Libraries working with vulnerable people

This is an interesting blog about work being done in Dundee Libraries. There are some good stories of relatively-low cost, high impact work here. Almost as heartening as the services that are being provided here is the fact that somebody's recording and celebrating them.

A lot of libraries, including Rochdale's, are doing similar types of activities to a greater or lesser extent. I'll encourage the people in our Special Services Team to have a look at this blog, for both the reasons stated above. It would be good if they could share experiences. It was nice to see how they do reminiscence work. Special Services work with "reminiscence packs," which tend to include more objects than books or other reading materials (very often they'll take along some books or audio items along to complement and support the reminiscence packs). The Library Service also does occasional one-off reminiscence events. The last one, I think, was this:

Do you remember the times when washday was always on a Monday?

Fourteen people came along to our morning of washday reminiscences at Castleton Library on Friday 16 January. This was an opportunity to swap memories of living, working and shopping in Castleton, Middleton and Rochdale. We used the "Women's Work" reminiscence pack to prompt discussion, support by materials from the local studies collections in Middleton Library and the Local Studies Collection in Touchstones. It was also very useful to be able to link this with the "Shop" exhibition in the Heritage Gallery at Touchstones.

My conscience is pricked: I need to do a proper page about the reminiscence packs on our web site.

Customer service skills: a collaborative training event

There's a nice bit of live-blogging of a useful workshop discussion on the ALA Learning web site. Don't be put off that the results conveniently fall into a "top ten" list: the ideas presented are simple and entirely do-able. In fact they're uncannily similar to the topics I used to include in customer care training sessions in the early nineties, so I might have been getting something right.

In principle I'm torn on live-blogging. On the one hand it's a good way of delivering a running account of a discussion or workshop. On the other it can be a bit off-putting for participants to be hearing the tap-tap or click-click of the recording angel. When it works it can be extremely useful. I think success hinges on the working brief:

• It has to be an appropriate topic - there's no point in live-blogging somebody doing a PowerPoint presentation, for instance.
• It has to be an appropriate audience - if the participants are going to be paying more attention to the recorder than the facilitator it's a waste of time. (I'd argue that live-blogging any activity involving young children is a hiding to nothing.)
• It has to have an appropriate purpose - you need to be doing something with the results or else you've wasted your time.
• The recording angel has to pay attention to the activity, not the recording thereof.

While I'm on the subject of customer care in the library, there are some useful notes about communicating in the virtual reference library environment on the Association of College & Research Libraries web site.

Guilty pleasures I

I'm a big fan of the Awful Library Books blog.

And yes, we do have a copy of "A Passion For Donkeys."

While I remember...

I said we're exploring web 2.0 stuff. I should have mentioned a few other bits and pieces.

• Alison's also working on a Black History Month blog.
• Ray's been working on the Children's Library News and Kids' Stuff blogs.