The writing is on the wall

Posted on May 10, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Environments | 1 Comment

In Saturday May 9th’s Globe & Mail there is a “Blueprint for Prosperity” by Tavia Grant. She outlines 3 building design themes that successful organizations have adopted or will adopt: Going Green, Close Quareters, and Lifespaces. Going Green is pretty straight forward, it’s the latter two that I think might be a bit more of a challenge for libraries.

If you didn’t click through and read the brief article, or listen to her podcast, I’ll give you the quick notes. She attributes increased innovation and communication to close quarters. Google Inc. uses open floor plans, desks arranged in pods, and gatherings over free lunches in the cafeterias as a way to bring people and ideas together.

Lifespaces, are “versatile, comfortable and homey public spaces” or “community hubs” and can be found at companies such as MediaCom canada’s Toronto office which includes “an airy, open-concept bistro” where people from different departments can meet in a common area promoting better communications, an exciting atmosphere, and increased productivity.

It’s very exciting to think about some of these ideas as our libraries, particularly our regional headquarters and central libraries, try to reimagine their physical public spaces to better serve our communities. Unfortunately I haven’t heard many library discussions about redesigning work areas so we serve our communities better - I’m sure they are happening, just not very loudly.

Well I do run across the occasional library reference to work areas, Stephen Abrahm shared a great product in his post Cool Paint.

Use IdeaPaint to transform office walls, desks, and hallways into collaborative spaces. With IdeaPaint, work environments become areas of increased functionality that evoke creativity and impromptu teamwork and cultivate innovation by providing a dry-erase writing surface without seams, borders, or restrictions. IdeaPaint can be used in a myriad of ways including in open work areas, conference rooms, offices, hallways, and even on columns.

I’m so keen on it I’m going to use it at home - not sure for what. I just like the idea of writing big and messy all over the wall and then wiping it clean!

You do the math

Posted on April 20, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Client Relations, Managing Ourselves | 2 Comments

When I first saw this spot, last year, from the Vancouver Public Library I was just happy to wallow in a bit of nostalgia and to see some old co-workers (I worked at VPL for many years). This time when I ran across it on Tame the Web and started down the road of “oh and there’s so and so, and so and so…” I asked myself, just how many of them did it take to get that book to the patron anyhow?

Here’s a breakdown of the book, Wilderness Ontario, and its travels at the Vancouver Public Library

Impact on library: 2 employees handled the book record (maybe 3 if original order came from library acquisitions or a subject librarian) and the physical book was handled at least 19 times by VPL employees from the time it arrived at the library to the time it was placed in the patron’s hands.

Impact on patron: She got a book that took 6 months and an excess of handling to process. Maybe she discovered it wasn’t the book she wanted and returned it without reading it, or maybe she read it cover to cover and her appreciation of the library’s role in meeting her entertainment and information sky rocketed and she is now the biggest advocator of public library services. Maybe.

Current status of the book, Wilderness Ontario: $22.50 on Amazon.ca. and sitting on the shelf in VPL’s history division.

And speaking of money…

Library fines. Considerable source of revenue for some library systems. Not something we can just do away with - or can we.

According to ODLIS fines

encourage borrowers to return materials promptly, most libraries charge a small amount for each day that a circulating item is kept past its due date. The amount may vary depending on the format of the material checked out. Overdue fines for items on reserve may be charged by the hour. Fines can be avoided by renewing items on or before the due date. Most automated circulation systems are set to block a borrower account if unpaid fines accumulate beyond a certain amount.

According to Dictionary.com a fine

is a sum of money imposed as a penalty for an offense or dereliction

Guess which of the definitions comes to our patron’s minds when we say “you have a fine” - even if we try to say it with a smile and an apology, they still only hear you screeching “YOU HAVE A FINE YOU MISCREANT!”.

So let’s get rid of fines, and instead have extended service fees or minor sur-charges. Changing language can change attitude, particularly ours towards the patron. If we need that revenue, it is up to us to make it a more pleasant experience - one that comes with a big welcome and a sincere thank you. After all, they are our customers and deserve as excellent, as we can make it, library experience.

