Big picture worries

Many of us need to address some organisational and systemic issues which aren’t very exciting in themselves and that we’ve been sort-of-getting-away-with for a few decades, but which may determine how well (or if) the public library service survives the next few years and which should make us better able to do the exciting things that people want to have happen.

In particular, we need to lessen the public librarian's traditional emphasis on buildings and furniture and focus our (and, more importantly, the public’s) attention onto services and people.

• There’s no point in committing all our resources on the set dressing if we don’t have a good play to put on or the leading man’s talking to himself in the love scene.
• In changing the service in response to cuts and new opportunities we need to be clear which is baby and which is bathwater.

We know there are a lot of challenging questions facing us. Some library services have got some of the answers. Some library services have got some of the questions. Here are a few...

Resource management — we have to be smarter about using the resources we’ve got more effectively and efficiently. We need to know what resources we have in the first place:

• Do you have a reasonable idea of your stock?
• Too many of us effectively ignore the literally millions of free resources on the web and don’t use the resources we pay for particularly effectively. We need to be treating these materials as part of our stock, to be selected, described and promoted the same way as we should be doing with physical resources. At the very least we should be making these available via the Library Catalogue. More than that, we should be using these as part of service development and delivery. It’s axiomatic that we should be using these as reference and information service resources. It should be equally obvious that they’re useful for literacy and reader development and as reading matter in their own right.
• An easy example for us at Rochdale would be tying together the physical resources in the Maskew Collection (a new collection of classic literature funded by a bequest) with out-of-print classics in Project Gutenberg.
• Are we actively using our Reserve Stock? No, but we could and should be. The National Back Catalogue of Books is an important resource that we shouldn't be wasting.
• Do we really know our customers, their use of the library and their needs? We have two decades’ worth of customer usage data. What are the trends in usage and membership and what do they tell us about what is and isn’t working in our libraries?
• Are there differences in trends for different customer groups? The answer is yes. We have some startling variances once we start looking over a ten-year period. Why?
• Are there differences in the rate of change over time? Yes again. Sometimes it’s obviously because of refurbishment or repair of the library, but are there other lessons to be learned? And what are the medium- long-term effects of refurbishments?
• Are trends different in different libraries? Are the patterns of use different? Yes. Why?
• How do usage patterns reflect, or not, the history of events and activities at each library?
• Do any customer usage patterns reflect any stock usage patterns? Is the use of a particular library by a particular customer group inextricably linked to the fortunes of a particular collection?
• Do usage patterns reflect changes of use rather than abandonment? Is the Internet doing the job that was traditionally done by some of our non-fiction stock? (It’s certainly doing the job of a lot of the reference stock.) People can access all our lending stock online, reserve a copy and have it sent over to their most convenient library, instead of having to go into the main library for the most choice — are main libraries becoming repositories rather than main access points?

What are staff capable of and what do they need to fulfil their potential?

• Do we know, or recognise, the skills and experience our staff are bringing to the workplace? Too many public libraries have had a culture of keeping people (especially, but not exclusively, the "para-professionals") in their place. We cannot afford to waste resources we are already paying for.
• Skills audits and a training needs analyses need to be kept up-to-date to reflect a changing world. And the skills audit needs to be shared within the Library Service so that anybody who needs a particular skill can easily find out who’s got it.

A modern library service needs a structured approach to partnership working with the focus of the relationship being the value added to the services and goals of the organisation.

• This should include a practical and practicable partnership strategy, including clear guidelines on determining the ROI of a potential partnership and a model exit strategy.
• For a practical and practicable partnership strategy to be practicable it would need to be available well beforehand to those staff who may be in a position to enter into partnership arrangements!

The modern library service needs to actively engage with ICT instead of treating it as something somehow “other” to the services we provide. It is an inescapable part of our service provision.

