Last night I got to hear Stephen Abram talk about the future of SLA & librarianship. First (and most important) I have uploaded my pictures to Flickr.

Stephen started with a mini rant (a good rant) about the fact that there is no proof that the book is at risk. Reading stats are going up and book sales are going up. That said, do we hear that librarians are at risk? Ever hear this one, “Everything’s on the Internet.” The fact is that librarians are at risk even if books aren’t. In short, there are some serious issues we have to get stronger about talking about.

Stephen mentioned that we’re about to experience some huge changes. If you think about it, we haven’t had any major changes in a long while. Our grandparents had a bunch of huge changes all hit them at once (phones, tv, 2 world wars, etc) and it’s time for that to happen again. North America is way behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology. In Europe, people are using their phones for everything. They have free TV delivered through their phone and text messages for everything. I’m not a fan of this movement - maybe it’s just because of the costs associated with it here - but - I just want a phone - I don’t need it to double as a TV.

When it comes to digitization, China is only 5 years from digitizing everything written in Chinese. It’s not going to be long before everything is available in digital format. We’re going to need the tools to take advantage of this content.

So, what does this have to do with SLA? Everything! The world is changing and librarians have to change with it and SLA wants to help librarians make that change as smooth as possible. One interesting point that Stephen brought up was the fact that when someone leaves an organization one of the first things they do is clear off their computer - bookmarks and all. This means that all the great resources that long time librarians have collected are lost. We have to start storing our data in collaborative spaces so that we can all benefit from each other’s knowledge. I love this! And this is why I took so much pride in working on improving the Jenkins Law Library research links (a pre-del.icio.us project) - I wanted to make sure we were sharing our resources with any one who might need them.

Stephen asks that instead of sharing the myth amongst ourselves that we’re collaborative, why not be collaborative? I love this! The fact is that the nature of associations is changing - something I wrote about in library school. The main selling point for associations used to be networking - but now with tools like Ning, Facebook and LinkedIn - why do I need an association to find fellow peers? With these tools threatening library associations as we know them, what can SLA do to continue to be important for librarians? The answer is learning and innovation.

One way that SLA is setting itself apart (in my opinion) is their Click-U. Educational events for SLA members. What I didn’t know is that they have a regular presentation by Gary Price where he shares the newest tools he’s found for researching and they have a monthly free course available. Being a recently graduated student, I’m a bit too poor to pay for too many classes - so I love to find things for cheap or free!

SLA also offers members access to over 1000 e-books on leadership and management topics (apparently we were told about this - but I missed it somehow - after writing this I’m heading to the SLA site to check out my member profile). They also offer what they call ExecuBooks Summaries - they are 4 page summaries of new releases.

The thing I’m most excited about hasn’t been released yet, but I’m keeping my eyes open for it, the Innovation Labs. This area of the SLA site will be a testing bed for members to try out all kinds of free and proprietary software without having to install it or pay for it. Some of the big names will include Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Blogger, Survey Monkey and Confluence. It’s basically a place for everyone to play!! This area of the site will also have over 25000 software training videos from atomic learning. How great is that???

While this isn’t everything that Stephen talked about, these were the bits that I was able to write down as he sped through his awesome talk. He certainly made me pay even more attention to what the association is doing for us - I hope he did the same for some of the rest of you.

Technorati Tags: njsla, sla

Yikes!

Via LibraryBytes & Biocultural Science & Management

From Lorcan Dempsey:

OCLC distributed around 2 million printed catalog cards last year. They are still being used ….

I understand that there are some libraries that just can’t afford monolithic library systems - but there are so many affordable options out there today - why would so many libraries still be using cards?

Thanks to Judith for pointing out Kathy’s editorial from the most recent issue of CIL.

“In the library world, many processes are still done the way they were years ago. The old adage ‘because we’ve always done it that way’ still holds sway, and entangled layers of bureaucracy can make real change incredibly slow, if no impossible. But as I preach in keynotes and workshops while I’m wearing my other hat, as editor of the Marketing Library Services newsletter, what you’ve ‘always done’ doesn’t cut it anymore. You’ve all heard that sermon before, but hearing it doesn’t really help. What you need is a place to start. How should you change? What should you change? What do people want you to do differently?