Here’s my guaranteed (not to be confused with rigorous) 10 minute research methodology. You’ve seen it before where I race across the country picking on largish library systems to see where they are in my expectations. Not even Richmond Public Library made the cut this time, but a few, such as Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto came close.

Vancouver Public Library - fines
Richmond Public Library - charges and fines
Calgary Public Library - fees
Edmonton Public Library - late charges
Yukon Public Libraries - fines and charges
Saskatoon Public Library - fines
Regina Public Library - fines
Winnipeg Public Library - fines/blocks
Thunder Bay Public Library - fines
London Public Library - fines
Toronto Public Library - fees and charges
Montreal Public Library - fees
Quebec City Public Library - fees
St John’s Public Library - fines
Halifax Public Library - fines
Charlottetown Public Library (Confederation Centre) - fines
Fredericton Public Library - fines

It’s really pretty simple: money in, money out. You do the math.

Jump

Posted on April 13, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Change | Leave a Comment

At a meeting the other day the inevitable discussion of libraries and change dominated the lunch break. It quickly focused in on technology, and in particular technology’s effect on the catalogue and the reference interview. This discussion often leaves me wary. I wonder if perhaps this focus on technological change has not let us off easy on the topic of libraries and change.

If the biggest change in libraries, that immediately comes to mind, is clicking on keys rather than flipping through cards or reaching for a reference book, then we have failed. We have failed to notice that the communities we serve are already receiving mediocre customer service, inadequate public space, and an abundance of information bytes from a variety of organizations and sources. Real change will come when we use technological advances as additional tools at our disposal - not as silver bullets - to differentiate ourselves in striving for excellence in everything we do.

Phew.

Okay, time to put the soap box away (but note, I did not have enough shame to push the delete key).

Helene Blowers has highlighted the following 12 ingredients for a culture of innovation that may provide a starting list for internal changes that would then ideally bring about useful and meaningful changes for our users.

1. Top Management Buy-In
2. Trust
3. Priority of Innovation (Often Confused with Time)
4. Freedom to Take Action
5. Freedom to Make Mistakes
6. Rewarding Rather than Stifling Creative Thinking
7. Collaboration Tools
8. Places and Opportunities to Talk
9. Places and Opportunities to Work in Isolation
10. Access to Information
11. Transparency
12. Humor

The only quibble I have with this list is that I would amend “Top management buy-in” to include an “or staff buy-in”.

So libraries and change.

A recent long prairie drive with a rather smart librarian brought up the pros and cons of using a burning platform to encourage change. If you want people to change their work habits and beliefs then explain to them why - and make it urgent. The problem with this philosophy is that many of us, in the Canadian library world, have never felt a shared genuine urgency.

Until maybe now.

It seems that the President of the Canadian Library Association, Ken Roberts, is giving us a burning platform in the latest issue of Feliciter:

Although it may be reassuring to know that libraries are being credited with a reinvigorated relevance, this
recognition comes with the certain knowledge that, to earn our keep, we have to become even more efficient, even more effective and even more relevant.

We need leaders who understand that even though we have experienced a decade or more of rapid and persistent change, the pace is about to speed up.

Over the past few months, there have been days at work when I have felt like I’m stuck in one of those
endless Indiana Jones chases, where the hero survives an impossible challenge only to discover that it was
merely an overture to the main event.

I can’t help but feel that we are just catching our first glimpse of the main event. If so, it is time to sigh,
catch a quick breath, and either assume the role of leader or follow those who have that skill.

I’m jumping. How about you?

Where the extraordinary and fun happens

Posted on April 6, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Environments, Managing Ourselves | Leave a Comment

The Canadian version of Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City is now in print . Florida is known for exploring the relationship between people and place, and in this book the particular relationship between creative people and a small group of Canadian cities. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers asks us to consider that leaders or successful individuals are not lone cowboys, but beneficiaries of networks, environments, and opportunities that come together to create a time and place in which the extraordinary will develop.

