Library training that I’d like to attend

I was thinking today about the sort of library training that is offered each year; and the sort of library training I would LIKE to go to. They are usually mutually exclusive at the moment.

So what do you think about the below? Do you know of any courses that match my needs?

What would you add?

LIBRARY TRAINING I WOULD ATTEND:

• How to justify to your manager traveling to other libraries
• Statistics: how to make them say what you want them too
• Effectively communicating with library customers through social media
• LIbrary Risk and how to increase it
• Challenging yourself and your colleagues to improve user experience
• ROI – evidence based decision making for customer experience
• Implementing change to keep your organisation nimble
• Meetings – when do they help, when do they hinder?
• Strategic planning and it’s relationship to implementation plans
• Vendor speak: the art of low expectations
• Encouraging creativity in a team
• Letting go: annual review of library services
• Nothing ventured? An annual workshop on new library initiatives that didn’t work out as planned, but someone tried them anyway because they were current
• Customer feedback sessions and how to run them with your mouth shut
• Mentoring in a time of cutbacks
• Managing Up : what you can gain
• How to hide things in tender contracts

LIBRARY TRAINING I COULD RUN

• Learning how to apply for funding for new fad toys
• Talking on any topic without preparation
• Talking
• Continuous Change – just for the fun of it
• Multitasking (also known as Variety for the Easily Distracted)
• Keeping yourself laughing in a library
• Mentoring for the real library world
• Dress for Success: when to wear open toed shoes, pearls and lycra (With help from @malbooth)

How will I measure that people have accepted our new discovery layer?

I’ve been so long stuck in the review and then implementation planning of our new discovery layer, that I have been hard pressed to visualise a time when it is live and i have to measure outcomes. Other than the outcome where the whole project team has a quiet weekend and loads of vodka of course.

However the go live possibity now beckons, and my change and consultation project officer wants a meeting on what from her is some long words about user acecptance, and to me means – So how will I know that the product has been accepted, let alone if people are happy with it?

Today’s reading has been therefore:

“User Satisfaction with electronic reference: a systematic review” by Elaine M LLasda Bergman and Irina I Holdern and published in Reference Services Rewview, 2010, v38(3) pp 493-509

It has given me some insights into how user satsifaction has been measured for electronic library services. I had some great starting advice on this from Caroline Gauld when we reviewed discovery layers. Now that she has flown onto to a higher role in Brisbane, I’m interested in what user testing we could do post our go live [any day now. really. I think.]

So Im off to do some more consideration on data collection, target audience and clarity of the questions! The concept of “willingness to return” is especially of interest if in the future we want to consider a single portal, rather than multiple entry points.

Reporting to your customers

Today I read a short article by Kirsty Thomson about how “the lack of annual reports make it difficult to analyze library strategic cerdibility” in Evidence Based  Library and Information Practice Vol 6(2), 2011, pp 34-35

It’s reminded me I am behind on service metric reporting for my section this quarter, and that there are real reasons why I should be more informative (but not more wordy)  in reporting what my section does for our clients through our annual report.

However it’s not the only way for communicating your value to your customers.

Recently we’ve had a staff member volunteer to “personalise” our Twitter stream. Go check it out, it’s really going well. One of the tricks he is using is trawling the Twitteverse for mentions of the library and responding. It’s getting some fun commentary. Of course another good example is UTS who have been doing social media with fun attitude for ages now.

Our last library survey actually had published results [finally] on what our gaps had been identified as, and what we were doing to meet them.

What methods are you using to respond to customer feedback, or push news of your services?         

My love affair with evidence based decision making

Years ago I had a supervisor who talked often and seriously to me about making non-emotional decisions and not necessarily needing to implement them straight away “to get into the action”. He finds it amusing now I’m sure when I talk about my love of the idea of evidence based decision making.

However even then I had a need to make decisions based on a known aim and considered output.

In other words I only wanted to implement changes that resulted from a clearly identified goal; “let’s review the fines policy” annoys me. Not to say it doesn’t have it’s place in strategic planning discussions …. just not at the action level. “Let’s review the fines policy to reduce student fines”, or “Lets review the fines policy to create more self service options” is more what I like.

