Blog about Libraries

A Good Friend

2008-05-08T08:38:00.001-04:00

Keith C. Kuhn, age 57 years, a 30 year resident of the Clifton area, passed away at Good Samaritan Hospital on Tuesday evening May 6, 2008. Keith was the Library Services Director of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Mr. Kuhn joined the Library on January 29, 1979 as the Adult Assistant in the Institutions/Books-By-Mail Department. in May 1980, he was appointed Interim Supervisor in the department. He was promoted to First Assistant of the department on June 6, 1983 and became the Department Head of Institutions/Books-by-Mail on March 31, 1986. Mr. Kuhn became the Department Head of Circulation Services in 1993 and was promoted to Deputy Librarian-Main on January 7, 1996. Mr. Kuhn was again promoted on January 30, 2000 as the Director of the newly formed Public Services Office.
Mr. Kuhn has served on numerous professional boards and committees, including the ProQuest Advisory Board and the Macmillan/Scribner's Advisory Board and as the Immediate Past President of the Indiana University SLIS Alumni Board. He also served as President of the W.J. Williams YMCA Advisory board and on the Board of the YMCA of Cincinnati. He received a B.A. from Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis, and a M.L.S. from the Indiana University, Bloomington. He was a member of Beta Phi Chi Chapter. Mr. Kuhn was also a co-founder of the Cincinnati USA Books by the Banks Festival.
Mr. Kuhn was the 2007 recipient of the American Library Association's Sullivan Award for Public Library Administrators Supporting Services to Children. The award served to recognize Mr. Kuhn's leadership role in making children's services and organizational priority for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Under his direction, a Children's Services Council was created for the PLCH System; this five-member panel established a mission, goals and priorities for children's library services. The success of this council led to the establishment of other such work groups in the library and also received state and national attention as the focus of several key programs at the Public Library Association (PLA) National conference and the Ohio Library Council (OLC) Children's Services Conference.
He also established the Indiana University SLIS-Keith C. Kuhn Tri-State Scholarship for Cincinnati area students to pursue their library degree at Indiana University.
Loving son of Arno Junior and the late Marjorie Jean (Brune) Kuhn of Waldron, IN. Devoted brother of Bruce A. and Max D. Kuhn of Waldron, IN, Sara Meloy of Atlanta, GA and Diana McNeely of Shelbyville, IN. Partner of Mark W. Rebstock. Friends may call at Miller-Busse & Borgmann Funeral Home, 3464 Central Parkway at Clifton Hills, Clifton, Thursday May 8, 2008 from 4:00-8:00 PM and on Friday May 9 from 9:30 AM until time of funeral service at 10:30 AM. Interment, Zion Cemetery, Shelbyville, Indiana. Memorials may be directed to W.J. Williams YMCA, c/o Chuck Barlage, 1228 E. McMillan Street, Cincinnati, OH 45206; Indiana University Foundation for the Keith Kuhn Tri-State Scholarship (or in memory of Keith Kuhn), PO Box 2298, Bloomington, IN 47402 or The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, 800 Vine Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202.

I'm from the United States...

2008-01-11T09:21:00.000-05:00

Beats me, but somehow Blogger decided I was posting from Afghanistan. Nope, I'm still posting from the heartland. And for those who have emailed- yes, I am still here. I just have a lot of other things going on right now and there isn't much time to maintain this blog.

However, I do have a particular topic on my mind, being a citizen of the US: Tax Season is here.

That's a pretty huge deal for a lot of public libraries and we are no exception. For one thing, as far as I can tell there is really no other source in town where people can find the paper forms. Sure, the guvmint is doing a really nice job of making all the forms and instructions available to taxpayers online, but there is something a little on the sneaky side going on if you look closely.

By restricting the supply of forms available the government saves money in paper costs by shifting the burden to the taxpayers. Secondly, by not providing forms via their own offices the IRS shifts the costs to other service providers who recognize that NOT providing a way for citizens to have a place to see, examine, study and choose forms on their own (and in paper) amounts to depriving them of valuable and potentially money saving information. And being in the business of facilitating easy access to useful information, I have a problem with that.

Furthermore, this cost shifting simply amounts to unfunded mandates. Rather than spending money to promote the collection of revenue, the federal government instead now causes local entities such as libraries and the citizens themselves to do so. I suppose I could make an argument for shifting the costs to the taxpayers directly; it's their money in the first place after all. However, to shift costs to the local entities without regard for their ability to pay is just bad policy. To me, this is another example of the counter intuitive, yet completely correct findings of the 2006 Public Libraries and the Internet study, which argues that with respect to e-government, the lack of local funding for libraries threatens and restricts access to the very resources these initiatives are meant to improve. Sure, having a computer at home is great, but I have a building full of people every day who don't and countless more who do not have the skills to find the right forms online or to e-file. Maybe one day we will be there, but not yet. Not nearly.