While it may not have been their intention, I think it is possible to see these works as road guides for encouraging successful and creative library environments. Too often in smaller cities, and organizations, that have not yet fully realized their recruiting power, it looks as if creativity and excellence happen as a fortuitous and natural by-product of living and working in Montreal or Vancouver. Nothing worthwhile in our libraries is fortuitous or natural - it all happens with vision, goals, and strategies.

So what can we do to manage our environments regardless of where we are geographically?

A quick gleaning of Florida and Gladwell’s work provides the following sign posts of heading in the right direction.

Bring people together:

Set the ground rules:

And just when I thought I was on a brilliant roll, I checked in with a favourite Australian blog, and look what Kathryn Greenhill, John Blyberg, and Cindi Trainor came up with: The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians

It’s all worth kicking around with friends and colleagues, but my favourite section is
“The Preservation of the Library” which opens with:

Our methods need to rapidly change to address the profound impact of information technology on the nature of human connection and the transmission and consumption of knowledge.

If the Library is to fulfill its purpose in the future, librarians must commit to a culture of continuous operational change, accept risk and uncertainty as key properties of the profession, and uphold service to the user as our most valuable directive.

They provide a list of what we must do as librarians to meet that statement. Here are the ones that I consider to be the most exciting and provocative:

Is it just me, or did librarianship just move up a notch on the fun-o-metre?

Sewing, oil changes, and fish?

Posted on March 29, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Environments, Managing Ourselves | Leave a Comment

feet resting on sewing machineAbout a year ago I got a rather strange notion in my head that I wanted to learn how to sew. Not a totally comfortable fit, things like sewing and me. At a tender age I was asked to transfer out of domestic science and into business studies (with an instructor who taught us punch cards because most businesses will never computerize - I’ll save that story for another time). A few months ago a man weary of my sewing talk bought me a beginner’s sewing machine. While still packed in its box it made a great side table for holding all the “how-to-sew” books.

Finally, I decided it was time to thread bobbin and make curtains. Off to the material shop I went. You know, the place where they know material and sewing. They’re the experts, they have the goods, and they serve customers. I did get cloth, thread, and even a bit of direction. And I never want to return there. I wandered around the store having no idea how to get the material which is organized and stored in a rather strange way, and then I had to ask someone to cut it, and despite my owning up to novice status, the cloth cutter asked questions about thread, weight, and hem type that I could not answer, much to her disappointment. I was served with what I needed, but it was not pleasant and if I can find another place to get what I need, even if that place does not have experts, I will go there.

You know where I’m going with this don’t you. Well slow down, I want to tell you about another business I visited - Mr. Lube.

I know that the car is brown, stinks of wet dog, and runs on gas. I rarely drive and don’t like to deal with anything regarding the car. Under duress I took it to Mr. Lube. I am now a Mr. Lube convert. The business was clean, efficient, and friendly. I was offered a drink and a newspaper, I was given clear directions as to what I needed to do to have the car checked, and was charmingly helped to find the release button for the hood. I left with a well-serviced car, a cheerful start to the day, and empowered with the knowledge of how to “pop the hood”.

Yep, it’s all about user experience.

Stephen Bell from Designing Better Libraries commented, during a recent ACRL Conference presentation

that libraries need to concentrate on their Wow Factor (the fish-toss quality that makes users say, “Your service is awesome”) and their Difference Factor (the user experience that can prove more valuable than a Google or Wikipedia search). There is also a Fidelity Factor that keeps users coming back to the library, instead of merely being wowed once then crawling back to their online searches. Bell said that library high-fidelity involves the totality of UX (web access, reference, the OPAC, systems, and circulation) that, when presented in a convenient and meaningful way, retains the user’s loyalty.

I was thinking that the FISH! philosophy had been discussed to shreds, yet perhaps not. The fish tossing is not just about entertainment, creative workers meeting high expectations, or having fun at work - it’s about an organizational culture that recognizes that the attitude of the employees is critical to the success of the overall customer experience.

And it is that experience that the success of the organization is built on.

Are you due for an attitude check?

And for those of you who have not seen fish tossing, here it is. Kind of makes having a good attitude as a librarian look easy.

Rethinking thinking

Posted on March 16, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Change, Managing Environments | Leave a Comment

Does your public library have a thinking pattern that is so tried and true, so formulaic, that it has moved beyond a successful method for solving problems into being a problem itself? Does every perceived problem get its own drawn out royal commission?