And I wanted the solutions we trialled to be an effective match with their intended audience. Of course you can’t always get it right, but instead of just brainstorming ideas and trialling them; having some customer feedback to identify solutions, or some user assessment feedback, some statistics or other data, and using that for your recommended solutions.

So now I am going to try and fit in some time learning more about the facts of evidence based decision making.

I’m starting with reading the journal “Evidence Based Library and Information Practice“. Send me your suggestions for more.

Signs I like (post 2)

And another from Macquarie during their refurbishment.

 

 

Our fabulous new marketing Library staff member used a sense of humour during our recent building renovations at the Baillieu Library. She organised lollipops with the words “Library renovations suck” on them that could be handed out at servicepoints

Signage I like

Ok I’m struggling with Internet access at home, and am off to Daylesford for 3 days with none at all. So some cheat posts coming up …

This is a sign that actually gets a boring message across well

Spotted at Macquarie University earlier this year

Selling library services

This morning I enjoyed a blogpost from PC Sweeney called “Death to Grass Roots Library marketing! Start a Library Franchise”.

I have been slowly developing my own interests in library marketing, along with great insights from @haikugirlOz I was lucky enough to get through my workplace a semester on Introduction to Marketing, and also to be sent on a CAVAL course introducing library marketing. Neither was aimed at high level library marketing, but combined they gave me the information needed to step out of the small scale marketing attempts we had tried, and be more open to outsourcing at a more professional level.

Last year my workplace actually hired a part time marketing staff member, just for the library! She is a fantastic resource for the new products we are branding eg Discovery Also she is great at student friendly language for new policies eg changing our library fine rules. Best of all, she taps into the existing University marketing environment, and keeps me up to date with communication options. Next semester we are sending student casuals out to chalk messages about the library on the footpaths around campus.

So I got to buy this toy : Crayola Sidewalk Paint Sprayer!

As librarians we are often very confident about expressing our preferences as if just because the product is in a library we know how to deliver it. I have heard librarians with no design training “advising” on layout or content for websites, posters, brochures to experienced professionals in publishing and design. I think that actually librarians’ tendency towards information sharing is often counter to what is required to communicate a message clearly. So I’m looking forward to learning more about marketing theory and practice, and welcome any information anyone wants to send me.

Discover this

For those of you who haven’t heard me whinge expound upon my new work project, I am currently working with a range of library and IT staff and vendors to implement EBSCO Discovery Service at the University of Melbourne. Go live date is 27 June.

After quite some time, guest access is actually working so feel free to go have a play at http://www.library.unimelb.edu.au/discovery
You can access anything except full text and some vendor limited metadata. Just don’t expect to print, export or save any records. EBSCO doesn’t support that for guests (REALLY)

I could tell you more about what a discovery layer is but people more qualified than I already have. Try using your own online resources to locate the following if you are interested, can’t give you our link of course

Judy Luther & Maureen C. Kelly, “The Next Generation of Discovery” Library Journal; 3/15/2011, Vol. 136 Issue 5, p66-71

Greg R. Notess, “Deciphering Discovery”, Online, Jan/Feb2011, Vol. 35 Issue 1, p45-47

help me with #pickourpaper

I have the following topics as possibles for the upcoming VALA conference.

Anyone want to suggest themes, info, citations? (see my new playspace in academic.edu)

1. “using tech to stop your inner creativity being crushed when working in academic libraries” @malbooth @pinkfairaedust @paulhagon

- con your friends into creating amusing iPhone library apps (thanks Paul)
- be silly (#piratehatsWed)
- talk to others on Twitter
- set up competitions that teach you new stuff (tagging on Flickr)
- dream of staffless libraries (Denmark) or moving your entire physical collection (virtual shelf browsing )
- borrow a therapy dog
- chat on your library facebook with your customers (show some UMelb stuff)
- set up a game for the opening of your new library
- something on why we librarians are scared of play???? Ring @pinkfairaedust for this? What’s required to make a cultural change (academic libraries learn from public libraries? Or simply accept we need marketing better?