“That’s why I chose the theme Finding Out What People Want From Library Technology for this issue. It’s perfect for January; the month of changing and renewing and starting fresh. And I have the only logical answer about where to start the process. Start with your patrons. Your collections and services are all for them, so update them to match patron wants and needs.

“But what do these users want and need? Even more important, what do nonusers want and need that you’re not offering? You could read other people’s research, you could make assumptions, or you could guess. Or you could do the only sensible thing—just ask them!

(emphasis added by me).

I’m shocked by how few of us actually ask our patrons/web visitors what they want. I’ve also seen that when one method of asking doesn’t work (survey, poll, etc) others are just thrown to the wayside - just because your patrons don’t answer your survey doesn’t mean they don’t have an opinion - it means they don’t have the time to fill out your survey - so come up with another way to gather information about their needs/wants.

This from a post on the NY Times Bits blog:

In less than 14 months, any traditional television set still connected to its antenna will receive nothing but static, as the broadcasting industry cuts over completely to its new digital frequencies.

A recent poll by the marketing arm of the cable industry shows that most people still have no clue this is going to happen.

In a telephone survey in November of 1,017 people, only 48 percent said they had heard about the switch to digital television. And only 17 percent correctly identified 2009 as the year that analog television will be cut off. (The survey had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.)

Did you know this? I didn’t! Not that it really bothers me - I’m all digital at home (DVR included) - but this may be a shock to people like Dan and others I know who don’t have digital cable.

I’m catching up on my podcasts (mostly because I had to take the train into the city today) and I got to listen to a great IT Conversation with Jeff Bonforte from Yahoo!.

Jeff starts out by telling us that anger is the most untapped emotion in start ups and innovation - and that’s unfortunate because he feels that it’s the most important emotion. How does this apply to libraries? Well I think that in our case the anger is coming from inside - librarians are becoming angry (look at the ILS market) and are trying to push innovation internally.

Jeff thinks that rather than think about the application or features or cool technology aspects - we should be thinking about emotion. He goes on to list 4 types of people:

1. The Lovers - these are the dorks, nerds and geeks - the technology lovers who see something new and say “ooo cool!” - a reaction that Jeff thinks is the wrong one to base a new innovation on
2. The Irrational - these are the angry, the insecure, the people who are looking for another alternative no matter what the cost. The example of this is Skype. Skype came along when everyone was out there screaming that they were pissed at their phone companies - so instead of yelling at the support people we’re yelling at our computer screens so people on the other end can hear us.
3. The Efficient - these are the money crunchers, the people who think rationally in terms of money and time.
4. The Comfortable - these are the people who will use the old way because it’s the way they know. Jeff gave a great example of an aunt of his who is paying $800 for her trip through a travel agent even though it costs $173 online because it’s the way she’s most comfortable with. These are the people who won’t change until we remove the old way.

I’m not sure where I fall in this spectrum - I’m sure we all have a bit of the comfortable in us - there are some things that we just love to do the way we do them. I’m certainly among the angry (as I’ve made clear here many of times) but I’m also among the lovers. I guess that this is a good thing for me because I can see things from different angles - or maybe I have blinders on when it comes to the things that make me comfortable - or angry.

Another great bit I picked up from Jeff’s talk is how to sell your innovation. Don’t go out and say it’s a “peer to peer blah blah blah”. Sell it the way you want your customers to tell their friends about it. And educate your consumer through experience with the product. I think we see a lot of this with 2.0 tools. The companies are clear on what they’re offering and they give you a way to demo the product.

This was a great (and short) podcast that was fun to listen to - so if you have 20 minutes, I recommend giving it a listen.

Richard Wallis has a post at Panlibus about an article found via the BBC regarding the Open Library project.

My favorite quote:

As with the rest of society, the fear of something nasty happening can be far more corrosive that the possibility of it happening.