Occasionally when I muse on the future of libraries, I’m not enthusiastic: I’m actually a little pessimistic. Not because I don’t think we have a future, but because I’m not sure we know how to think our way into it.

I find it odd (just slightly, not overwhelmingly) that if you flip through any of our professional literature, conference offerings or liblogs it seems that we are eager to seize opportunities of innovation, transformation, and adaptability while amazingly enough using our traditional paradigms of thinking.

For example, take the economic situation that I frequently read is good news for libraries (woman gets card for first time since childhood). There’s sort of this collective “yeehaw, now they’ll pay attention to us, cuz we’re free!” Our affordability will bring the masses to our doors seeking materials that they bought last week but have decided to budget on this week. But folks we are not free.

There are public libraries facing declining circulation, rising material costs, dead formats, and facilities that no longer meet the needs of their communities. And these communities fund their public libraries.

And to be accountable to that funding we had best be clear as to what business we are in. Are we a stop gap in a financial downturn, an affordable purveyor of DVDs?

We have a tendency to chop up and isolate our perceived problems. The dying format of the DVD is discussed separately from funding children’s programs and the need for new washrooms is seperate from the ILS. Unfortunately our users don’t divide up their experience. They walk in, and walk out, having experienced the collection, programs, space, and an overall feeling of having been somewhere special, or dismal, as one single experience.

To get to where they want their library experience to be, we need to think about the library as an integrated system and I don’t think we can do this with chopped up linear thinking. It’s time to throw out the inhibitions, the fear of making a mistake in a meeting with colleagues, being wed to an idea, and its time to adopt a new way of thinking. Not only do we need to look at the perceived problems differently but we need to understand that the best solutions are already there and are discovered through kicking around ideas, putting forth notions that will be adapted, amalgamated, and grown to the point where any individual can’t figure out where their contribution ended and someone elses took off.

We need to be liberated from our usual way of thinking.

Final word to the folks at Fischbowl.

“We are going to have to seize on the current crisis to make transformative change and conjure up new institutions – or least new learning paradigms. One of our core values must be to seize these “new ways of sharing ideas or organizing human life,” to be compulsive sharers and utilize these tools and our learning networks to transform our schools, our communities and our world.

Vive la transformation!

Posted on March 2, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Client Relations | Leave a Comment

I like reason and humour. And when faced with sentimentality or other emotions that make me uncomfortable I default to flippancy and irreverence. I’m not saying this is a good thing, It’s just a fair warning that you have to buy me a drink before you can get mushy with me.

And then along came Dave, Virtual Dave that is. He has an emotional, take it higher piece that actually made me sit a little straighter in my seat, and perhaps I even felt a small hint of what sports fans feel when their national anthem is being belted out. Well, I’m just guessing at that, but during Casablanca’s anthem duel I did feel proud to be Free French, so maybe I kind of get it.

Dave makes some really valid points about knowledge being dynamic. It only exists when people use it - it does not exist in records. Only code exists in records. He also talks about engagement and conversation theory. If we could get a handle on these two complimentary concepts our understanding of customer service would be seriously enhanced. We would no longer claim excellent service because we said good morning and pointed out the due date. We would claim excellent service because we were part of a transformational process.

See how riled up Dave got me. Anyhow he wants to get the rest of you riled up too. Dave says,

And those among us, those who can’t see their own self-worth - those who would define the value of libraries in things that can be recorded? We must first take care to hear them, and to show them the power and value within themselves. If they cannot, or will not see it? Then we must move on and leave them behind.

And if Dave didn’t get you going try this.

Time for a little R&D

Posted on February 23, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Ourselves, Managing Projects | Leave a Comment

Flipping through the Globe & Mail this weekend I ran across Gary Mason’s article “Scarcity of R&D driving top minds from Canada”.

Read the article, or the quotes I have here, and see how frighteningly well these concerns fit into a library context.

Mason was looking at the work of Dr. Gupta, a professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University and wondering “How did one make businesses in Canada wake up to the need to integrate research and innovation into their business plans?”