I have spoken to a few library directors about this and frankly, most just look at tax forms the wrong way. They have told me we are wasting time and money by providing tax forms, and by the way, my people do a fantastic job, better than anywhere I have seen. Most of the directors I have talked to tell me they don't do it, and that if the IRS or the Post Office won't do it, there is no reason why the library should.
Unfortunately, what these well meaning people don't understand is this- paper will eventually go away and we will then provide access to tax forms and government information whether we like it or not. At my own library we see a steady decline in the number of forms we provide each year. In fact, we are below the number of forms we passed out ten years ago. Well below. Eventually the IRS will just stop allowing me to order bulk forms, in which case my staff will still distribute them, only they will do it by helping people figure out how to do it online.

Secondly, since we are currently seen by several thousand repeat customers each year as "THE ONLY PLACE IN TOWN" for tax forms, there is an enormous amount of goodwill shed upon us for doing the great job we do. Each year, patrons tell me they think we are doing the community a favor. Many also tell me they think it is stupid that we have to do this, but that it is great that we do. What is that worth, I ask.

To borrow a well used phrase: "Making you local tax paying patrons happy- priceless."

Professions don't stand sill, but...

2007-10-29T13:05:00.000-04:00

Michael and Michael referred to a post I made a while back about professions not standing still. It's always nice to get recognized for something, yet at the same time it forces one to reread their own material, which in my case usually leads to the realization that the ideas therein are only half developed.

Such is the case with that post, which I now realize contained a glaring omission. Professions may not stand still, but it is also true that professions accumulate new processes and priorities while continuing to maintain old ones. We hang on to the tried and true, we cast off the obsolete and we respond to modernizing forces by adapting to the new.

Librarians have to remain open to new technologies and library patrons have expectations that the technology environment they encounter there will be state of the art. Yet those same patrons also expect that libraries will have the same things they have always had and that they will still have the time and expertise to help them understand and navigate the knowledge of the world. The point begging to be addressed here is the inherent difficulty of adding to what we do while also maintaining some or large parts of what we have always done. For that matter, how do we even know what to cast aside? And once we have decided what to add and what to keep, and since it is bound to seem like more work, how do we manage the workload without sacrificing quality or the thing we most want to spend with patrons- time?

I know, I know- probably this is not so insightful, yet it is something that deserves to be pointed out and I should have in that original post.

Spring/Summer Hiatus

2007-03-12T12:41:00.000-04:00

If nothing shows up on this blog for a while, then it's probably due to spending my free time as an amusement park for my kids rather than as a blogger. I'm still around, but between playing outside, swimming and working on my all too atrocious golf game, there's not much time left for anything else.

Send me an email if you need anything...

Where is the line?

2007-02-21T10:27:00.000-05:00

I have suggested that public service librarians must be technologically literate and that they must be willing to help people use the computers in their public libraries. One of the comments to that post said this:

"When libraries were solely about books, did we teach the illiterate how to read? Did we teach librarians how to teach people to read? Rarely that happened, but mostly we didn't do those things."

Well, yes we did. Literacy programs are an established service at public libraries throughout the country (cite & cite). What's more, literacy is included as one of the PLA service responses, (Literacy: "Learn to Read and Write: Adult, Teen, and Family Literacy") and I don't recall any responses on the discussion blog that said literacy was not a legitimate service.

Having said that, I do recoginize that we have limitations; we cannot teach people to use a computer in a reference interview, we cannot afford to immerse ourselves with an in depth tutoring session on setting up an email account with one patron while five others await our assistance with other matters. Like many reference librarians, I deal with this tension every day and I understand that there are truly times where the best answer to their request for help may very well be to send them elsewhere for assistance or instruction. Some people need to take a class (which we offer), some people need to take a little initiative, and some people need to understand that it really isn't our job to do the work for them. However, there are miles and miles between those extremes and the very ordinary expectations for assistance that we should be able to provide. My problem is with library public service staff who have a low level of competency and who are therefore unable to help patrons with perfectly reasonable requests, such as "how do I create columns in a document?", or "Does your wireless network have a SSID?"

So, speaking of reasonable requests, two questions I am typically asked about providing support for our public access computers are, "What kinds of questions should I be expected to answer?" and "Where to I draw the line?". These are fair questions, but unfortunately there is no list of questions we will and won't answer. And there will never be a list. The only answer I can give to these questions is based on competencies. Librarians have to master a certain set of skills and they have to have a familiarity and a comfort level with computers so that they will develop their own sense for when they are approaching "the line". Once they get to that point of having a high level of confidence in their own competencies, then they will have developed the authority to establish "the line".

I have a fairly high degree of computer competency, myself. I am not a programmer, or a webmaster by any stretch, but I am quite comfortable with most enduser tasks. But, first and foremost I have a well developed understanding of what I don't know. Furthermore, since my comfort level with computers in general is fairly high, I am confident that what I don't know is often beyond what a patron should expect to get from me. By contrast, a librarian with a low level of computer competency, someone who is very unsure of themself around computers is also someone who doesn't even know what they don't know. For me, it is fairly easy to help patrons solve many problems with our computers AND I have little trouble establishing the boundaries of service. For the librarian who is uncomfortable around computers, those boundaries do not exist because they don't ever really know whether the patron has a reasonable request or not.