Maybe I should give you a little bit of background. This was in response to comments by Stephen Bury, head of European and American Collections at the British Library, who voiced a concern of people changing things maliciously.

The fact of the matter is that people expect a bit of freedom. There is always going to be the idiot who thinks it’s funny to use profanity to describe a book, but for the most part the people who choose to participate in adding content are the people who have a respect and love for books and libraries. LibraryThing is the perfect example of this.

Tim at LibraryThing has a short - and very to the point post at Thingology.

I have seen the future of libraries: It is to spend the future discussing the future of libraries.

I had to give a sad giggle at this post …

I don’t have much to add, but I do agree with commenter James:

Luckily I think there are some great libraries out there implementing rather than talking about the future. It does feel like there is a lot more talk than action though…

It does get tiring talking about change when there aren’t any signs of change actually happening. On a personal plus side - my library is taking a huge step towards change … a pretty cool change. I’m referring to the use of XQuery for our digital collections. As soon as I’m done moving I’ll make sure to write much more - but for now, this teaser will have to be enough.

My first (official) book review has been published in Info Career Trends.

I read Managing Change: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians by Susan Carol Curzon. It was a handy guide and very timely considering the changes happening all around us. Read my review and if you like the way it sounds, read the book!

At CIL David Lee King gave an amazing talk on Guiding Information Pros Through Change.

I mentioned in my summary that David started out with a few questions for the audience:

First, I asked if attendees had learned something innovative or new at the conference that they'd like to take back to their libraries. Almost everyone raised their hands. Then I followed up with this question: how many will take that cool, innovative idea back to their libraries, and hit a brick wall with administrators when they try to implement that idea.

ALMOST EVERYONE RAISED THEIR HANDS.

The fact is that what Helene said was right - a lot of innovative people were at Computers in Libraries absorbing as many neat ideas as they could - but all with the fear in the back of their heads that they’d have to battle to get any of them implemented. In David’s reflective post How Can We Change the Unchangeable, or David's Rant he asks administrators a few good questions:

I have a question for the library administrators who sent staff to Computers in Libraries, but who also don't plan to do anything with the new knowledge their staff gained from the conference. Why did you send them? Why did you pay good money for the conference, for the hotel, for the food, for the flight"¦ probably $1000 or so - to go to a conference that's geared towards sharing best practices for implementing emerging technology in libraries?

Why send them if you don't plan to do anything with their new knowledge?

Which touches on Julian’s comment to my post last week - maybe this is why so many people at these conferences just seem to be going through the motions.

Looking for some answers? Check out the comments on David’s post and add your own.

My notes? Well, I found that after my presentation on using blogs and wikis for project management, that attendees in my room had a similar but different problem - getting staff to use new technologies. I’ve had more problems in this are than in the admin area - maybe I’ve been lucky. The fact of the matter is that change hurts and scares and exhausts people - all people - even the techies - but it’s going to happen. I like how David summed up his talk at CIL, by telling us that if we resisted change we’d miss out on a lot:

Most importantly, you'll miss out on the possibility of shaping your new destiny and reality - don't get me wrong, it will be shaped, the question is who do you want to do it - you or someone else?

Seems like a simple question …

My personal solution for dealing with change? Well I posted it a few weeks back - I have a song I listen to over and over (The Wood Song by Indigo Girls).

the thin horizon of a plan is almost clear my friends and I have had a hard time bruising our brains hard up against change all the old dogs and the magician now I see we're in the boat in two by twos only the heart that we have for a tool we could use and the very close quarters are hard to get used to love weighs the hull down with its weight but the wood is tired and the wood is old and we'll make it fine if the weather holds but if the weather holds then we'll have missed the point

Helene Blowers has a great post summing up what she learned at CIL - and it’s not pretty.

