Daily Thoughts 04/12/2014
On the way to work, I read a little more of Smarter. I am reading about intelligence in mice. I also liked that the author, Dan Hurley, writes about how first person shooter video games can improve attention, that nicotine can enhance memory, and coffee also increases memory and attention.
This morning, I checked the Twitter and Facebook for the library. I also checked the displays.
I did a writeup on the Urban Librarians Conference.
Web Bits
Where are America’s Librarians
Cool Bookish Places: Stockholm Public Library
http://bookriot.com/2013/04/30/cool-bookish-places-stockholm-public-library/Urban Librarians Conference 04/11/2014
On Friday, April 11, I went to the Urban Librarians
Conference at the Stevan Dweck Center
for Contemporary Culture from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The keynote speaker was Matt Delaney who is
now the director of the Manlius Library.
He spoke about the nobility of the profession and how it was
an antidote to the increasingly competitive, fractured world. He saw librarianship as an antidote to
working for large impersonal corporations.
His view was that he was spending a lot of time in libraries so why not
become one.
I felt his talk was very much a counter to the negativity
which people have had in the profession lately.
The initial part of the talk was about his work in the
Tulley Library where he introduced STEAM science, technology, engineering, art,
and mathematics programs, had a book
buggy built for the beach, and helped found a farmers market at the library. I rather liked how he described the library
as about innovation, knowledge, and information in the general sense rather
than just library materials.
Part of his talk was about the concept of change and
technology.
There were some
excellent analogies and quotes. He cited
the famous story, The Library of Babel by Borges as well as Metcalfe’s law
about how telecommunications networks expand exponentially, and quoted Andrew
Carnegie and Lewis Mumford.
The Keynote ran from 9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
I went to the second
panel which was also run by Matt Delaney.
It was from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m..
The title of the discussion was Policies, punchcards, and other annoying
buzzkills that threaten to derail us daily.
This was more of an open discussion about everyday things.
It was refreshing because a lot of it seemed to be problem
solving focused rather than procedure focused.
I rather liked his statement that we should stop being library property
evangelists and focus on our communities.
People talked about how advocacy was often simply about
customer service.
We talked about how
to keep things fixed. One of the things
which was discussed was the importance of having a weekly hour long staff
training in technology to answer basic troubleshooting questions.
There were some reminders about how we should use less
library jargon and speak to the patron directly. Programs thrive because of individual people.
There was a bit of talk about how library school did not
really cover advocacy and many of the daily needs of librarians. A new librarian should try and intern as much
as possible or even work part time in the library while they are getting their
degree. There are some sights that are
helpful like Hack Library School, for
going to school. http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/
Some people had questions about how to get technical
training. Webjunction and Metro New York
were mentioned as sources as well as Lynda.com.
I saw Tamara Stewart at the beginning of the conference.
She liked it tremendously. I also
spent a few minutes talking to her at lunch time.
I had lunch with the New York Librarians Meetup at the
library café which was quite good. I
have not been to a meetup in a very long time.
I will probably see them again when I go to Book Expo America.
After lunch, Everylibrary.org http://www.everylibrary.org represented by John Chrastka gave a
presentation on advocacy. Everylibrary
is a 501 c 4 lobbying organization for libraries. He reminded people that libraries are limited
in how they can lobby. He does not just
lobby for budgets, he also includes lobbying for legislation that impacts
libraries ability to function.
He focused on a specific document as part of his talk. The document is called From Awareness to
Funding. http://oclc.org/en-CA/reports/funding.html
I read this document. The information is useful. It gave some ideas about who supports libraries that are very different from when I first read it. I like the description of the five characteristics of the ideal librarian library advocate for the public: 1) They are a true advocate for lifelong learning. 2) Passionate about making the library relevant again. 3) Knowledgable about every aspect of the library. 4) Well educated. 5) Knowledgable about their community.
I read this document. The information is useful. It gave some ideas about who supports libraries that are very different from when I first read it. I like the description of the five characteristics of the ideal librarian library advocate for the public: 1) They are a true advocate for lifelong learning. 2) Passionate about making the library relevant again. 3) Knowledgable about every aspect of the library. 4) Well educated. 5) Knowledgable about their community.
He cited the statistics among voters that :
37% will vote for the library
37% will probably vote yes for the library.
26% will probably vote no.
His job is to find out what will get people to yes. These percentages are irregardless of party
lines, democrat or republican. They are
more affected by an anti-tax stance than party affiliation. The people who view any tax as a bad tax are
the most likely to cause problems for libraries.
People view the librarian as an advocate for lifelong
learning.
The public does not understand the difference between a
librarian and other library staff members, they see most people who work in a
library as librarians.
In his view the librarian is the candidate who represents
the library. This is the reason why
people vote for the library. Peoples
viewpoints are tipped by human contact.
Personal contact through messaging, phoning, talking in person, and
social media will tip the balance.
Requests for funding should be a personal value
proposition. Let me tell you about my
colleague. The most important thing is
to be friendly and improve customer service.
John Chrastka did a second presentation where he talked face
to face with librarians.
He talked about how stories are what motivate in a bad
economy, and statistics are what motivate people in a good economy.
There were some anecdotes where politicians often would not
read their email, but would read personal letters. Each politician is different.
There was a lot of audience participation. One librarian said that he would go to the
pizza parlor twice a week because that was where the politicians who funded the
library often liked to hang out.
I mentioned that we would often go to the budget hearings
each year at city hall in Mount Vernon, both the Friends of the Library and the
staff.
There was also a gentleman who talked about his outreach
program for reading to children in hospitals at the Brooklyn Public
Library. John Chrastka reminded us that
it isn’t always about the statistics, it is about the human side of an
institution as well.
There was a reminder of how important it was for branch
librarians in New York Public to go to community board meetings. This was simply so the politicians would know
who you are.
I asked him about Mount Vernon. What he told me from his impression of
following our campaign is our job is to improve the gate count. That is get as many as local people from our
immediate area to vote as possible
He described the Friends Group in public libraries as a lobbying group as
well as the Foundation as a lobbying group.
He even said there are situations where the union also lobbies in behalf
of the library.
It was a quite informative session.
The Final Session I attended was on Web Design for Libraries
The focus was on Drupal versus Wordpress as a content
management system.
Val Forrestal who is a web services librarian at the College
of Staten Island chose Wordpress over Drupal.
Her view was that Drupal was overly complicated and had a
steep learning curve for the line staff to give her information to put into a
website. Wordpress was much easier to use.
Most of what she did was HTML and CSS with some Jquery and
PHP. She was hired to redo their
website. The version of Wordpress she
used was wordpress.org where she hosted Wordpress on her own server. She modeled her site after the Harvard
Library Website. Her system was also
compatible with Dreamweaver so she could easily build a site. She used a modified version of the Leaf
Template.
There were questions on how to stay on top of
technology. One of the first things
people said is that you have to be constantly reading about new technology,
especially if you are going to hire technical people even if you are not going
to be programming things.
People once again mentioned Metro New York for training as
well as the W3 school which is from the world web consortium. There was also a mention of Youtube videos
for training. Some people talked about
how there was recent demand for people with backgrounds in librarianship and
computerized instructional design. Some
people even said they went back to community college to get the training they
needed for computers.
Overall, I found the conference to be useful.
I went to the afterparty and had a drink which I have not
done in a long time. It was an
interesting experience.
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