LibraryTechtonics

It’s been very quiet around here, because I’ve been doing lots and lots of thinking.

Out of that thinking came a decision: I’m leaving.

So wait, what does that mean?
I’ve given a month’s notice at my library. My last day is September 5, 2008.

What are you going to be doing next?
Something different. My goal is to head towards some sort of client or project management role, in the Metro Boston area, with a preference for technology and social networking/media/software. But really, I’m open to just about anything that strikes my fancy, pays a decent wage, and excites me intellectually (I have a few irons in the fire already). In an ideal world, I’ll be back at work somewhere as early as October, since I’m looking forward to a month off before I do anything real.

But why?
After a long, hard assessment of my professional life, I’ve found that library profession is not a cultural fit for me. I’m a lifelong patron and a fan of libraries, but I’d like to be in a different work culture where people are truly, deeply tech- and geek-minded, because I miss that a lot. I’ll definitely be able to apply the valuable skills I’ve acquired from my 5+ years in the library world to future professional endeavors.

Is this a permanent goodbye to libraries?
I’m not sure yet. We’ll see.

What will happen to your blog?
I’m still thinking about that. I am interested in using it to launch a social networking experiment to help me find a job, much like this one, since this is a shift that might be interesting to carefully and diplomatically document. Other than that, I’m not sure if I’ll just keep posting to it as-is, leave it up as an archive somehow, move myself to a new domain altogether, or hand it over to someone else. Figuring it out will be its own adventure.

I’m feeling confident about my decision, and I’m looking forward to what the future will bring. I’m in a debt of gratitude to the people who helped me throughout my decision making and exit strategy formulating process, which has been many months in the making. You kids know who you are, and you rock my socks. I’m also hoping to keep in touch with the many colleagues who have become friends.

Thanks to @Alexa for tweeting this:

Takeaway summary:

1. This is s’posed to be funny. It’s more funny uh-oh than funny ha-ha, if you ask me, but it’s still a hoot of the comedy persuasion. If you don’t get why it’s funny, post a comment, and we’ll talk about it.
2. Don’t come away from this video thinking the blame is on services and vendors. If you use it, it’s on you to use it responsibly.

So remember kids, not everything from a blender is tasty goodness. Pick a clear objective, instead of just implementing “because it’s cool.”

This is a 2D barcode for my blog:

What does it do? Well, if I were to, say, print it onto the back of a business card, and someone scanned it with their barcode-reader phone, or took a picture of it with their camera-enabled phone and put it through a little phone app to translate it, this funny picture would take that person *directly* to my web site on their phone, without them needing to do the thumb-type cha-cha. If I wanted to point networking contacts to, say, a special web site to promote something I’ve worked on, or my LinkedIn profile, or whathaveyou, then I could make a barcode for each site, and push it along by way of a simple snapshot.

Now, imagine if this little barcode could to more. Actually, it can. You can pass along chunks of text, phone numbers, or perform express e-ticket check-in at Heathrow airport. Nate Hill actually has a plan to make these barcodes do more for Brooklyn Public Library, and encourages you to do the same for your library:

I got interested in this idea after hearing that this technology is fully blown up in Japan and that CitySearch San Francisco has been using 2Dbarcodes to identify restaurants. Why not create stickers for library branches? Why not add these images to our print flyers, thus enriching an old-fashioned paper format with readily accessible web information? Update: check out this online zine promoting 2D barcode projects and all of the exciting possibilities.

Below you will find 4 different links for each of our Brooklyn Public Library buildings. I’ve presented the barcodes in 2 different formats, datamatrix and QR. The first two links are PNG image files that can be copied and pasted into Microsoft Word docs, Photoshop, or Illustrator. Just copy and paste the barcode and you add a web page and all that interactivity to your flyer! The second two links are to PDF files of label templates. Each sheet has 6 stickers, and can be printed on Avery matte white labels size 8254, available from Staples here. Stick information about your local library anywhere! In addition I’ve added a link to PDF files of “ex libris” bookplate stickers that offer a barcode image linking you to the Brooklyn Public Library homepage. That should keep you busy and make your books look cool.