The closest thing we can come to providing librarians with an operational understanding of what is required to provide high quality service with public access computers is to make sure they develop the skills necessary to understand what the difference is between reasonable and extreme requests. Staff should be evaluated on their level of computer competencies and they should be required to get the training they need to make sure they are comfortable and confident with computers. More importantly, those same staff members need to be involved in discussions about "the line" so that the service they provide can be as consistent as possible. They need to work together to share knowledge, to bail each other out when they need help and to establish a team based understanding of what kinds of questions they can and cannot answer.

I said in my previous post that providing assistance to patrons on our computers is not a choice. Perhaps that should be rephrased to say that providing assistance to patrons on our computers is a choice, but we choose not to do so at our peril. We create expectations by providing the computers in the first place. If we don't think we should be helping people use computers, then not only are we not providing a level of service that is a reasonable expectation, but we are also missing opportunity after opportunity to connect with patrons and demonstrate our worth.

"I didn't get an MLS to do that."

2007-02-06T09:15:00.000-05:00

This was said to me by a former staff member a few years ago.
This librarian was making the point that she did not agree with the expectation that she should be required to assist patrons with computer problems- helping them with word processing, spreadsheets, Powerpoint demos, formatting fliers, etc. on the library's public computers. She didn't have the skills to do it and felt that she couldn't give them the help they needed. She said she didn't go to library school to help people on the computers. I sympathized with her, but I could not agree with her for these reasons:

Professions do not stand still.
Have you ever met a plumber who doesn't work with PVC? An electrician who only uses knob and tube wiring? A firefighter who thinks those new fangled breathing masks are just too complicated? No, professionals who don't keep up with the technologies that affect their work go out of business. Librarianship is not immune to that.

We don't have a choice.
To me this is the most important reason. Even if we don't like computers, our patrons do. Libraries have established themselves as the place to get on the internet. We market this. We brag about it. We get federal funding for it (well, a little...). It is not responsible to provide access to computers without also providing the staff training necessary to make sure our people have the competencies to help patrons with them.
Furthermore, the line between information tools, social software, games and productivity tools is thoroughly blurred by now. To expect that we can choose what part of the technology we will help patrons with is simply unrealistic.

The jobs we signed up for may not exist anymore.
Or, they may. It depends on how you look at it. I signed up for this because it's a service profession. Nothing drives me more than getting someone exactly what they want. The "what they want" has changed in the years I've been on the job. If professionals cannot adapt to that or cannot accept this, then I understand when they say they didn't get an MLS to do this.

A reasonable response to this post is to ask where the line is. How far should we go to help patrons (because sometimes their expectations for assistance really are more than we can or should provide)? Next post will be about that. So, don't touch that...mouse, or whatever.

If you say you chat...then PAY ATTENTION

2007-02-05T17:47:00.000-05:00

I needed some information that I figured would be easily found at another library. I noticed they had chat reference, which they very proudly advertised, along with the hours of availability. So I gave it a shot. Here's the short, sad story of that experience:

(tick, tick, tick, tick....that's the sound of a clock. Keep it in your head as you read, okay?)

[17:30] stivab: Hi, have a question for you. Are you there?
[17:33] stivab: Hello?
[17:34] stivab: sigh...bye.

Look, I'm not impatient. But, from the perspective of a person who uses IM pretty frequently, waiting four minutes for a response is a lifetime. My guess is someone forgot they were online, or was too busy to answer. Either way, I wonder at the message this sends to people.

By the way, it is now about fifteen minutes later and still no response. Hello!?

"You have to let it go."

2007-01-30T11:51:00.000-05:00

David Lee King writes about Customer Service When No One is looking.

He wonders,

"…think about your library staff for a sec. Are their customer service cups half-empty or half-full? Are they prone to to be reactive or proactive? Do they go the extra mile to help customers find something, or do they say “it’s up on the next floor” and point vaguely to the elevator? Do they “flip her the bird” when no one’s looking (or at least, when they THINK no one’s looking)?"

The best way to answer this is to staff your library with people who have the attributes you want in an excellent service provider. Either they have the skills to handle problems well or they don't. My guess is that the person mentioned in the book felt they just had to let that steam off. For them it may have been a safety valve and others might say it was a smart way to deal with it. But my goodness, think about the level of planning involved just to get that act over without being noticed (by almost everyone...). No, the better way is to have the ability to let that transaction go and move on to the next one in the first place. You can't prevent yourself from being affected by problem patrons, but you can control your reactions to the situation. It's just part of a person's mental, professional and emotional makeup. Much of this can be taught, but it's a lot easier if you can hire people who have a lot of the tools already in place.

Robert Spector, author of the Nordstrom Way, writes at his website,

Hire Nice, Motivated People:
"The company’s preference is to hire a nice person and teach her how to sell, rather than hire a saleswoman and teach her how to be nice. The corollary to that rule is "hire the smile and train the skill." I once asked Bruce Nordstrom who really trains the sales people. His answer was: "Their parents."

Urban Libraries Council Report on Libraries and Economic Development

2007-01-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

Making Cities Stronger: Public Library Contributions to Local Economic Development

The study was announced on January 11th on the ULC website.

