.  Graphics are easy to add; YouTube videos are easy to embed.  There are cool features like mouseover bubbles that make your library look  like it's a tech savvy place.  Each guide has a separate URL, so you can promote an individual guide easily.  What's not to love?

If you're unfamiliar with LibGuides, check out our guides:  EBRPL Research Guides
If you want more info visit their social networking site:  The Springshare Lounge

LibGuides are worth looking into.  Check them out.

Addendum:  this librarian said it better than I did...

Where is the Single Sign-On Library Website?

There are many frustrations in the library world, but for me, the biggest one is the login. 

Our patrons do nothing but login to stuff.  They log in to access their accounts. They login to place a hold.  They login to to use the databases, to read an ebook, to download an audiobook.  We've had automated catalogs and electronic, authenticated resources for YEARS now.  Why are our patrons still logging in multiple times to use them???

The concept of the truly single sign-on is a mystery to just about everyone I talk to. For some reason nobody seems to grasp the idea of having patrons log in on the home page to get access to all our resources -- with NO MORE LOGINS!  Whenever I broach the subject, the person I'm speaking to asks, "You mean your patrons have to login to each database individually?"  Or, "Don't you have a database page?" 

People, am I speaking Swahili in America? 

Our patrons should be able to log in one time -- on our home pages -- and have seamless access to our resources from that point forward. 

Think about it...  How many websites do you use that require a login?  About a million.  After you login to one of these sites, do you have to keep doing it to access the content?  No.  So why do you have to keep doing it on the Library website?

Now, I'm not stupid.  I know very well that the content on library websites is comprised of very disparate elements provided an infinite number of vendors.  The catalog/ILS is one thing (that often doesn't communicate well with itself); databases are another thing; ebooks are their own thing; and downloadable content is a horse of a different color altogether.  Big Whoop.  Just because we get this stuff from different vendors who, in some cases, don't acknowledge the existence of the others, doesn't mean that we can't figure out a way to create seamless access.

I WANT EASY!! 

When I go home, I want to go to my library site, create an account that consists of my username (whatever I want it to be), a password and my library card number.  Once I create that account, I want to log in with my username and password and NEVER LOGIN AGAIN while I'm on the site.  I want to click on the databases link and go straight to the database list.  I want to click on a database link in a LibGuide (did I ever say how much I love LibGuides?) and go straight to that database to start my search.  I want to click on a link that says Renew My Books and renew my books.  Right then.  I want to access the content of an ebook straight from the catalog.  I DO NOT want to login to Overdrive separately.

Isn't integrated access to all our resources something we should be demanding?  Isn't the single sign-on the only thing that really makes sense if we want to see a real return on our resource investment? 

I am Picard.  Make it so.

Post-Internet Librarian

Sitting in the airport waiting to go back home is probably the best place to write a reflective blog post about the Internet Librarian conference.  I'm certainly not distracted by anything... Unless boredom can be a distraction.

The ILC was not as great as I'd hoped it would be.  Which is not to say I got nothing out of it.  I did.  I got plenty of validation.  I found out that my library does a pretty good job of managing our online presence.  We make sure we brand everything with our logo.  We try to keep the same color palette on our various sites. And we've done our best to use consistent naming for our accounts, although, our reference name, eref, is too generic.  Oh well. It's been around long enough now that our patrons know it.

I also found out that I have a better idea about how to strategize a strategic plan that I thought I did.  That was a comfort, to be sure.  I had recently been in a meeting about our technology plan and was poo-poo'd by the group concerning a suggestion I made.  Found out my suggestion was accepted practice.  (told you so). I also found out a whole lot more about developing a strategic plan.  This was a very good thing since I plan on doing one in the very near future.  Internet Librarian really helped me prepare for that task.

And I learned about failure at IL.  Not that there's a lot to learn about it -- we have all failed at one time or another.  Anyone remember thin clients?? 

I attended a couple of programs that dealt with library fails.  I was surprised at some of them.  Reference in 2nd Life?  Has anyone had true success with that? Granted i heard only a brief synopsis of this library's SL adventure, but it sounded to me like part of the fail was that they didn't want to answer the kinds of questions they got.  People wanted to know how to put on clothes. That's a legit SL question. It's also a public library-type question.  I mean, we'd answer it -- and count it in our stats for the day.  I guess the academic library that was presenting this particular fail didn't realize the SL is a community, not a campus?   It took me awhile to figure out how to dress that avatar when I first joined SL.  Too bad we weren't doing SL reference then.  I could have been the Naked Librarian!

I don't think I'll be bucking to go back to Internet Librarian anytime in the near future.  I'm glad I got to go this time and I'm sure I'll find a reason to go again, but I think I'll stick to ALA for the time being.

If Wishes were Fishes...

Oh, how I wish that Overdrive's delivery element wasn't so clunky!  Wait.  Let me rephrase...

Oh, how I wish Overdrive's delivery method was more streamlined!  That's better.  More streamlined...  as in a single computer-resident software application that accommodates both audio- and e- books. 

• Or an application that would allow WMAs to work on a Mac (What? They work with iTunes...).  

• Or an iDevice app that tells you to log in before you do anything else.  

OH!  How I wish their help file was navigable!  (I also wish patrons would actually look at it.)

I really wish the publishers would pick a single DAMN industry-standard format for audiobooks and ebooks and make it so we all can access the titles we want, whether we borrow them from the library or buy them from Amazon. And use them on any device we happen to own.  (And I thought the recording industry was bad!)  Jeeze!

I wish our patrons would take advantage of the great stuff we provide for them.  We have free music downloads!  That you can keep!!  Why aren't you downloading constantly?  Do you prefer to steal the music off our CDs?

I wish the reference staff would go to Credo first rather than Wikipedia. I also wish they'd learn how to do a basic search in Westlaw.  It ain't that hard.

I really wish I ruled the world.