Say a patron requested some books or DVDs or something. What if, when their stuff came in, a text message with a little 2D barcode in it went to that person’s phone, and like the Heathrow check-in, they could have the circulation desk scan the barcode from their phone to pick up their stuff? That way, even if the person doesn’t have their card, the circ staff can check out the item to them with some assurance that they are who they say they are with their one-of-a-kind barcode message? (Yes, yes, given that they don’t just hand their phone to someone else, but I think you get my meaning here.)

Or, say a library kept a page called “2dannouncement.html” on their site, where the content could change according to what’s new at the library, then that library made a 2d barcode that pointed to that URL.  Put that URL in the newspaper, on flyers, on bookmarks, in library books, and a mobile user could scan it for the latest information, event news, and recommended books at your library.

But I’m just thinking out loud here.

If you think this is cool (or, for some odd reason, not cool) definitely hit Nate’s post and tell him. Let your imagination run wild: if there was any type of information you wanted to be a quick scan away from a mobile user, what would it be? How would you use the 2D barcode to get it to the people? Or, how would you use the 2D barcode to get information from customers to you?

I had a really interesting conversation with Jim Storer over at Mzinga the other day. We were talking about Chris Brogan’s postulation of social networks for hotels, which bases the social network on the sheer geography of the hotel space. The post is the simple outline of possible bells/whistles/features/requirements for such a network, and spawns a very interesting conversation in the comments about the general potential of this and other “temporary social networks,” based on actual geographic space instead of by site, organization, type of media, conference/vacation/event, etc., bringing it all together for the duration of your stay. It’s good stuff, definitely take a look.

Jim asked, “Why aren’t libraries building social networks?” The major commonality for library patrons, he argued, is geography, and with the library moving to a more community center-living room space profile, it would make sense to link everyone together by their common geography to help them meet each other, using the library as a conduit.

Off the top of my head, my answers were:

• Libraries and librarians seem to be focusing entirely too much on specific, very library-oriented features, tasks, and applications. Instead of trying to find or develop a real go-to location or application online that patron would really want to use or naturally gravitate towards, libraries are doing things like trying to trick out the catalog, a piece of library machinery that so many patrons don’t really get or like to use in the first place.
  
  photo credit: Hans on Experience
• Librarians are still getting their heads around social networking, and haven’t quite reached a peace with the idea that because social networking and social media is about diverse community generated content, rules, and culture, the most successful way to execute social communities is to *let go of control*. (This assessment is based on my experience speaking to groups of librarians about social media, conversing with librarians in my travels, and talking to librarians who *really* get this).
• Even outside of grok gap between the buttons and levers of social sites and community culture, there is a deeper technology barrier, not only with using the software as a service sites that exist, but the ability, skills, and vision to build something fun and innovative from the ground up.

When I think of a library building a social network of its very own, I don’t see a library with a Facebook page, a MySpace page, a LibraryThing account, a Flickr account, a Twitter stream, and a designated Meebo chat room, all linked from the home page of the library site. I see single sign-on to a library web site that offers, all in one interface:

• standard access to the patron’s account (what’s checked out, online renewal and fine payment, requests)
• the ability to make lists, share lists (awesome for book groups), and keep lists private
• some sort of Netflixian queuing/scheduling of requests, and a way to move things from lists to the Libraryflix request queue
• the ability to see who else is signed on right now (if the user allows it), and even perhaps some PM (private messaging) feature
• a way to “friend” other people, and limit sharing to those friends only
• a general sidebar newsish feed that lets you see what people are searching for/requesting/checking out most (anonymized, naturally)
• a calendar feature that allows the patron to add library calendar events as well as other local events, and a way to share those events with other patrons and the outside world, and perhaps even the addition of public, locally-oriented Google Calendars
• a mini Meetup feature that allows people to arrange everything from meeting at the library via an official meeting room booking to something as simple as “studying for the trig test this week? I’ll be there, too.”
• some sort of connection to community events and organizations
• a way for patrons to add inward feeds to as many aggregations as they want to share, such as social bookmarking sites, photos, reviews of books/local establishments/events
• ADDED 8/1: A way for patrons to connect with each other to help answer questions, research issues, or explore interests in depth, sort of a mindshare between librarians and patrons helping to answer questions.  Kinda like Ask MetaFilter, but local.

