Daily Thoughts 5/8/2009

The Owl 1896

Daily Thoughts 5/8/2009

Hello, I went to the Westchester Library Association
conference today. I had a great time. During the first
part, I spent quite a bit of time talking to Baker and
Taylor about some of the different things which we
needed to do. I took away a few interesting ideas.
Baker and Taylor has a leasing program for books and
dvds where you can get a number of items for a brief
period, keep a few of them and return the rest. I think
this may be good for our bestsellers and other high
demand items.

This is a link for a slideshow on the first program I
attended, Programming on a Shoestring presented by Janie Hernan.

http://www.slideshare.net/JanieH/high-impact-programs-on-a-shoestring-budget-presentation . It is what was
presented.

There were some comments that were not part of the
slideshow. If you base your programs on highly
circulating items in a collection you are more likely to
get a crowd of people. You need to tie in your programs
with books. It is not just about numbers, it is about
audience satisfaction as well.

At least once a month you should spend money on a large
program that will definitely draw a crowd. Don't give
up. We plan programs six months in advance.

She highlighted a number of programs including video and
photo contests, gaming nights, podcasting events that
have already happened. She mentioned poetry as a nice
draw. There are always of local poets. Poetry readings
work well.

You need to do an adult summer reading club. You need
to tell the adults who are coming for the teenage and
childrens summer reading program that there is also an
adult summer reading program.

The objective is to become the communities living room
where there are a lot of activities all over the library
for people. The library showed worldcup soccer on the big
screen in the community room. Her library showed Obama's
inauguratiion at the library.

Her library has not had an official survey, be they do spot
surveys after each program to see what people want.
They fill out a short sheet for feedback.

This is what I got from my first session at the
conference.

I also attended a session on Library Advocacy For Tough
Economic Times presented by Michael J. Borges. This was interesting. I

wasn't sure what to make of it. The presenter basically outlined
what you needed to do as an advocate for libraries.

He emphasized a number of different things; start at the
top where the money is, before you ask for money build
lots of friendships in your community, libraries have a
built in constituency, their patrons. This constituency
includes a friends group and your
foundation.

You should have a newsletter and an email newsletter
which you can send to people. Try and get other
libraries to help you. Libraries are too fragmented,
they should help each other more.

One surprising statement was that you cannot target
twitter and many social tools. Your message should be
targeted.

This is a brief of summary of what I heard. It is not
everything, it is just what I thought was
interesting.

I had a chance to talk with many different people and
collect a lot of business cards. There are some useful
changes which may be coming as a result of the
conference. I am still pondering a few ideas right now.

The lunch was not bad. I had the vegetarian lunch. Lee
Child was there to give a speech about his thrillers as
a key note speaker. I thought his speech was
entertaining. My favorite part was his statement about
writers block. He asked the audience if they ever got
librarians block. He would put his mortgage, his bills,
and his contract in front of him and start
writing.

The last session which I attended was on Your Role In
Achieving Positive Change presented by Ma' lis Wendt. The speaker gave

two resources http://www.appreciativeinquiry.org and http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm This was about a set

of tools which helps people react to change in a more positive way.

Appreciate Inquiry is supposed to help people identify the positive aspects of change and focus on how to build on past successes. I still have to take a closer look at the website and read it more. It was a very upbeat session.

Westchester Library Association Conference

On May 9, 2008, I attended the Westchester Library Association one day conference held in Tarrytown. I took the Metro North up to Tarrytown. It was a long slow ride. On the way up, I read some more of Robert Grave's The Reader Over Your Shoulder. I am almost done reading it. The conference registration started at 8:00 a.m. which was quite early. I had time to get some grapefruit juice, coffee, and minimuffins.

I got a chance to look at the vendors in the morning. Archie Comics was there. They have a new design for their title Betty & Veronica. I actually like the new style of drawing, it is much cleaner and easier to look at. It looks a lot less cartoonish and the characters are a bit more diverse than before. The vendor gave me a free sample copy. The title is Betty & Veronica, Bad Boy Trouble. I think teenage girls will probably like this in a library setting.