• In Rochdale we should be replacing both the PN management system and the LMS in the next year (actually, the intended timescales are scarily short). The hard question facing us is: "What is the Library Service actually planning on doing with them?" We need to be very clear about the reasons for making this investment and the intended return on this investment. And we need to make it clear that these aren't just magic wand solutions. After all, just because you’ve bought a hammer and some wood doesn’t mean the garden shed’s going to build itself.
• It's easy to make the mistake of limiting discussions about the People's Network to traditional reference, learning and business information issues. We also need to have a clear idea of what we want to do with it regarding literacy, reader development and cultural identity.
• The modern library service needs to be looking to deliver real-time online services other than just automated circulation transactions. How will this be done with existing resources?
• “Online” is no longer “on computer,” we need to be delivering services via mobile technology as well. How will this be done with existing resources?

More resource management: when the library service commits itself to doing anything it also needs to commit the appropriate (and, where applicable, named) resources. Obvious? Of course. Uinversally-acknowledged and applied? Nah... So:

• Do we have the resources to deliver on these commitments?
  Are some resources being over-committed? (This ties in with the skills audit.)
• Are we committing resources we don’t actually have in the first place? (This ties in with the training needs matrix.)

As I've said before, we need to be more aggressive and proactive about our marketing. We do stuff, why do we keep it a secret? If it's worth doing it's worth letting people know that you can do it, do do it and could do it again.

• Internal marketing is also important: if staff know what’s going on then they can tell our customers about it. This doesn’t just mean the front-line staff at the particular library — Library A can and should tells its customers what’s going on in other libraries nearby; backstage staff take a lot of ‘phone calls from customers; and all staff talk to friends, relatives and strangers at bus stops.
• Events, activities and projects need to be formally recorded and reviewed afterwards (which doesn’t mean writing a dissertation — Key Notes should do). What worked, what didn’t and why? What resources were used? What key resources didn’t turn out to be available after all? (see above) What can somebody else learn from this experience so that they don’t have to re-invent the wheel? What can we tell the world about it?
• Too much of our publicity depends on people already having come into the library in the first place. We need to have “libraries do neat stuff” notices in church halls, doctors’ waiting room, supermarkets’ community notice boards, etc. If there were still telephone boxes around I’d also suggest little calling cards.
• We also need to use social networking services to deliver timely updates and news about our events and services in a shareable format.

There's a ton and a half of other stuff to worry about, too, but that's enough of a start for one Sunday afternoon.

Treasure trove

Every so often we unearth undiscovered riches.

Moving a pile of disreputable old filing cabinets out of an office the other day we discovered a long-forgotten portfolio. Luckily, we're all dead nosy and had a quick look inside before throwing it away. Just as well: it's a collection of original artwork by children's artists who'd visited our libraries in the 1970s and 1980s. They'd come along, talked to the children and did a few illustrative sketches in the process and somebody had the sense to keep them safe for future use.

I'm just starting taking photographs of them (there aren't many smaller than A3 sized so in-house scanning's not an option for us). I'm putting them onto the Library Service's Flickr account in a set I'm calling "Discovered Treasures." (The ones I've put on so far haven't been digitally remastered so look a bit murky. I'll be putting "before" and "after" versions online eventually.)

Being dead bone idle I want to see more than one outcome for this effort. Having a chat with Ray, our Children's Services Manager, we decided that at the very least we'd want:

• The Flickr set.
• A news item on the web site linking to the Flickr set and to the catalogue records for those authors we still stock.
• Ties-in with other children's library activities and promotions (Ray was already planning on doing something on a pirate theme some time, the John Ryan sketches fit in nicely).
• A properly-curated exhibition of some kind of the sketches.

So it's not all doom and gloom at the coal face.

Telling the story

We have good people working in our libraries, should we choose to use them. Not a day goes by without something really good happening for somebody in one, other or all of our libraries. There are things we can do better, to be sure, we're only human after all, but we mustn't ignore the good that we do. If we don't value that good, why should anybody else?

Most of our customers think that we are A Good Thing. This is a double-edged sword: are we really that good or are we just delighting the few at the expense of the many? Well... Place Surveys tell us that we are by far the most popular of the council's services. When you look at the overall results this is damning with faint praise but we must be doing something right even so, otherwise we wouldn't even be that popular. We know we have to change with the times and the different needs of different customers. In doing so we need to be careful to know which is baby and which is bathwater. Let's make sure that we recognise what we're doing right, learn from it and keep on doing it at least as well, if not better.

