Best laid plans… (Library Day in the Life)

OK so my participation in Library Day in the Life ground to an early halt. I don’t feel too guilty as this week has been very full and sometimes you have to just recognise when something is not going to be achievable.  Anyway I thought I should at least summarise what the rest of the week entailed in the spirit of sharing and historical record…

Wednesday
This was largely taken up with a joint workshop with the English Faculty on Personalising Customer Service facilitated by myself and Kirsty Taylor. I think Kirsty is going to blog about the event on her Kupu blog, so suffice to say here, it was great to take time out to explore this and I found the video content we gathered, including this Little Britain USA clip (below) really brought the session alive, and provoked a lot of discussion (as well as being funny).

Thursday
Yesterday was mainly spent on improving our annual survey which we’re going to distribute next week. The more time I spent on it the more obvious it was that it needed a radical overhaul and this is what it has had thanks to the input and dedication of Claudia. I don’t encourage working on stuff at home but I’m grateful she did so all the same.

Friday
Today saw an early meeting with a database supplier who stunned me by actually having researched the academic market and offering a realistic price for their product! Top marks Oxford Business Group, although we will of course have to promote you as ‘The Other Place Business Group’ if and when we subscribe.

Next up was the live chat on the Guardian website on the evolving role of librarians in HE which as a contributing panel member I found to be enjoyable and exhausting in equal measure. I was amused by the Twitter backchannel comment from @daveyp about a possible #HElivechat drinking game which involved having a drink every time one of the panel members plugged a book! I plugged three, including my own twice, so well done if you were taking part and still upright. I was talking about marketing a lot so I feel it was entirely warranted.

Nice to see that this was internally recognised and promoted within the business school here. Thanks Tracy!

This was followed by a lively and rather fun Operations User Group at which myself, the IT Manager and the Facilities Manager discussed service problems, developments and suggestions with the student reps in a genuinely two-way forum. I find this hugely useful and am very grateful for the contributions the students make.

Time for another end of week wrap-up with Kirsty and its the weekend. And it really needs to be.

Advertising space

Suddenly I’m a little less embarrassed and a little more proud of my physical library, or, more properly, Information Centre.

For those of you that know the lengths I go to in order to avoid showing the physical library to new members of the business school you will realise this is quite a reversal. It’s not that the physical space we have is SO awful, more that its just not what I want it to be. To my mind it screams ‘cosy’, ‘books’ and perhaps worst of all ‘pine’. Most problematically it doesn’t reflect or enhance the overall service we offer and instead detracts from it by emphasising traditional library values and components. What I think is needed is a benefactor with fairly deep pockets to pay for me to make the major changes needed – a complete re-fit of the ground floor with less space-heavy shelving, more study desks and comfy seating.

Up until the last few weeks the continued absence of Mr Deep Pockets had made me more negative about the space we have to work with, especially as the the wait has seemed more and more destined to be a long one. However, two simple and relatively inexpensive changes have turned out to make a world of difference.

Change Number 1: Removal of the display case at the entrance.
Change Number 2: Installation of plasma screens running adverts 24/7 in and outside of the Info Centre.

The first change made the entrance more welcoming by virtue of allowing longer (and therefore better) sight-lines into our space, including sight of PCs rather than just books. It also allows more freedom of choice for the users as they can now decide where to go after they arrive rather than being herded by the once awkwardly placed security gates towards the Issue Desk. Finally it just feels more spacious and there’s more light. Light is good.

Change number two saw the installation, just yesterday, of plasma screens to optimise usage of both our resources and services. And wow have they made a difference, in fact “Wow” is precisely the vocal reaction they’ve been evoking. For one thing they’re a nice size and look quite sexy (there I said it, frankly amazed it took me this long to use the word), for another the PPT adverts that run on them are colourful, image-heavy and eye-catching. Yes they’re PPT but I still feel it has its place and this is very definitely it.