I also picked up a discount sheet for Pimsleur language learning tapes-- 50% off.

The name of the conference was Sparkle, Dazzle, Shine.

The opening speaker was Jeff Connell, The Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Education of New York. His office is in Albany. He is governed by the Board of Regents. He talked about his position in the library world. His responsibilities include educational tv, the state museum, the state archives, and the state library in Albany.

He quoted Thomas Jefferson, "Information is the currency of Democracy." Then he gave a long rambling speech about his experiences as a librarian before he became a deputy commissioner. A lot of it was about merchandising books and improving circulation statistics.

The good news from him is that the state is not cutting the baseline funding of $14 million dollars from the New York State Library, but they are cutting 2% from additional requested funds.

There is also a position open for a new state librarian in Albany, New York..

The reason I was there more than anything else was because of a session called. "May I Please Blow Up The Reference Desk." by Traci Hall, Assistant Dean of Dominican University library. The main point was that the reference desk created physical and cultural barriers to doing reference work. Traci Hall claimed that the reference desk was a symbol of the 19th and 20th century, not a symbol of the 21st century.

She further claimed that the job of the librarian was to help the patron at their point of origin not make them go back to a reference desk. She was quite lively and stated that she was aiming to stir up a bit of trouble. She brought out the example of libraries failing and having to recreate themselves. For example in England, in some of the more troubled libraries, they were renamed as "Idea Stores."

She also used another example of the Infoplank, or Swedish cataloging system that is multilingual. She said we are no longer living in a monoculture, the world is changing into a multicultural, mobile, globalized world.

She then brough up ten key points. I am rewriting them in my own language because, there was a lot of jargon used which might not be understandable for people outside of libraries or in general.

1) We have a diverse multicultural, multilingual, globalized world.

2) People are dropping out of school early, and prolonging their college education. The educational system is failing. We have help people get educated.

3) People learn in groups.

4) People use informal peer review systems like Amazon.

5) We want have things customized for us personally.

6) We want things brought to us instead of having to go there.

7) An immediate human voice is preferable to a computer intermediary.

8) There are gatekeepers to peoples needs.

9) People using social networking want immediate sensation and results.

10) People are trading on popularity and empathy.

After this she started talking about how we need a new kind of librarian. It was kind of interesting. It was also a little overblown. The constant focus on the new was distracting. The message seemed to be teach people how to learn. This was the original basis for building the Carnegie Libraries. Libraries were not originally built for entertainment. They were built for self-education.

This is a summary of her ideas. Because, I am paraphrasing her, I am not sure that this is the exact meaning of what she said. I think it is close. One website which I found interesting that she mentioned was http://www.aadl.org/ Ann Arbor District Library which has their library website completely redesigned as a blog.

After the opening speech and the first lecture, we broke for lunch. I sat with my colleagues and gabbed for a little bit. The lunch was quite nice. I had the vegetarian plate which was vegetables with tofu, a salad, and an apple tart for dessert. They held a raffle, but I had already gone downstairs for the next lecture.

After lunch was over and coffee was served. Traci Hall gave the keynote speech which was on diversity. It was called Library 911. The key points she brought up were that libraries are diverse institutopms with a wide variety of people using them and libraries should be embedded in their communities. They should participate in things like the chambers of commerce and community events. She gave a brief quote from John D. Rockefeller, "I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than for any ability under the sun."

The last lecture I attended was "From Dress Casual to Eye Candy, Outfitting Our LIbraries For Online Social Networking." The librarian giving the lecture said her favorite library web site on Myspace was http://www.myspace.com/brackenlibrary . The library website which she ran on Myspace, Brooklyn College Library had 3980 freinds. It also had music, photographs, and instructional videos. It was very interesting to look at.

Following the Myspace examples, she gave examples of Librarians using facebook. One librarian facebook page which she said stood out was Gerry McKiernan.