If the services we're providing are all that good (and they very often are), why do we keep it a secret? If it's worth doing it's worth letting people know that you can do it, do do it and could do it again. That isn't just publicising events and activities before the day, though that's important too. We need to make sure that once the job's done it isn't consigned to oblivion. It isn't done and dusted when the chairs are put away, there's work to be done.

Review the event. How did it go? Were the results as planned? Was the actual audience the intended audience? If not, what went right/wrong? What do you learn from the event? What can somebody else learn from the event? How? (Why re-invent the wheel?) Share the experience.

Share the news. Tell people it's happening. Tell people it happened. You did something. We do lots of somethings in libraries. How many people really know that? (Here's a clue, at a recent meeting of Chief Leisure Officers in one of the English regions the question "what do libraries do these days?" wasn't rhetorical).

Celebrate the event. We're crap at this. We need to be better.

Be realistic. We seem to think that if we don't get a football crowd turning up at the library it's a failure. Elsewhere in the world around us there are people doing events once, twice a year that were attended by a dozen people or so and feted as major achievements. Once or twice a year. We're doing that every other week in our libraries and accepting the label "declining." Footfall and visitor counts are important measures but tell but a fraction of the story. Having a load of stray bodies in the library for an event isn't necessarily a sustainable option. If those people have a miserable time of it because the venue was cramped or overcrowded or they are otherwise not delighted then that's worse than not having them visit in the first place: "the potential customer" becomes "the doesn't fancy come back here again." Delivering something brilliant for a sufficiency of visitors who want to come back to the library even when there's not an event going on is a result. Over a year twelve repeat customers visiting once a month is a better return than one hundred coming to the event and not coming back. The event is the hook to draw in the potential customers. Once they're in the library it's our job to persuade them to come back even when they're not an event going on. There's more chance of doing that when we're interacting with customers rather than just controlling crowds.

Tell the world. I've repeated myself. So should you. You had the event. it was a success (it was a great success). Let the world and his dog know it was a great success.

We do services as well as events. What applies to events applies to services. We're doing lots of really neat stuff on a day-to-day basis. So tell the world about this, too.

Did I say tell the world?

Telling the world isn't about just slapping a photo and a bit of copy somewhere and waiting for the world to find it. Any more than marketing an event is just putting a notice up in the library. Here's why not if you don't believe me.

Photos are good. A picture tells a thousand words. Summed up as "libraries do neat stuff."

We need to make sure that people bump into photos of people enjoying themselves in the library. And keep bumping into pictures of people enjoying themselves in the library in odd places that might not be "library" places. Picture of people enjoying themselves in the library? Perhaps the library is an enjoyable place to visit? Perhaps they'll come and visit the library to see what other neat stuff we do.

And we'll tell them.

And we'll tell them to tell their friends.

And we'll tell them about the neat stuff going on in our other libraries. And they can tell their friends that, too.

The important, the most important, thing is that we cannot assume that people will know what we do. And we cannot afford for the off-chance that they pop in to find out. There is no place for assumption and blind hope in a time of uncertainty. We need to tell people what we do. And keep on telling them.

If we wait to be asked they might not come and ask us. And they might just assume that we just stand around waiting to stamp out a few books, in between going "shhh!!!"

Managing in a storm

The single worst thing a manager can say is: "I assumed..."

It isn't the job of managers to assume. It is their job to ensure.

• To ensure that the people who are tasked to do the work know what is expected of them.


• To ensure that the people who are tasked to do the work know how to do what is expected of them.


• To ensure that the resources required to deliver the work are available when they are needed.


• To ensure that there are ways of means of making sure that the work is being delivered.


• To ensure that there are ways of means of determining when the work has been done.


• To ensure that there is a review process so that if the work needs to be done again it can be done to at least the same standard, if not better and more efficiently.

No assumes there.

