"Your library might be ready for a UX Librarian if:
• it holds regular cross-departmental meetings that people find productive
• people in the organization put ideas before their egos
• the library is ready to research its community
• change isn't a dirty word
• there's a widespread genuine desire to improve the library"
"Earlier this year, as part of an environmental scan for a patron use and open hours study, we asked groups of Hennepin County Library staff to participate in a Trend Wave exercise. Over 500 staff completed the exercise, identifying public library trends that are on the horizon, emerging, established, and disappearing. Staff gave thoughtful responses and valuable insights that, paired with other data and similar surveys, continue to inform Library work and decision-making."Nice work, Hennepin!
"There is no existing concept called “Helicopter Librarians” (trademark pending?) but the concept is a logical evolution based on the prevalence of Helicopter Parents. Current students have different expectations and are used to a greater level of support. This is an opportunity to transform the profession regardless of emerging technology trends or fiscal constraints. This Helicopter Librarians approach does not require intensive training; that is why I do not include any checklists to follow. I am not developing any metrics; and I am not advocating for data-driven anything! This is a holistic approach to a human interaction based on individuality and genuine compassion.
A study based on the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement reports that, contrary to popular belief; children of Helicopter Parents excelled in deeper learning activities and reported higher levels of educational gains as well as greater satisfaction with their college experience. The prevailing perception of Helicopter Parents is that their over-involvement is detrimental to their child’s growth. However, such support appeared to be welcomed by most students and actually beneficial to their overall well-being. Thus the first positive attribute of Helicopter Parents is the fact that they are sincerely concerned with the success of their children. This genuine concern has to be shared by Helicopter Librarians."
New York: Library Journal Online, June 15th 2011."Hardly someone else’s problem, homelessness is prevalent and even more persistent owing to the recession. “We are continuing to see increased numbers of people experience homelessness due to the economy and the foreclosure crisis. Right now, there is an upward trend,” says Whitney Gent, development and communications director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Libraries, Gent contends, can do more. “Libraries are information spaces so they can serve a key role in helping people find resources to end their homelessness or to prevent it.” "
"Those who are satisfied are sustained by doing public good and the relationships and human interactions involved in serving their constituencies. Across all library types, 49 percent of respondents agreed that their chief satisfaction is helping users and working with the public. “Each day I get to help people in a thousand different ways,” one public librarian noted. “By helping them, I learn and grow as a human being. It is as simple as that.”
"Some librarians are afraid that proactive reference is bothersome to patrons—too aggressive, a crass retail approach. If done badly, it can be all of those things. Quality reference work takes more than just being able to construct a complicated Boolean search; it takes social intelligence, too. Just the way librarians develop a command of information resources, they should also develop a greater understanding of people."
"After spurring a surge in public library use nationwide, the tough economy is forcing many branches to cut staff, hours and programming right when many cash-strapped people need them most.As in previous downturns, Americans turned to their libraries during the Great Recession for free children's programming or to borrow books, movies and music. In 2008, when the economy was in freefall, a record 68 percent of Americans had a library card, and library visits and borrowing spiked as well. ...
Despite their funding peril, public libraries remain one of the most popular government services and historically have fared pretty well at the ballot box. In 2009, voters passed 84 percent of library funding referendums nationwide and 54 percent of library construction measures, according to the Library Journal."
"Rather than disappear, it seems more likely that if they’re really needed public libraries will devolve into various pre-20th century forms, probably some variety of subscription library. Subscription libraries were 18th and 19th century predecessors to public libraries where citizens who wanted to read would pay a fee to a library or buy shares in order to access their books and magazines."
"In 35 years of journalism I've lost count of the times politicians, business or civic leaders told me they learned their trade not at school, college or university, but by browsing in libraries."
"The advent of the Information Age has brought other ethical issues to the attention of librarians. Rapidly changing technology is forcing the library profession to rethink its mission and responsibilities. Technology has and will continue to have an enormous effect on how information is accessed, retrieved, and transformed into knowledge. Previously accepted values are being challenged."
"The heart of the lingering concern over RA, where there is a division between reference and RA, is not in the basis of our service but a philosophy of worth. In a 1981 speech, preserved in John J. Boll's Reader Services in Libraries: A Day in Honor of Margaret E. Monroe, Monroe painted the rise of adult services as something pretty upsetting to at least some library administrators in the Twenties and Thirties. "For those stern public library administrators who rejected color, motion, maypoles, flowers and enthusiasm," she said, "'adult education' was not the promising chrysalis about to become a glorious 'adult services' creature that would capture the world for public library use, but rather an all-consuming worm to be extirpated before it ate great holes in the bibliographic tapestry and filled the bibliothecal halls with wings, nests, and crawling creatures."
"Beyond the deep rebranding effort, the Anythink “revolution” includes constructing four innovative buildings, dropping Dewey for the “WordThink” system, eliminating fines, upending summer reading for the more experiential MySummer, and recasting staff roles from librarians to Guides, bolstered by Concierges and Wranglers."
""Jobs...what jobs?" asked many of the 2009 LIS graduating class following another year of stagnating salaries & rising unemployment."
"Only those who haven’t checked out a book in the new millennium would be surprised that the public library is now making video games available. The image of the urban public library as a citadel of culture and quietude shielding patrons from the noisy, dumbed-down, digital world outside has taken a hit in recent years. Anyone who has logged significant time at the library has noticed an environment at odds with what Andrew Carnegie had in mind when he bankrolled the construction of 2,811 libraries—roughly 1,000 more institutions than will be participating in National Gaming Day on Saturday. It’s not uncommon to see Internet porn on library computer consoles, and for those not satiated by simply looking, library bathrooms have become popular rendezvous points. Most conspicuously, the library has been transformed into an unofficial homeless shelter during those daytime hours when the official homeless shelter shuts its doors. Libraries have become comfortable hosting many activities unrelated to the life of the mind.
Indeed, libraries have been lending popular music and movies for decades. And one can hardly blame libraries for exhibiting the problems of the society that surrounds them. But there is a difference between tolerating vice and indulging it."
"A librarian saved Gary Paulsen's life."
"Because of this turnover and a change in atti-tudes about library service, the atmosphere of the library has transformed a great deal, and it has become a fun and interesting place to work and study.
The newly hired staff brought their own experiences and ideas to the library, resulting in a rethinking of how the library promoted and marketed itself. Much of this culture change can be attributed to the new library director, John Pollitz. He encouraged library staff to act on their ideas and indicated that it was okay to fail. This was the catalyst for innovation.
The library’s budget, however, was limited and not much funding was available for pro-motions or activities."
"In this suburb of St. Paul, the new library branch has no librarians, no card catalog and no comfortable chairs in which to curl up and read."
"This is why the funding of American libraries should be a matter of national security. Keeping libraries open, giving access to all children to all books is vital to our nation’s sovereignty. For nearly 85 percent of kids living in rural areas, the only place where they have access to technology or books outside the schoolroom is in a public library. For many urban kids, the only safe haven they have to study or do homework is the public library. Librarians are soldiers in the battle for our place in the world, and in many cases they are getting the least amount of support our communities can offer."