"The study concludes that public libraries are positioned to fuel not only new, but next economies because of their roles in building technology skills, entrepreneurial activity, and vibrant, livable places. The combination of stronger roles in economic development strategies and their prevalence -- 16,000 branches in more than 9,000 systems -- make public libraries stable and powerful tools for cities seeking to attract and build new businesses."

Libraries are good for the community

2007-01-23T19:54:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know this. You know this, too. It's just really nice to have it in the press once in a while.
Even if one of us has to write it.

My name is Steve and I'm a sports fan.

2007-01-22T13:20:00.000-05:00

Excellent post over at Pop Goes the Library about sports and librarians.

One of the challenges about being a librarian is acknowledging the legitimacy of art forms, cultural phenomena, politics, career choices, etc. for which one has no interest. Susan mentions the disdain of sports (or at least the lack of interest) by librarians and how it may prevent us from attracting a particular segment of our clientele. Spot on, I say. Believe me, I struggle with this all the time. For instance, I HATE pro-wrestling (and the fact that LC seems to think it belongs at 796.812 and not 791.3), but I know it's a form of entertainment that a lot of people like. So, I try keep my professional self from wondering outloud about the irony of a book by this title. Okay, so I'm not perfect, but one has to admit there is a problem before moving on to the next step.

Anyway, I have also noticed this with business sources. Now, far be it from me to generalize about librarians, but well, I am about to do so anyway; my guess is that a lot of us come from backgrounds that have little to do with business. We were all a bunch of comp lit, poli sci and anthropology majors. Sure, we have great educational backgrounds (and masters degrees!) and we may be tremendous reference librarians. Nevertheless many of us, lacking any business, economic, or finance training either fear or loathe the mention of EDGAR, historical stock quotes, ETFs, annuities, or anything having to do with ammortization and/or the time value of money. If a patron asks us where the Morningstar Mutual Fund Report is, we're happy to hand it to them. If they ask us how to use it, or if (oh no!) they want to know what an A++ rating means....we get clammy, we look around for someone else, we wish the world would open up and swallow us. Then we page to the introduction to Best's and (with relief) read the ratings part to them aloud.

Of course, I am only half serious, but Susan has touched on something very important here. If you want to serve your community as well as you can, then you have to acknowledge and work within the contexts that shape their interests. Of course, you can't master every subject- that's not what librarianship is about- but at the very least you make sure your own biases don't prevent you from building services and collections that are relevant to the people who come to your library (or who don't because you don't have what they want).

Me? I'm a sports fan, so there's one bias I don't have to worry about. And I listen to AM radio. And I golf. Just doing my part to shatter the stereotype....

Job seeking advice for newly minted librarians

2007-01-19T13:33:00.000-05:00

I will be giving a presentation to students about job seeking in public libraries in late February. Below are a few things I want to discuss, based on my experience in hiring librarians directly and as part of search committees and it would be great to have the opinions of others, too. If you have suggestions or advice that you think would be valuable to someone starting out in the career, please leave a comment or email me directly. I'm especially interested in experience others have had with negotiating salaries and moving expenses at the entry level.

Getting a job is about finding a match (in more ways than one):
Learn to trust your impressions. There are a lot of factors about a public library that might make it a good match such as its size, the location, the management structure, etc. The more you consider what you actually want and what interests you, the easier it is to recognize whether a place has those qualities or not. Additionally, it is just a fact of life that some people don't mix well together. It could be one person, or an entire unit within a library could have a culture that you may want to avoid. Choose well, and don't be afraid to walk away from a job because the personality of the place seems like it would turn work into something you don't enjoy.

Use a rifle, not a shotgun- apply wisely:
It is tempting to apply to everything you see, but it is probably not an efficient way to land a job. I have been on search committees that have had to wade through over 200 applications for entry level librarian positions and the first order of business is to put as many applications as possible into the reject pile. If you don't meet the required qualifications....you are not qualified. Don't annoy the nice people on the search committee by applying for the job.
Think hard before you apply for a bunch of jobs at the same library. At some places this is fine, like large public libraries that often advertise pools of jobs. Probably the best way to do this would be to make sure the jobs are pretty similar, but if you have targeted a specific library then there is nothing wrong about applying for more than a couple kinds of jobs as long as you are qualified. Applying to be a reference librarian AND the head of technical servcies would seem a little strange to the employer.

Write your application and/or cover letter for the job:
It's tempting to send the same letter (or close to it) to every place. That would be fine if all the libraries and all the positions were exactly the same. But they are not and another way of staying out of the reject pile is by taking time to do the research, to think about the job and to write a thoughtful essay on why you are a good match for the position. These things come through and will help your letter stand out and float to the top of the pile.
I recommend reviewing your letter and checking, point by point, to make sure you have addressed all the qualifications, required skills, etc. If there are any holes, you will have to explain them because the search committee won't miss the fact that you have left something out. And when there are holes and unanswered questions, the search committee won't bother trying to answer them; they will move on without you.

On fonts, fancy paper, etc.:
Just forget it- it's not worth anything. In fact, when I get a resume and cover letter on expensive paper with one of those half cursive fonts, it seems even less polished. Not that I'd throw a letter in the reject pile for such a violation, but it makes an amateurish impression on me. Besides, sometimes the actual reviewers end up with photocopies, so the extra cost in paper is wasted.