Every one of these points requires effective communication between the manager and the staff. Effective communication isn't just telling somebody something, or sending them an email, and then walking away expecting things to be done the way you want them. Communication is a game for more than one player. You need to listen. You need to ask. You need to check. Does the other person understand what you want? Do you understand what they mean when they're responding? Are you sure you know all the answers or have they got a better idea? Are you having an argument because they don't understand you, you don't understand them, or that you were talking out of the seat of your pants in the first place (oh come on, be honest, we all do sometimes).

Don't assume that questions and challenges are a bad thing: if your point of view doesn't stand up to internal scrutiny like as not it won't survive an outsider's inquisition. A tested proposition is a safer proposition.

So a good manager ensures that there is a conversation. And ensures a common goal. And ensures a fighting chance of success.

And a bad manager assumes that success will just come to them and that it's somebody else's fault if it doesn't happen.

Twit

OK, I have to admit it.

I'm not remotely comfortable with Twitter yet, but it is extremely useful. Not least because of the generous people tweeting updates from events and activities they're involved in. A tip of the hat to all of them.

It's nice when something works

We've been doing customer surveuys using one of CRT's Viewpoint workstations for a while now. They're pretty robust and largely trouble-free, which is always a welcome set of attributes. I find creating a survey a bit of a faff but not so much as to be off-putting.

What's really good is the analysis and reporting tools. Within half an hour of uploading the data I've got access to a very straightforward mass of meaningful statistics that can be easily exported to a spreadsheet for tarting up.

Particularly nice is that all the iffy stuff gets quarantined. If it's obvious that somebody's just been hitting keys or inputting a pre-disposed set of answers the responses get put to one side for you to check up on. We knew this latest survey had been nobbled by somebody with an axe to grind, so I'd set myself up to go through the data to see if I could identify the offending responses on the days involved. Much to my delight, I found that they'd all already been shunted over to the Quarantine folder (on account of their being twelve very similar responses in the space of ten minutes). I'm suitably impressed.

Looking through the responses to open-ended questions is always an education. It shouldn't surprise me that youngsters see it as the opportunity to post love grafitti on the screen ("Charlotte loves Lewis TLFE"). Looking at this set I'm going to suggest to the Branch Assistant that she should have a word in Nathan's ear: if he doesn't borrow lots more books we'll tell Caitlyn about Bridie and Bridie about Caitlyn.

Secret to Successful New Product Innovation: Keep the Boss Out of It

Interesting report by Nielson presented the other day here. The basic question is: why are some organisations better at innovation than others? The result of their study looks provocative at first:

"One secret appears to lie in the degree of senior management involvement in the creative process."

I'm happy to stop the ball rolling there and enjoy the point-scoring, but I think there's a much more important point made in this report:

“New product development success comes down to two important principles - - managing ideas lightly while managing the process precisely,”

This is important. Successful innovation is the intelligent application of creative thought.

• Creativity is about making new connections and doing something with them.
• Intelligent application is about persuading the creative process to do something useful with them.

You'll notice the active verbs involved here.

Library services aren't alone in the public sector in tending to manage ideas precisely while managing processes lightly, if at all. It's a habit we could usefully unlearn. Library service managers who organise and unclench can optimise the potential of both their workforce and their service. The ones who don't will struggle.

Is your library making milkshake mistakes?

A useful heads-up on The Unquiet Librarian's site (thanks again to Marianne for the link).

It's a variation on the "can't see the wood for the trees" problem where the purpose of a development activity has become ill-defined. In this case the key question for the developer is: "are we wanting to improve [however defined] the product or are we wanting to improve its sales?" If the former, then the behaviour of the product is paramount. If the latter, then the behaviour of the [potential] customer is paramount.

It doesn't matter how excellent your product is if the customer can't, or won't, use it or afford it. A 'good enough' product that doesn't require the customer's having to radically modify their usual behaviours is always going to have something going for it.

Listening to global voices

Food for thought in one of the TED lectures. In this one, Ethan Zuckerman talks about the need to open up your online world and read the news in languages you don't even know.

He argues that "the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves." Which is uncomfortably like the problem with some public libraries — "for people like us, by people like us," with everybody else fringed off and assigned their special label to be treated differently. We know that this doesn't have to be so, and there's a lot going on in our libraries to try and knock that sort of attitude on the head. Which is just as well as public libraries are excellently positioned to help foster Zuckerman's "xenophilia" and have excellent reasons for making an active effort to do it.