My CIL experience this year was bittersweet and I find myself personally leaving with a lot more unanswered questions and frustrations than new ideas and inspirations.
…
This type of frustration I heard echoed in almost every conversation (but thankfully not all) I had over the past three days. And given that this is about the 3rd Computers in Libraries conference highlighting the same tools and trends (wikis, blogs, user-generated content, the long tail etc), I'm beginning to wonder if what the profession really needs is just to give some administrators a good swift kick in the head. Those that I spent my time talking with clearly got all the 2.0 concepts, in fact they were apostles. But after trying to move their libraries forward for the past year or so, they felt stippled and oppressed by stale management and old world politics.

My heart melted a bit every time I heard a story from a passionate librarian whose gallant efforts to provide new and fresh services were crushed by the old guard. Clearly things need to change"¦ but I'm struggling even myself with exactly just how?

Like Helene, I had many such talks with librarians. In fact - I actually had the (sad) opportunity to sit near some of these people who have probably held back their passionate staff members. What were they doing at a conference with the “Library 2.0″ theme? They probably just come every year and go through the motions. Also like Helene, I got to talk to tons of passionate librarians. I learned just as much from librarians after hours as I did during the sessions.

I agree with Helene - we have to keep up the enthusiasm and battle for change as best as we can because in the end it will pay off:

It's hard to fight battles through small change, but with enough small battles, it creates some erosion. And the thing about erosion is … that if it continues long enough, it eventually leads to an avalanche of new opportunity!

Technorati Tags: cil07, cil2007

I’ve been writing about change a lot lately - and while at CIL this year I was informed of an article by Stephen Abram titled “Change - Arrghhhhh!.” I shared the article on my Facebook page and was promptly pointed to a post that links to all of the people who weren’t happy with Stephen’s article.

Sometimes people just see the worst in things - I recently read Out Front with Stephen Abram (a collection of articles and presentations by Stephen). After that I can’t see this article as a company ploy as some think - it’s just Stephen (he has many similar articles out there - and he has always been up front - and sometimes blunt - which I love)!! I was happy to find that Helene Blowers (another person I respect) was also impressed with what Stephen had written.

I’m even more impressed with Stephen’s response to the negative people out there:

We all have our personal definition of what comprises professionalism. I sometimes fail. I’m not perfect - far from it. If I have offended anyone with this article, then I apologize. My intent was to share a personal experience in a difficult time. But then, that’s just me.

Either way, I will continue to carry myself the same way in all my roles.

I’m not in a library that uses Sirsi - but I’m all for a company that will let its employees express themselves on the front page of the company newsletter. I’m used to being in a library with an ILS vendor who does everything to prevent putting on a human face - or allowing human interaction! And as someone who respects Stephen, I don’t think this was any more than he said it was - an intent to share his feelings.

David Lee King gave an amazing talk on handling change within our libraries. He started by asking a few questions and reading a few quotes. The first question was how many of us have had a hard time changing things in our libraries - lots of hands were raised. Then what kinds of change are hard - tech or other? Both! How many of us had to change ourselves while trying to implement change? A good number.

David, like a few others, recommended reading Stephen Abram’s article in OneSource on change within libraries.

He then read a quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins which basically said that spending time to motivate people is a waste of effort - the right people will be self-motivated - but the key is to not de-motivate them! What a great quote!! I don’t have the book, so I can’t write the exact quote, but the gist is right.

Change is gonna happen whether we like it or not - just take a look at librarian want ads these days - they’re all full of new (fun sounding) jobs.

So what is change? Change the old way:

• leaders simply ordered changes
• goal: getting the change accomplished
• when it failed the leaders would review change to see what went wrong

The problem is that they were looking in the wrong place (within their organizations) - because change is external. Transitions (reorientation people have to go through inside before the change can work) however, are internal. The reason most changes failed was because leaders focused on getting the change done instead of getting people through the transition.

So, what are the stages of transition?

1. Saying goodbye (letting go of the way things used to be)
2. Shifting into neutral (in between state - full of uncertainty and confusion)
   This is where you focus on the details. You have to want to change to get past this phase and unfortunately, some people get stuck here. These people don’t let go of the old ways. On the other end of things, some people get frightened and leave
3. Moving forward- requires people to begin behaving in a new way

Of course there is going to be resistance to change, in fact, “nearly 2/3 of changes in corporate environments fail”, but resistance isn’t the problem - management’s reaction to resistance is the problem - resistors aren’t seeing it as resistance - they see it as survival!