The cover letter and resume are all about getting them to ask you for an interview:
Just like the paper and font thing, I don't advocate trying anything wildly creative to get an interview. It probably won't work. Potential employers are often looking for employees who seem like they are easy to get along with, people who come off on paper as someone who will fit in, who will be a solid performer and who will not ruffle a lot of feathers. If your application screams "free spirit" you may get overlooked. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stand out; just get the person who proof reads it for you to give you a gut check on it.
Writing a good letter is a bit of an art form. There is a fine line between demonstrating your qualifications on paper and blowing smoke up the committees' backsides. Have your trusted friend read your letters and resumes and ask them to act as your B.S. alarm. If there is anything in your letter that sounds pompous, vain, or beyond the normal expectations for this position, then rewrite it and tone it down.

Once you get an interview, know your stuff:
You have to do the research for interviewing just like you do for applying. But you don't just want to find out all you can about the library (if you can, then that's great), you want to form opinions about the place, you want to be able to answer questions in a way that says you have put a lot of thought into this job and this library. For instance, what are their fine policies and what do you think of them? Do they give you an impression that the library is easy going or gulag-like? How do they handle kids' cards- no fines for the kids themselves or no fines on kids' materials? There's a big difference.

Shop the place before you interview:
They don't know you yet, unless you have committed the egregious error of sending them a picture...which you should never do under any circumstances. It's just weird. And a video is even weirder.
Anyway, if you get the job, you will never have another opportunity to have a completely uninitiated view of the place. If you end up accepting a position there, your first impressions are going to be very valuable to you as a new employee. But as far as the interview goes, taking a walk through the place and interacting with the organization will give you some good ideas for questions you can ask them in the interview. It is impressive to interviewers when a candidate shows they have taken this position seriously enough to prepare thoroughly.

Books on the Menu

2007-01-17T10:47:00.001-05:00

Books on the Menu
Originally uploaded by stivab.

The Winter Reading Program is up and running again. It gets better every year; last year our staff even made a quilt.

Another nice job, folks!

Work at my Library

2007-01-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

The Monroe County Public Library is looking for two excellent librarians. You'd get to work with a group of pretty cool and smart people (despite my presence among them!), and you'd get to live in Bloomington, one of the nicest little cities in the country.

One of the great things about working at MCPL is the support we have in the community. People love this library. It is also an interesting library because it has a large, central branch right in heart of downtown. Because of that, MCPL is a hub of activity; there are always large amounts of people here, our meeting rooms and auditorium get used for major cultural and intellectual events (Lee Hamilton spoke here last year and Nick Clooney stopped by to lecture on Darfur, too), and the library is used as a gathering space for thousands of people each week. Check out these two positions- they are both great opportunities.

Children's Services Department Manager

Collection Services Department Manager

Five things....

2007-01-10T06:28:00.000-05:00

1) I'm ambidextrous. Well, sort of. I eat left handed, play baseball and golf right handed, write lefthanded; you get the picture. The only things I really do lefty and righty are darts and soccer.
2) I homebrew. Right now, there are 24 liters of dark lager in my garage. Two more days to go.
3) I have two really great kids.
4) Speaking of my kids, they say my pizza is the best in the world. That may be an overstatement (they're 4 and 5, so their experience is limited to well, my 'za), but it's perdy darn good stuff. We make it from scratch every weekend. There's no pizza like home pizza.
5) My wife and I met in a library. We're both librarians. Cute, eh?

Thanks to Peter for the tag.
And if I'm not mistaken, we've reached the end of the internet; there may be no one left to tag. So, if you haven't been tagged, don't skink away mad. Tag yourself and have at it.

Terrill Ridge Pond

2006-12-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

Terrill Ridge Pond
Originally uploaded by stivab.

I haven't been real active on this blog lately. Work is keeping me very busy, as is family life. Yesterday was beautiful and I made a choice to stay away from my computer and get out into the woods. After about eight miles I came to this pond, up on a ridge in the Deam Wilderness.

Bear Flash Drive

2006-12-18T20:42:00.000-05:00

So I'm helping this guy tonight, trying to explain to him what a flash drive is. I figure a picture of it will help so I bring up a few images on google. This one did not help.

Act like a special library

2006-12-17T20:01:00.000-05:00

Special libraries exist within a more tenuous environment than public and academic libraries. Many are within businesess and are constantly under pressure to justify their existence. No wonder then that so much good writing about customer service has come from this area.

There is a great read from the SLA publication Information Outlook, an article called "Talking about Customer Service" published back in 2001. It covers a lot of ground in a short piece, from challenging the idea that no complaints means all is well, to the assertion that excellent customer service means survival for special libraries.
They also include a must-read quote from Ellen Altman's and Peter Hernon's article in American Libraries (I went back to the original article and tacked on another important paragraph):

Many librarians maintain that only they, the professionals, have the expertise to assess the quality of library service. They assert that users cannot judge quality, users do not know what they want or need, and professional hegemony will be undermined if they kowtow to users. Such opinions about service, in fact, are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the customers' opinions, because without users there is no need for libraries except to serve as warehouses. After all, customers (present, potential, and former ones) believe that the library's reason for being open is to meet their needs. Each customer evaluates the quality of service received and decides when (or if) there will be further interaction with that organization.