• Public libraries are — or should be — important serendipity engines within the community. The key purpose of the library is to give the user the keys to the world. This can't be effected if the library only delivers what the specifics that customer asks for. As Arkwright says: "What they come in for is up to themselves. What they go out with is up to us."
• The survival of any public sector service is dependent on not just being important to "people like us." The more "people not like us" that a service engages with, satisfies and delights the better for its chances of survival. Which is why, for all the breast-beating over the years, the prospects for the public library service are better than those for the municipal blacksmith, the lamp-lighter and the knocker-upper.
• Local economic recovery is dependent on entrepreneurship and inward investment. These days the key markets, and the money, are in Asia.
• We need to maximise the chances of serendipitous discovery of opportunities for local entrepreneurs.
• We need to maximise the chances of serendipitous discovery of local opportunities for overseas entrepreneurs.

How to do it?

• We need to make sure that we don't make all our user interface too relevant. At first that sounds counter-productive, we don't want to be wasting our customers' time after all. All I'm saying is that there always needs to be a small but visible proportion of almost randomised, but certainly unexpected, content or activity that can act as a bridge between the user's daily information/cultural commuting route and roads less-travelled. The whole customer experience needs to enable the same scope for serendipitous discovery as a browse of the library bookshelves.
• We need to be open to and promote user-generated content that provides useful bridges. And perhaps even be brave enough to let customers themselves define and share "useful."
• We need to mainstream and actively promote those activities that link us with "people unlike ourselves."
• We need to make sure the we, our content and our community are available. If we're not there we won't be found. Back in the nineties a friend's library service scored quite a few Brownie points because a Japanese company used the library's online community information database to investigate the local social infrastructure, which led to them setting up a factory there.

We should be doing that anyway. It's worth testing whether or not we actually do.

Slacking

I'm uncomfortably defensive about days spent working from home. I tell myself that on the plus side I'm not going to spend four hours commuting, the network connection is faster and more reliable, I have access to tools that aren't available at the workplace, yadda yadda yadda... And it's true, I am genuinely more productive than at work. But I do still feel uncomfortably defensive.

For one thing, it's too comfortable. I've been sat sitting on the sofa working on the laptop, a pot of tea to hand, the Hairy Bikers on DVD for background noise (the remaining background noise being provided by a robin, a wren and a charm of goldfinches). This can't possibly be work can it?

Oh, I've done all the usual systems housekeeping work. And reported the (sadly) usual problems. I've run a pile of statistics to test an idea that was worrying me about distribution patterns of reserved stock and written a few web pages but I can't say that I feel that I've been particularly productive today.

Part of the problem is that the world has changed. What have I been doing while I've been slacking?

• I've been eavesdropping on the ALA Virtual Conference (thanks to both Marianne and Stewart!);
• Watched lectures on the potential of the online cognitive surplus; Facebook game business dynamics and making a splash with social media;
• Checked out articles on Mashable and LGITU;
• Tried to get my head round the mechanics of the WriteToReply functions being explained by Tony Hirst. and
• Exchanged concerns with colleagues about the current state of play of one of the library management systems companies.

Nothing extraordinary there. You'll have done as much, probably considerably more. But have another look at that in the context of "work," without the use of a laptop and t'internet.

• Peeking through a window to watch a conference.
• Leaving the office for a day just to see a lecture or two or attend a seminar or meet colleagues from far, far away

In the old days what I'm calling slacking would have been A Hard Day's Work. Time was, so long as you clocked on and clocked off at the right time you were doing your work. It was OK to feel not particularly productive because you'd been In Work All Day and had earned your corn by your very presence. These days, I'm happy to say, the currency is deliverables, not time spent (shouldn't it always have been?). So where does that leave personal professional development? It was never much valued in the 'time served' model, but does it only have a utilitarian value in the 'focus on delivery model?' Dunno. I'd like to hope not; I believe that understanding for the sake of it increases the opportunities for the serendipitous development of solutions. But I'd be hard-pressed to prove it.

And I still think I've been an idle beggar today.