But that’s just my short rough feature list.

photo credit: Will Lion

The common theme here is local community. It’s not a site that exists elsewhere built, hosted, and maintained by some other entity trying to meet the blanket needs of thousands of users, it’s customized and built for The Community, and allows the patrons in the community to connect with each other with the library as their conduit. Those connections can then inform the library on what’s important, what’s interesting, and what types of events, items, and services they should highlight or think about offering. Think Facebook for Library Patrons or Facebook Local, not Facebook for Libraries & Librarians. It’s not reinventing what’s out there, necessarily, it’s making it specific and relevant to the community, using the single sign-on of the library card account, as well as an enhancement to the library experience. At least, that’s what I see as the goal.

Is your library building anything like this? Thinking about it? How are you going about it? How would you do it, in your dream world?

Do you think this could work? Why or why not? What do you see as the barriers and quandaries? What would you do differently or better?

If you are a regular library patron, would you want this? Would you use it? What’s missing? What would you want instead? Would you be more likely to use the library if the library site were more like this? Why or why not?

A friend and fellow tweeter, Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting (she’s a consultant who “makes presentations suck less/rock more,” so if you need that sort of thing, check her out, she’s a rock star) tweeted an excellent blog post that serves as a reminder to every industry and organization that while social networking can be a boon of communication and user data, it’s *really* about people interacting.  A few points of note:

Stop worrying about how you can use social sites and tools to draw attention to yourself.

…

Stop focusing on metrics, start focusing on people.

Stop thinking that YOUR way is always the RIGHT way (looking for mirror on this one).

…

Stop trying to control how interactions happen and focus on facilitating them.

For libraries, I see some of the commentary applying beyond the use of social networking, and speaking to our industry’s culture, but of course I would ;).  Check out the whole post, and the comments.  It’s awesome.

What are you doing to participate with the population at large?  Have you been able to see outside of the view of social networking as advertising and attention getting, and to the core of connecting with people?  Is all of social networking getting a sanity check (thanks to lbraun2000 for the tweet on this article), or are the markets and organizations that are trying to capitalize/benefit from/perform outreach through on social networking getting the sanity check?

The best way to ameliorate the Me Me Me syndrome that comes from diving head first into social networking is participation.  While putting content out there is part of the process, it’s a full-duplex conversation, which means that you need to do some listening, too.  Chris Brogan, in this morning’s edition of his twice-monthly newsletter (you *need* to subscribe to his newsletter, seriously, here’s a sample so you can see why), communicates this so well:

Why Listening is the First Step

People want to get involved with social media. Why wouldn’t you? It’s inexpensive, has the capacity to bring more customers to your shores, provides a powerful set of tools (again, mostly free!) where you can express yourself, build reputation, and develop awareness. But MAKING media isn’t the first step in the journey, really. I propose that listening comes first, and here’s why.

People are talking about you. They are discussing your company, your products, your industry. No matter if the senior team wants you to start blogging because meanies might comment, there are meanies already out there saying things about you. But if you’re not listening, and not building a methodology to HOW you listen, and what you do with the information, what good is it?

So build your searches in Technorati, Blogpulse, Google Blogsearch, and Summize. Get your ears open, and start finding ways to report this back to the team so that they understand the pulse. And once this is fully understood and evolved, I believe the exercise of listening alone will give you ideas on how you might build a social media strategy for your organization.

Are people talking about your library? Why or why not? Where? What are they saying? Have you asked them about it?  Is it because of information you put out there, or are they talking about it without your starter content?  Put your ear to the ground, have the face-to-face and interactive online conversations (not just lurking!), and listen.  You might find that you aren’t in the places or having the conversations you need to be, or you might find that you’re right on target without even knowing it.  Let me know what you find, I’d love to hear it.