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I’m a little over halfway through Here Comes Everybody, and I’m reading with a box of Page Points by my side (of course, the book is a library copy – I’ll have to buy my own so I can leave my markers in place and go back to them later). I’m up to the 7th chapter now, but so far Chapter 3 is the one with the most passages marked. Shirky discusses the effect of the internet on more traditional media and the mass amateurization of tasks that used to be the purview of professionals. He gets right to the heart of some of the things we’ve been discussing in the library world, and particularly just this past week at Eureka. Here are just a few choice tidbits:
For people with a professional outlook, it’s hard to understand how something that isn’t professionally produced could affect them….Most professions exist because there is a scare resource that requires ongoing management…a professional learns things in a way that differentiates her from most of the populace, and she pays as much or more attention to the judgment of her peers as to the judgment of her customers when figuring out how to do her job….Sometimes, thought, the professional outlook can become a disadvantage, preventing the very people who have the most at stake – the professionals themselves – from understanding major changes to the structure of their profession….It is easier to understand that you face competition than obsolescence. In any profession, particularly one that has existed long enough that no one can remember a time when it didn’t exist, members have a tendency to equate provisional solutions to particular problems with deep truths about the world. This is true of newspapers today and of the media generally….A professional often becomes a gatekeeper…Professional self-conception and self-defense, so valuable in ordinary times, become a disadvantage in revolutionary ones, because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession. In most cases, those threats are also threats to society; we don not want to see a relaxing of standards for becoming a surgeon or a pilot. But in some cases the change that threatens the the profession benefits society, as did the spread of the printing press; even in these situations the professionals can be relied on to care more about self-defense than about progress. What was once a service has become a bottleneck.
This chapter really made me squirm. I don’t agree with everything Shirky says (and he does mention libraries as well as the media), but I think he brings some valuable insights to the discussion. I don’t believe that libraries and librarians are obsolete, but I certainly think we could become so if we focused on the wrong things. Anyway, this book is challenging me in a lot of ways, AND it’s really interesting. Read it, think about it, talk about it. I’m curious to hear what others have to say.
A woman comes up to the desk this evening. She turned in a book and forgot to write down the author’s name, but wants to search for more books by that author. The book has already been checked in, so there’s no record of it on her account (we don’t keep a history, for privacy purposes). Here’s our conversation:
“Do you remember the title or any of the title words?”
“Um, no.”
“Can you tell me what the cover looks like?”
“Um, no. But it had a ‘new’ sticker on it.”
“Can you tell me what the book was about?”
“Um, not really. I guess it was a family story. The author wrote another book about dogs, but I don’t know the name of it.”
Well, I found the book (Life’s a Beach by Claire Cook, who also wrote Must Love Dogs). But before you give me credit for my librarian kung fu, I have to admit that there were only about 8 books with a “new” sticker waiting to be shelved, so it wasn’t too taxing. I wish I could tell you that questions like that are rare, but alas, they are far too common.
I found out today that I was accepted into the Eureka! Leadership Institute. Woohoo! It’s a wonderful opportunity and I’m so excited to be going. I’m not generally pessimistic, but I struggled a bit with my application and so I was trying very hard not to get my hopes up. Needless to say, I’m thrilled! I may write more about this later, but for now just wanted to share my joy.
Librarian in Black Sara Houghton-Jan posted A Treatise on the Black Market of Holds a week or so ago, and it got me thinking. I was just going to comment on her blog, but my response was getting pretty wordy so I figured I’d put it here instead. The basic gist of her post:
We have created a two class system in our libraries: those who know about the hold system and are willing to pay the hold fee for the privilege of material-borrowing -and- those who come in to our libraries to browse and/or don’t know about the hold system, assuming that what they see on the shelf is an accurate representation of what we actually have.
Now, I am fortunate enough to work in a library that does not charge for holds. As a consequence, we have a very active holds queue. Is it a perfect system? No. But I think it works pretty well. It’s a gross over-simplification, but essentially we make our libraries relevant and stake our territory in the marketplace by offering great service and collections for free (or cheap, as the case may be). Convenience is currency. Why do so many people have Netflix accounts? Because they can add items to their queue when they think about it and then forget about them. They can keep items as long as they want and aren’t bothered about late fees. (Honestly, I’m very intrigued by the idea of going completely fine-free, but that’s a whole other post as it raises a bunch of other issues. )
To stay on track with Sarah’s post, I’ll just say that as the Web Services Librarian at MPOW I’m always concerned with reaching the customers who rarely or never make it into the library, and one of the ways we do that is by making our services more convenient and accessible from outside the physical library. I know that we get more users because we allow people to place holds on items and notify them when those holds are available. (We’re looking at the possibility of mailing holds to our customers, which could be even better). We currently shelve our holds in a self-service pick-up area, near our self-service and full-service checkout stations. If a customer so chooses, they might never come much further than the front door, and might never interact personally with a staff member. And you know what? That’s okay! We’re right there with friendly and helpful staff for the people who want and need us. For the people who don’t, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to get what they DO want from the library.
I think it’s a great service, and a large number of our customers take full advantage of it. We promote the service heavily to the customers who do choose to come in the library, and many of them are thrilled to find out about it. For those who choose not to place holds, that’s okay. We won’t force them! It’s really their choice. We still have a great collection of new titles that might not make the NY Times or LA Times Bestseller lists and are therefore more likely to be on the shelf. The browsers aren’t faced with empty shelves, and they’re not stuck with just the “dregs” of the collection, either. We do have some items we don’t allow holds for (e.g. 1-day DVDs – basically new releases), and people still have trouble finding those items on the shelves when they come in the library. Then they’re more upset because they had to make the trip to the library and didn’t get what they wanted anyway.
It’s tricky – I understand that we need to try to balance the needs of all of our customers, and really try not to leave anyone out in the cold. That’s especially true when money is the dividing issue. But if we eliminate the practice of placing holds we just alienate a different group of users. If you haven’t already, make sure to read the comment thread on Sarah’s post – several commenters had great ideas and practices for improving the balance and fairness. I’ll be recommending some of these at my library.
I don’t want to make light of this issue: I understand that finding a good solution can be much more difficult for the libraries that don’t have the budget to buy a lot of copies of bestsellers or supplement their collections in other ways. I think that’s all the more reason to exercise our creativity and look for new solutions and service models that help us do a better job of juggling the needs of all of our customers.
I’m grateful to Sarah for her post, because it got me thinking about something that I tend to take for granted, and now I feel the creative juices flowing. I can’t say that I’ll come up with anything new and brilliant, but if I think of anything good I promise I’ll share!
I’m reading Leading for Growth
Think of your own business and industry. What do you and your competitors do that is boring, stale, or bland? Is there something that is numbingly similar across every company, including yours? If so, you have a great opportunity. (p.13)
Well, at least in libraries, the “numbing similarities” are probably too numerous to count. But I like looking at our services through this prism and seeing what opportunities shine out…much to think about here.