That some librarians reject the idea of users as customers is equally irrelevant. Most people do not focus on a label--customer, patron, or user; rather, they concentrate on their information needs and preferences, the services offered, and how the staff treats them. They also evaluate the service in terms of time and effort expended, and foregone opportunity to do something else. (Service quality and customer satisfaction do matter., By: Altman, Ellen, Hernon, Peter, American Libraries, Aug98, Vol. 29, Issue 7)

Back to the topic of this post, I have found that some of the best reading on customer service in libraries has come from writers who have a background in special libraries. My guess is that their experience has driven them to differentiate themselves within their organizations, to market their services effectively and to generate good will and support among their clientele. I can imagine they live with the knowledge that there is no such thing as job security when profits are down which forces them to work hard to develop and demonstrate their impact.
Does this sound familiar? Substitute the phrase "tax revenue" for profits and it's exactly the situation that many, many public and academic libraries are in right now.

Judith Siess, another special librarian wrote The Visible Librarian (ALA, 2003), a great book about customer service, marketing and advocacy in libraries. Siess describes the steps to take in order to create services, experiences and perceptions that will stand out, that will create customer loyalty and that will help stakeholders see the value of a library. In the preface, she explains why she can presume to speak to public or academic or other libraries:

"The way I see it, what makes a library special is its ability to know and customize its services to a specific user population, whether that population is a community, university, company, hospital or law firm. Therefore, all libraries are special libraries."

15 Ideas for supporting Businesses at your Library

2006-12-04T07:26:00.000-05:00

More info from the IPLA Conference On Libraries & Economic Development. Nancy Dowell, Director of the Vigo County Library and Melissa Martin, President of Issues & Advocates made this great list of things libraries can do to attract interest from the business community. Here are some of their ideas:

Host a Job Fair

Become a Job Club site - get your local workforce development groups to hold meetings or conduct training at your site.

Partner with a geek - get them to teach computer classes for you.

Become a professional study site - develop your career collection, make it relevant to the needs of your community.

Collect resources for start ups.

Create Alliances - local Chamber, downtown business groups, arts organizations, the local economic development group.

Form Partnerships - local schools, colleges and universities, local governing bodies and workforce development organizations.

Support SBDCs.

Enhance diversity - partner with groups that teach workplace spanish and other skills.

Build a Resume Center.

Provide Skill Training - computer skills, resume writing, soft skills, etc.

Support education - be a proctoring site, purchase products like KeyTrain or Learning Express.

Look for opportunities to help businesses excel.

Support community initiatives - local arts, cultural and economic development projects, task forces and commissions. Get on the boards of these things.

Get involved with ILF's Go Center Campaign - this one is specific to those of us in Indiana. ILF kicked off this pretty cool thing to help libraries become more involved in supporting businesses and economic development. It's a great idea, if you ask me.

Library Engagement in Economic Development

2006-12-03T14:18:00.000-05:00

I went to a workshop over a month ago on Economic Development and Libraries, sponsored by the Indiana Public Libraries Association. Christopher Pfaff from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation led a discussion about what libraries can do to become engaged in the economic development of their communities. Here is a top ten list of things he thought libraries could be doing:

Maintain on-going memberships and relationships with local chambers of commerce, the local economic development corporation, council, etc., and develop cooperative programs, services, and information resources with the local Small Business Development Centers.

Conduct technology related workshops especially in the areas of Internet resources, software selection, basic accounting and business ethics workshops.

Provide core business resources for the reference department including print and web based information resources.

Make meeting room policies open to businesses for staff training, planning sessions, client counseling, etc.

Develop strong partnerships with any local business incubators.

Provide training to library staff to meet the demands of business reference inquiries and to anticipate the diverse information needs of business.

Make available in library facilities the latest technology hardware and software to facilitate their use by small business entrepreneurs.

Provide telephone, e-mail, and instant text messaging business reference service.

Actively market and publicize public library services, resources, meeting rooms, computer labs, workshops, etc to business.

Develop a method of referring patrons to corporate, special, academic, or state agencies for inquiries that the local collection cannot answer and make available interlibrary loan services.

Library (yawn?) 2.0

2006-11-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

I did an experiment a while back when this blog first started- I made a pointless post about library 2.0 to see if it would generate any hits. My guess was that there were lots of people trolling the web for the phrase and I joked about using it simply to optimize the blog. Well, it worked.

I really do appreciate all the interest in new technology, and I have even participated in the "Two-point-oh-ificiation" of the field with some of the posts I have made here. But, I don't have the fire under my butt about it that others do, mainly because it's not the core of my own hedgehog concept.

Jim Collins used the phrase "hedgehog concept" in his fantastic book "Good to Great". It refers to to a singularity of focus that he uncovered in all the companies he identified as the great ones in his book. A hedgehog concept may not necessarily be the sexiest thing a company can do, but according to Collins, the hedgehog concept satisfies three things:

It is the one thing a company can do better than anyone else.
It can drive their economic engine.
It is somthting they can be passionate about.