Three levels of resistance:

1. info based - not enough info with the new thing, don’t understand, disagree with the idea, confused
2. physiological & emotional - job threatened, future with organization threatened, respect of your peers at risk (loss of power - feelings of incompetence) - all in your head (but still real!)
3. bigger stuff - personal histories, significant disagreement over values, etc

So, how do we navigate through change?

Tips just for leaders & techies:

• remember that you’ve already come to terms with the change, but others still have their own stages to go through
• understand why people might not want to change
• understand that it’s the transitions, not the change, that’s causing waves

Steps to take in helping change run smoothly:

• describe the change succinctly (1 minute or less) change and why it must happen
• plan carefully
• help people let go (explain why they have to let go - why it’s a necessary change)
• constant communication
• create temporary solutions when needed (things to make the change move smoother)
• model new behavior - practice what you preach, don’t say we need a blog and then never contribute
• provide practice & training in new things)
• if you want staff to use web 2.0, you better have an RSS reader and you better be actively using it and reading blogs etc etc

David than reminded us not to do these things:

• don’t confuse novelty with innovation
• don’t confuse motion with action
• don’t keep something going if it still has a “few good years of life left”

More tips & reminders for techies:

• you might be able to change quickly
• there are areas where you don’t change quickly (it departments have to stop saying no first - think it through)
• always share too much… (and do too much training) it should feel this way to you - cause you’re not the user
• technojust(ification) - make sure it makes sense (the opposite of technolust)

After all of this if you still won’t change, you need to remember that refusing to change will lead to missed career opportunities and missed changes to expand your network and meet new people (like I do at conferences and through my blog). Most importantly, you’ll miss out on the possibility of shaping your new destiny and reality - don’t get me wrong, it will be shaped, the question is who do you want to do it - you or someone else?

Some final pointers from David:

• learn all there is to about change
• break old habits
• work on stress management strategies
• whine with purpose (constructive criticism is good)

What an awesome talk!!! I hope I did it justice in my summarization - and I hope you’re all motivated to change the way you handle change in your institutions.

[update] See David’s Slides [/update]

Technorati Tags: cil2007, cil07

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a Library Connect event hosted by PALINET. The topic was “What’s Next? - Embracing Change” - the perfect topic for me!

In his introduction, John Tagler, VP of Customer Marketing, Academic & Gov’t Libraries at Elsevier said we’re all dealing with change and we have to “face it and embrace it or we’ll all fall behind” - what a great way to start the event and such a true statement.

The first speaker was Rush Miller, University Librarian at Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh. The title of his talk was: “The Library Director’s Perspective: Beyond Survival”. Rush is so passionate about change that he sometimes made me cringe! That said, he was an awesome speaker and the fact that he went off on tangents didn’t seem to bother the audience (or myself) one bit.

Rush started us off by talking about how librarians handle change. He told us this great story of how when he was given his first director job, the technical services librarians all brought him back to the storage room and said “Now if there is a fire, we all run in here and grab the shelf list”. Apparently, this shelf list was nothing to scoff at - big and heavy. Years later when electronic catalogs were available, people still kept their shelf lists because they didn’t trust the new technology. Rush asked a great question - did the librarians really think that if the library had a fire the administration was going to re-order every book that was on the shelves? For years, librarians fought change - it was technology that forced it on them.

He told a great story of how a friend gave him a disk years ago and said “here, you’ve got to try this, it’s a graphical interface for getting on the internet” - that disk had Mosaic on it - and Rush was unable to install it on his work computer because he didn’t have Windows. Why not? Cause his IT staff it took up too much space and was a passing fad! See - it’s not just librarians how fight change - we all do - we fight until we’re bruised and broken and then we have to give in - wouldn’t it be easier if we acknowledged that change is scary and that we’re terrified, but go with the flow anyway??