2. Dissenting Discussions – can you have more open dialogue about libraries online?
- Twitter substreams in confs commenting on the speakers (good or bad)
- creating dissenting networks
- opening up like minded groups across distances
- fear of risk and technophobia
- anonyimity online
- getting mentoring from a wider network? ourstide MPOW
- #pickourpaper Increase your chances of getting a conf paper accepted by crowdsourcing ideas?

3. Free ideas looking for the highest bidder? @girlwithshoes
- ideas you have that you are always told are too way out, not serious enough etc
eg dispensing machine that gives you a packet of crisps with every 3rd book; matches food to genre eg sports=gatorade, chocolate=romance
eg art gallery players/podcasts instead of verbal directions from ref desks to places in the library.  eg students who ask “Where are the toilets?” and gives them audio directions and commentary until they get there. Then includes some fun stuff about the graffiti on the wall
eg include real stuff like facepainting at UTS

- ideas you could put into practice if Bill Gates decided to give your library unlimited funding
eg include real stuff like Apple chair from The Grove

- ideas that are really simple and could be implemented cheaply if anyone would take a chance
eg Andrew’s idea to tag roving librarians with RFID, then put up a screen at the ref desk that says “Today your librarian is here” with a graphic that shows where they have roved too

4. Talking about an (r)evolution: librarians, technology and the future @haikugirlOz

- explore feelings of alienation of some tech people in library world eg @katclancy difficulty in their ideas being fully engaged with (how serious are we about usability ux etc)
- what is the future of librarianship in terms of technology. What do we have to do to get people on board with using technology, incorporating it.
- how do we manage for space for innovation? (UM RFID)
- how can we stay more  up to date with users needs, not always be reactive
- have someone Skype in and participate @DaenelT
- gogo dancing perhaps with instructions from animoto (interactive with audience) to start as we walk up or for intro?
- Kim to enter to soundtrack and windmachine
- advertise giveaways (Kim to crochet)
- plan & report on some tweetups/focus groups to talk to librarians about what they think. (Perth new gen libs?) Segment by what managers think, new grads, peeps with plus 5 experience, educators, library students across a range
of different libraries.

Trolley overload

This post is for all those interested in our installation of the Automated Returns Sorter (as mentioned earlier). We have been very happy with the sorting to bins, however the ultimate aim with automated options is to reduce manual materials handling to a minimum (try saying that 5 times quickly!) so my ultimate hope is for the items to be automatically returned on the ILMS, sensitized and then sorted onto trolleys.

Then I move to my dream of a robotic trolley that drives itself to the correct floor and sorting shelves without running anyone over and we move again into the realms of what I would do if I won Tattslotto ….

 

Anyway in the short term we have recently purchased 2 trolleys from QLS, onto which can be loaded returned items. Simply remove the bin from the ARS, add a docking station, then hook in a trolley instead (as below).

[you can see a video of it on my youtube channel]

Note that books are loaded in the order returned (not presorted as Bibliotecha’s machine does), and are placed with side displayed up as returned by the student; so not always spine up (as a ARS with a turning mechanism can do for you). However the QLS machine may be a more affordable option if these items are not a priority for you. This option works well for general loads.

Unfortunately after trialling the trolleys for a little while we have discovered there are 2 issues with large books.

1. NOISE – each item lands with a decided bang. You wouldn’t want to have staff in the room all the time. Unless they had nerves of steel … Or have the returns machine too close to public quiet reading space.

[watch sample video on youtube with the volume on] 

2. BALANCE – if a heavy book lands on some smaller books, then following some rule of physics I can’t remember, the whole collection topples and several books end up on the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However we are continuing with the trial for a little while to see what we can use them for.
Note that each trolley is run off a battery, rather than powered from the ARS. Batteries are attached to the trolley for use, and then removed and added to a separate charger for recharging. Undoubtedly there is a OH&S reason for this … Our  staff have come up with a clever way to remember which battery is next for the charger  (Arthur and Martha)