Those companies he found to be "great" had discovered a concept that would satisfiy those three things and then had driven toward it relentlessly.
By contrast, Collins noticed that many companies failed to develop that singularity of purpose. They were "foxes", companies that tried to do many spectacular things, but that lacked the focus and singularity of the hedgehog. Some of them were remarkably successful companies, but none of them achieved the same success that the great ones had.

The Hedgehog Concept is just one chapter in Good to Great, but I think it is instructive. Happily, Collins has written a short monograph as an addendum to Good to Great, called Good to Great and the Social Sectors. If you have time, read them both. If not, just get the new one. He summarizes the major concepts in the first book for this second volume and then argues that they apply equally in all organizations. Collins believes that success is not about acting like a business, but about the process of going from good to great. Essentially, businesses, non profits, the public sector all share one important element; they are comprised of people who have to work together to get anywhere. Those organizations that do it well, those that go from good to great exist in every sector and share common traits; they have great leaders, they have passionate, disciplined management and staff, and there is a connection to the hedgehog concept from the lowliest lineworker to the CEO.

As for technology, Collins said, "Companies go from good to great because they come up with a great strategy idea, not because they deploy great technology solutions." When it comes to L2.0, that's something I am trying to keep in mind. My goal is to build services that are unique in my community, to do a few things that no one else in town does. And I want to build an organization that markets itself by delivering surprisingly good results, patron after patron after patron. Technology is certainly part of that, but it is important for me to put things in the proper perspective. What I truly have to offer the community is not just access, or a community gathering space, or an online networking environment, but an important engine of cultural and economic development. If getting a Flickr or a MySpace account will further our goals in that regard, then okay- we'll try those things. But (and this is most important), we will only do those things insofar as they fit in with our own hedgehog concept.

Learning from Failure

2006-11-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

Public service librarians who impress me the most are the ones who are interested in knowing what they are doing wrong. They approach their craft with a sense of humility and openness to learning from their failures. The best ones exhibit a comfort level with their own skills and weaknesses; they understand what they are good at and what they need to work on. Most of all, they don't hide from their weaknesses. By and large these people are comfortable in their own skin; they don't have a lot of insecurity about admitting they don't know something or that they need help. They understand that their work is about the customer and not about them. If they don't know something, their ego doesn't force them to fake it, or to disengage ("we just don't have anything on that"). Instead, they get things out on the table, they let the customer know where they stand and they build a strategy for getting that person what they need, whether it means a referral, calling on a colleague or whatever.
This is high art; something I have not mastered completely myself. I get caught trying to fake it once in a while and it reminds me that this is hard work.

Developing a high comfort level with our own weaknesses is important. No, it's critical. In order to really get down to continuous improvement our outlook has to embrace our failures. We have to be willing to accept the fact that we always have something to work on, no matter how long we've been doing this and no matter how many patrons tell us we are great at what we do. This quote summarizes the quest for service excellence better than I ever could:

The best way to ensure the survival, success, and prosperity of an
organisation is for its managers to recognise the contribution of service failure
and the accompanying customer feedback. And sustained excellence will
only be found through a constant search for, and understanding of, failure. It
is only through measurement that this can be achieved. Simply put, it is not
sustainable for an organisation to claim that it seeks to deliver excellent
customer service and then have no reliable, consistent and continuous
measurement of actual service delivery.
From: "Service Failure: Seize the Opportunity"

Cool Library Commercial.

2006-10-26T16:03:00.000-04:00

The Fulton County Public Library in Rochester Indiana has a very cool commercial. Check it out on You Tube (where else?) .

Joshua Zehner is responsible for the work. Nice Job, Joshua and FCPL!

Obsolete? No. Threatened? Well, maybe.

2006-10-13T09:39:00.000-04:00

Michael makes many good points about libraries not being obsolete and I agree that they are not. At my library we are lucky to have strong public sentiment about the importance the library occupies as a part of the community. That doesn't mean we may not be facing a rough road ahead, though. We need to face some sobering realities.

Technology and increased connectivity will continue to put people closer to the products and information they seek.
The market will continue to reward companies that create more convenience for information users and at some point why would this not translate into a threat to libraries? After all, one of the reasons libraries were created was to provide easy access to knowledge. Sure, we can probably always remain involved as intermediaries for people who don't want to or who can't buy their books, but there is no reason to believe this cannot transform into a scenario where books are fully downloadable so that patrons don't have to come to our buildings anymore. In that case, even if people still like to get their books from us, we have to be ready to understand that the library as "Place" may become less relevant.
Moreover, and I am sure every librarian is sick of hearing this, why do people need to come to a library when they can just find it on Google? Many of us answer that question quite well, even though it can be exasperating. Yet, the fact that this assumption remains means something; that this perception of irrelevance is very strong, indeed.