Mason wrote,

For Dr. Gupta, it made no sense that Canada was a net importer of research while being a huge exporter of research talent. Meantime, we were falling further behind the United States and others in terms of productivity and innovation.

Dr. Gupta found that,

in the U.S. if you ask a company why it does research it will look at you strange: “We do research because we have to develop our next product.”

and

In Canada, you ask and companies will say they don’t invest in a lot of research because it’s very expensive and they’re trying to make ends meet and it’s a luxury they can’t afford.

So, if research and development is part of a successful business plan, are we, as librarians, doing enough of it? We know we do it, that’s what conferences and publishing is about. A “spit it out in 10 seconds or walk the plank” list of library R&D includes SFU Library’s reSearcher, the highly collaborative Working Together Project, and Edmonton Public Library’s Library Services to Aboriginal People’s Report. And in 15 seconds I even remember that tomorrow morning I will be meeting with a committee to write the almost final draft of a research report that will result in improved measurement tools and better public service practices for collections.

After all, research and development is part of what we do as librarians. And we do it well. Right?

I’m not sure. Take a look at Roy Tennant’s post commenting on another blogger’s post about Google ( I give up, go to Roy’s Learning from Google post to follow the hyperlink trail).

If you didn’t go the post, here’s the sentence by Jeff Jarvis that prompted Roy’s response:

I would love to have worked for a company where at least the culture decrees that the default is smart and the expectation is learning and the response to problems is finding solutions.

Roy then notes that in the library world this is rare, He gives plenty of good reasons as to why this is so, He also suggests “that our very survival may depend” on operating more like Google in regards to how work gets done.

That darn Google. Are we going to let it best us at everything? No? Well then, how about getting together with some friends for a little R&D? The worst case scenario is that we might learn something.

You get what you ask for - maybe

Posted on February 16, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Client Relations, Managing Projects | Leave a Comment

Who hasn’t heard that tough questions are hard to ask? But it’s not really the questions is it? “Do you love me?” isn’t a tough question if you know the answer is “yes”.

Designing customer satisfaction surveys that are meaningful, is not for the faint of heart. Developing questions that bring back answers that we can use to transform our services and products for the better takes courage and faith. Faith that a relationship with the community(s) we serve based on honesty is better for the sustainability of our organizations, than a relationship based on a belief that just because of who we are, what we do is good and necessary.

Seth Godin has Five tips for better online surveys and while I understand his point about making surveys more interesting for our users, I’m not sure that more interesting necessarily means shaking up the format or entertaining them. Surveys are worth our customer’s effort only if we act on those surveys. Within a reasonable amount of time after a survey, we should be able to say “we heard from you….” and “we are going to…”.

His most intriguing tip is,

Every question you ask changes the way your users think. If you ask, “which did you hate more…” then you’ve planted a seed.

There is a danger in taking this tip and thinking that it would be smart to plant a positive seed with “which did you love best…”. That still doesn’t tell us enough about developing our customer relationships. It’s like the guy asking “Do you love me best for my sparkling wit or my great cooking?”. And she answers with a charming “both are equally appealing, but I suppose if I have to chose, I’ll pick the wit.” The truth is, at least his imitation of a four year old with his shoes on the wrong feet didn’t nearly kill her like his fusion Greek/Japanese cooking (lamb sushi?) and since she’s leaving anyway it doesn’t really matter.

I have also been wondering about Likert scales . These are common and are often mistakenly used with the belief that they are more “scientific” or less corruptible than open ended questions. I had several in a survey the other day at the dentist in which they kept switching the values for the 1-5. For some questions the number 1 stood in for “excellent”, for others it was “poor”, and then there was an odd question in which it expressed “I don’t know”. Perhaps it was an attempt to make the survey interesting, or maybe they were measuring my alertness rather than their service. I really wasn’t that alert and I’m now pretty certain that I handed in a corrupt survey (I tried to explain my mistakes, but the nice woman at the desk said “it really didn’t matter”).