He talked about how he hated going golfing without a full group of friends because eventually someone was going to ask - “so what do you do” and he’d have to tell them he was a librarian. This would lead to a discussion on whether people actually use libraries anymore - if they’re really necessary and so on. The fact of the matter is - that if we don’t start making the right arguments - people are going to believe that they’re not necessary!! Here’s where Rush and I part ways a bit. Rush feels that it should all go digital - that books are on their way out - slowly - but on their way out. He mentioned that at Pitt they’re closing departmental libraries with no opposition from the departments - he said that book usage is going down (a stat that is the complete opposite of another I recently read).

That said - his next point is right on track - constantly claiming the value of libraries and making arguments is not going to get things done - we have to demonstrate to others how it works.

He then proceeded to give us 8 ideas for changes:

1. User-centric not user-focused
   Provide multiple channels for information delivery and rethink our processes and services. What’s important is what they think not what you think!
2. Re-think our mission
   It’s not about books anymore and it’s not about organizing information, it’s about connecting people to what they want to learn. In short - it’s about people!
3. Re-engineer our operations
   Stop worrying about the quality of the data in your catalog - it’s not the center of the universe
4. Re-think how space is used
   Allow cafes in the library - stop worrying about the stupid carpets! (I actually thought it was worries about the books that made us stop people from drinking in the library - but when we did our renovation it was also about the carpets - why???)
5. Collaborate and innovate
6. Communicate our message
7. Build expertise
8. Change the culture of our libraries
   Stop rewarding the people who won’t change in your library and start supporting those who will. Rewards should not be given on the basis of who’s been there the longest.

So, overall - a great presentation by Rush!! And lots of great info. I’ll provide a link to his presentation as soon as it’s available.

Darlene Fichter added a new quote to her Facebook page - and I just love it!!!

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.
– General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

Awesome!

We all talk about change, but what encourages you to push through the pain and fear associated with change? I have a song by the Indigo Girls that got me through a lot of tough times when I was younger and has stuck with me through the years. The song is The Wood Song. I want to share it with you.

the thin horizon of a plan is almost clear my friends and I have had a hard time bruising our brains hard up against change all the old dogs and the magician now I see we’re in the boat in two by twos only the heart that we have for a tool we could use and the very close quarters are hard to get used to love weighs the hull down with its weight but the wood is tired and the wood is old and we’ll make it fine if the weather holds but if the weather holds then we’ll have missed the point that’s were i need to go no way construction of this tricky plan was built by other than a greater hand with a love that passes all our understanding watching closely over the journey yeah but what it takes to cross the great divide seems more than all the courage i can muster up inside but we get to have some answers when we reach the other side the prize is always worth the rocky ride but the wood is tired and the wood is old and we’ll make it fine if the weather holds but if the weather holds then we’ll have missed the point that’s where i need to go sometimes i ask to sneak a closer look skip to the final chapter of the book and maybe steer us clear from some of the pain that it took to get us where we are this far but the question drowns in its futility and even i have got to laugh at me cause no one gets to miss the storm of what will be just holding on for the ride the wood is tired the wood is old and we’ll make it fine if the weather holds but if the weather holds then we’ll have missed the point that’s where i need to go

Lyrics found here.

When I was in high school a friend of mine and I sat down and deconstructed the song - we didn’t understand the lyrics, years later it seems so simple. Change is hard, but it’s going to happen whether we want it to or not - “but if the weather holds then we’ll have missed the point” - I love that line.

So, if you have a friend with the CD, give it a listen or pay the $.99 to your favorite MP3 store and listen to it over and over as I have through the years - if you don’t have a mantra, it’s a pretty good one.

“…but what it takes to cross the great divide seems more than all the courage i can muster up inside but we get to have some answers when we reach the other side the prize is always worth the rocky ride ” — How can that not encourage you??

Feel free to share something that helps you push through change - maybe it will help others around you (maybe you know some old dogs or magicians).

Technorati Tags: indigo girls, change, the wood song