Funding will not increase.
I can't see any possible scenario in the near term whereby public funding for libraries will increase. It would be nice if suddenly the economy took off again, overflowing the government revenue stream, but the current stress of energy prices, war and globalization do not bode well for the library funding situation. The recent Bertot, Jaeger, Langa and McClure study on libraries and the Internet hammers home the funding plight (and take a look at this memo, which in retrospect is very telling for its ommissions about where citizens are actually expected to access all that convenient government info). If library funding remains flat or trends downward, then why would we expect that our ability to remain relevant is not threatened? Less revenue means fewer librarians, less programming, less materials, less marketing- not a scenario that makes remaining relevant easy.

However, once you get through all the woe about having the government pile unfunded mandates onto libraries in the form of E-government, there is in my opinion an opportunity lurking. Sure, we don't get any funding from the Feds or the states to provide a public interface to their services, and we should shove that back at them as hard as we can. Recent work on ROI and Impact studies (here and here, for example) are great tools to use- we are completely able to show that money spent on public library services is well spent. Extraordinarily well spent. We should be working with our state libraries, our consortia and with our national organizations to pound this home relentlessly.
But, I think we can also do a lot for ourselves by creating services that make us absolutely indespensable to our local communities, the people who we really need to worry about. For if we are going to be forced to look outside the public funding stream to maintain high service levels, then it's these people we need to impress. We need to create a relationship with them and we need to develop the perception that our institutions are critical to the well being of our towns, counties and districts. After all, our "irrelevance" is a perception. Not a great one, but why should we not expect that we can't combat that by manufacturing new reasons for people to rely on us and to develop new sympathetic perceptions?

Take the E-government issue, for example, where there is clearly a gap between the end users and the products. I don't see why we can't use this service gap to strengthen our position. Certainly, just about every library with an internet connection has done their share of digging to locate information from their own state or local government. But how many of us have made the effort to know our state government websites backwards and forwards to the point that we actually know where a specific piece of information is located, rather than just knowing that a Google search will get us there? How many of us know which government agency oversees brownfields, or consumer protection, or securities trading? How many of us know how our local government runs or how it interacts with local businesses? To an experienced govdocs librarian, this is the bread and butter of their profession, understanding the structure, services and information flow of the public sector.
The near ubiquity of E-government makes it possible for us all to pursue this specialized level of expertise and I think we are missing a chance if we don't grab onto to it and use it as a way to demonstrate something beyond the ROI marketing efforts; that our people occupy a unique professional niche within local government services. Does your county auditor have property data and tax information online? Dig into it and master it because I guarantee people in your county would like to use it, but can't figure it out. Does your locality have businesses who may deal with the federal government? Then maybe you could help them find what they need from FAR (speaking of something that people can't figure out!). Or, maybe you could help nonprofits in your community look for Federal grants. There is a huge amount of help needed and we are just the people to do it. It only requires that we start thinking of ourselves as the "special libaries" for our own communities.

Reference in the Raw

2006-09-09T21:04:00.000-04:00

The Myth of Multitasking (or The Truth About Multitasking)
Originally uploaded by Tim Morgan.

A while ago I commented on the contradictory messages we managers send to our staff when we require them to bring "off desk" tasks to the public service desks. In my opinion, the effects on public service of having a cart in front of oneself, or of being immersed in a non-patron oriented task are terribly detrimental. We focus on our computer while we compose a message that we want to get just right, we look down and furl our brow as we try to understand something we are reading. In short, we concentrate on the tasks at hand, no matter how "interruptible" we feel they may be.

Now, how does this look to our visitors? From the results of the mystery shopper program I am conducting, the message is that we just don't seem approachable. Sure, we do a great job once the person gets our attention, but from an outsider's perspective, having to actually initiate contact to speak to us sends a pretty important message, that we are either too busy to be interrupted, or that we are at that service point for some reason other than to help people. Furthermore, my gut tells me a good percentage of patrons don't know that we usually have our own workspaces away from the public desk. Many of them probably think we are out there all day long and that only a portion of our time can be spent helping people, the rest of the time being spent on other duties. The proof is in the action of so many patrons who stand patiently by a desk, waiting for the librarian to look up, or who approach tentatively, even offering an apology for the interruption (and by the way, if this happens to you I really hope you are returning the apology for making them ask you for help in the first place).

I am not saying we send these messages or create these perceptions intentionally, but the truth is that a sedentary, passive library service setting, wherein staff wait for questions and/or do other things until a patron approaches us runs the risk of sending exactly those kinds of messages. There is simply no way around that- either you are aware of your surroundings and are looking for engagement, or you are not.

So, with this in mind, I have deemed September "Naked Reference Month" in my department. The idea is that all public desk staff will leave everything behind when they work at our desk. No food, no bookcarts, no stacks of journals to read. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. And there are few ground rules to go along with this:

If it seems boring- walk around, find patrons, spruce up the place, try to drum up some business.
If a staff member needs a break to have a little snack, someone has to provide it. This means we need to pay closer attention to each other- offer breaks, ask if they need help, etc.
If a staff member has a pressing deadline for a project- someone needs to help them make it happen by taking all or part of their desk shift. That includes me, the manager.
Lastly, every staff member needs to think "public first, off desk stuff later".

We will revisit this experiment in the beginning of October. I'm hoping we have some insights that I can share here, too.

NOTE:
The photo above came from Tim Morgan's flickr page.