One site which she mentioned teaches a free course for librarians on social networking called, "Five Weeks To A Social Library."
http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/

Thoughts For Today

Hello, I finished reading a book called Goblin War by Jim C. Hines. I enjoyed reading it. It was a humorous fantasy about a goblin who has to survive human and elven raiders, and an army of orcs, trolls, wolves, goblins, and kobolds. I thought about reviewing it, but I haven't read the first two books in the series, Goblin Quest and Goblin Hero. This makes me think I should wait until we get these two books. None of the libraries in the system where I work have these two books. I am going to try and convince the young adult librarian to buy this series. After all, Goblin War was on the Locus Bestseller list and got excellent reviews. I think it would be an injustice to write a review of a series I haven't read completely.

I requested that our library buy Steampunk edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. It is interesting seeing husband and wife writing teams. I don't know if this team will be as good as Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore who wrote as a husband and wife team, but I know that their writing is already excellent. This book got a starred review in the Publishers Weekly April 21, 2008 issue.

Another book which I am suggesting for purchase is The Kingmakers How The Media Threatens Our Security and Democracy by Mike Gravel and David Eisenbach, Ph.D.. It received a starred review in the May 5, 2008 Publishers Weekly. The book is slated to be out June 1, 2008.

There is a rather interesting article on CNN on the Great Comic Books Scare of the 1950s. It mentions The Ten Cent Plague by David Hajdu.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/05/08/comic.books/index.html

Today, it was a really nice day out. There was a light wind blowing around 70 degrees, not too sunny. I still ran a poetry open microphone today. Eight people showed up and several people read. I guess a few of them were there for the cookies, juice, and water. I read a few of my own poems. I brought some books down from upstairs by different poets, Maya Angelou, Calvin Trillin, Jack Kerouac, Rita Dove, Bei Dao and a few others. The cookies were all gone by the end of the program. One of the older gentlemen who comes to the library talked about trumpet playing for a little bit.

Tomorrow, I am going to the Westchester Library Association conference. It should be interesting. I have to be there by 8:00 a.m. My library is paying for it. I ordered the vegetarian lunch. They always have a hard time messing up vegetarian food. I don't like rubber chicken lunches you occassionally get at conferences. I hope I get to gab with a few different people in addition to the speakers. The train ride up will be interesting. Unfortunately, none of the items I have on hold came in for me to check out.

Thoughts for Today

On Friday, May 9, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. , I will attending the Westchester Library Association conference. http://www.westchesterlibraryassociation.org/Registration.pdf

I plan on attending the sections:

A) May I please blow up this reference desk?

This session is already causing some interesting reactions and consternation at work. To say it mildly, my attending this session should be quite controversial. I think it is about social and cultural changes which are affecting reference. There might be a dose of 'multicultural' style thinking.

H) From dress casual to eye candy: Outfitting our libraries for online social networking.

This also should shake things up a bit. It might make me a bit on the sharp end of things at work as well. There is nothing quite like taking a little bit of risk. I am afraid, I can't stick my head in the sand this time. I might get blindsided.

In a way, I am looking forward to this. It will be a challenge to my way of thinking. I will be thinking on how to both refute and support the points being made. Also, with the social networking, much of it is very nonsensical. I am hoping that people use some common sense with this kind of thing.

Today was a busy day. I mostly made sure a lot of the things in reference were in order. I ordered some law books, made some suggestions for new law titles, checked the new books and other every day tasks.

I have been reading a little bit more of The Reader Over Your Shoulder by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge. Reading this book is like eating bread putting, it is slow to chew, and takes a long time to digest. I think I can handle about thirty to forty pages at a sitting. It will take a while for me to read this book.

I tried reading Harald by David Friedman, but I could not get into it. It is a middling medieval fantasy, not great not bad, but it just could not capture my attention.

I also have read a few pages of V.S. Naipaul, A Writer's People Ways of Looking and Feeling which so far is enjoyable reading. It is a memoir of Naipaul's life as a writer. Maybe I am reading too much at once.