Likert scales remind me of multiple choice tests. I suspect that they often (but not always) measure, and ensure, the continuity of mediocrity when they set out to measure “customer satisfaction”. My fabulous colleague Navee brought to my attention Fred Reichheld and the concept of measuring customer loyalty rather than satisfaction. Here’s an excerpt from his promotional website about measuring your Net Promoter Score (be careful - that’s trademarked!)

Net Promoter Score is based on the fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories. “Promoters” are loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and urge their friends to do the same. “Passives” are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who can be easily wooed by the competition. And “detractors” are unhappy customers trapped in a bad relationship.

Did you get that? A satisfied customer isn’t that great.

The Net Promoter Community is an interesting place to kick around in for awhile if only for comments such as this from Bruce Temkin in My Closing Thoughts on Net Promoter:

The excitement and exuberance of a single measure for customer loyalty is giving way to some second guessing and rethinking. Companies are learning that it’s not as easy as just using NPS, it takes hard work to figure out how to best use NPS to improve customer experience.

Hey ho, looks like any method of measurement requires hard work, assessment of the tool (not just the outcomes), and then perhaps some adjusting of the tool.

I’ll close with one of those educational spots. Consider it a how-to for adjusting units or scales of measure.

Using Evidence

Posted on February 9, 2009 
Filed Under Managing Client Relations | Leave a Comment

Have you ever thought about the connection between marketing and evidence based librarianship (EBL)? No, me neither. But the other day I tuned into The Age of Persuasion with Terry O’Reilly on CBC. It was the “According to Hoyle” episode where Terry does a quick and dirty run through of the rules of marketing; endorsing some, dismissing others and consistently driving home the message that marketing is a science and an art that takes a life time of devotion and study to come anywhere close to understanding.

So what are we to do as librarians, not professional marketers, who know that we need to market our services?

Well, following through on my belief that we need to manage ourselves and our organizations for excellence, I thought why not try to make a connection between marketing and EBL - just for fun you know.

In his radio show Terry covers rules such as:

  • a product/service is something that a company makes, a benefit is what it is to the customer
  • every successful product/service has a unique benefit to distinguish it from all competitors (unique selling proposition)
  • develop a unique product proposition that should be strong enough to move customers to the product
  • a product/service will fail if it does not meet some need of the user
  • an effective ad has to be meaningful to the consumer - (I mean really, do we sell mom and apple pie or increasing circ stats?)
  • to speak to everyone is to speak to no-one so speak to people one at a time
  • you can’t logic your way into a person’s heart
  • keep tone compatible with brand

    • I’m thinking that successful marketing is about understanding your customers, their needs, and how to connect them to a product/service that fills their needs.

    So how can we as librarians, managing ourselves and our organizations, work with our marketing departments, or if they don’t exist, work with what we have, to do the most effective marketing possible?

    Perhaps the practice of EBL may provide the direction needed. We can use EBL as a way of getting to know what the customer wants and then how to make meeting that want part of our regular way of doing business.

    There are all sorts of demographic information out there that we are tapping into to get to know our markets better and some librarians have looked at new ways to generate that information (I have mentioned the Working Together Project before) but, to make sense of the information we have to have the right questions.

    And how convenient is this? The journal of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice has an EBL 101 section with the article Asking the Right Question by Lorie Andrea Kloda! The author writes,

    The benefit to creating a precise, answerable question is that you will be more likely to make a decision based on the answer, should you find one.

    And

    In other words, the concepts present in a detailed question will enable you to develop a search strategy that retrieves only very relevant results.

    So, did you get the connection? I’m thinking that while very few of us librarians are experts in marketing, we need to bring ourselves to our marketing department, or to our libraries’ marketing needs, with what we can do - ask the right questions that retrieve the most accurate information for the situation at hand.

    This is important. We need success at our libraries. We need to serve our customers with what they want. But do we know who they are, what they want, how we will get it to them, and how we will measure what we did? In other words, do we know what it is going to take to keep our libraries operating?

    I’ll use Seth Godin’s words to close this post.

    If you’re strong enough to do that [ignore your market], more power to you. If you do your art and the market rejects you, though, you need to make a choice. If your art has no market, it’s still art. It just might not be a living.

    keep looking »