We had a great and fruitful discussion about content a few weeks ago and concluded that the possibilities were pretty endless. The adverts could – and do – promote databases, ebooks, stats, business quotes, our twitter, our fb, our Library Thing, our Delicious, our service points, our willingness to help, why they should go beyond Google, the fact that the FT and Economist and WSJ are all available in full-text, and well, us as helpful librarians. In fact we have the feeling that we’ve only just scratched the surface in terms of what we can do. As Ange said to me yesterday: “the only limiting factor is our imagination”.  Come to think about it, that quote is taken out of context, but it works here so it’s staying. The other limiting factor is of course: time. We need time to create the slides, as we plan to create 10 decks of 20+ slides , so that we can have a new deck every day for two weeks. That’s quite a bit of work and one of the reasons why the whole team are contributing.

That one of the plasmas is by our entrance by a lift to all 6 floors of the business school is a deliberate strategic marketing decision. This also informed decisions on content. It made it important that the slides were clearly delineated as ours and that they gave clear direction to anyone who was not a regular library user. Watching the slides run by in the Info Centre was quite different to watching them run by while in the business school foyer. They have to make complete sense in both locations and after some minor edits I think they now do.

The plasma at the Issue Desk improves the physical space no end as it has continuity with the outside screen and impresses upon the user that the space is about information and data not just about books and, er… it looks sexy. Did I use that word already?

So what of reaction? Well apart from the “Wow’s” they’ve already provoked a number of conversations with students and faculty that wouldn’t have taken place otherwise (including a great discussion with a marketing lecturer about our market databases – which were on screen as we talked) and they’re just the exchanges that have occured because I was  stood at the exterior screen for a few short minutes. I sense there’s a much wider buzz across the building and this is just Day One. The current and first slide deck is below:

.
Unfortunately the buzz hasn’t been all good. It has been fed back to me that support staff are wondering about the cost of these screens in austerity times. Well I can tell them is that it amounts to less than 1% of my annual database budget, so as money spent on optimising database usage I’d count that as money very well spent. There’s also been confusion as to why we’ve put up these screens at all. I mean after all we just stamp books and shelve them don’t we? Which has once again reminded me not to underestimate the continued lack of understanding as to what it is we do. A depressing reality.

Like the kids in South Park “I learnt something today”: relatively inexpensive changes can make a huge impact and increase our visbility. And impact and visibility are right at the top of my strategic agenda, an agenda which is even more important if there are people out there who can’t for the life of them understand why we put up these screens  in the first place.

Be our friend

One of the innovations instituted by my Deputy, Kirsty Taylor,  after arriving here following her sojourn in NZ, was a regular ‘journals club’ meeting for the library team. These meetings have been going for over a year now and involve the dissemination of an article of professional relevance ahead of a free-for-all opinion sharing meeting at which we’re all equals (and for which we revolve the role of chair). This week’s meeting was chaired by Claudia, whose My Cam23 blog is well worth a read if you haven’t found it yet, and concentrated on a US article (‘Social software programs: student preferences of librarian use’ in New Library World, 110(7/8): p.366) which reported results of a survey of students by librarians which had essentially asked: ‘Do you want to be friends with librarians in the social media space?’

Now it seemed pretty obvious to all of us that this was a less than ideal way to approach the opportunities offered by social media. What?! Students said “No” when asked this? What really? Well of course they did.  I guess this is rather like asking a teenager if they’d like their parents to go with them to the sixth form disco, not quite as extreme maybe, but not far off. Aside from this angle there was the fact that the librarians in question didn’t seem to be very clear why students should connect with them in the social space. In fact there was a definite feel emanating from the piece that these librarians felt that they needed to connect with students in this new medium but they didn’t really know why. Linking this to the 4 C’s model that I included in my marketing blog piece on the main Cam23 blog, I think the problem here was that they knew they wanted to make Connections and have Conversations in this new Context, but that they hadn’t thought enough about the Content they were offering. How would they actually go about marketing their service via this medium? (N.B. It is important to mention that the survey questions were not included in the article so it is entirely possible that their approach was less basic and aimless than it appeared to be.)

These observations naturally led to discussion about our adoption of social media tools here at Judge and specifically the approach to promoting them that we have taken thus far. Although we use Delicious, have a Library Twitter account, upload to SlideShare, provide a new books RSS Feed, offer a library induction podcast, update a Facebook Group etc. etc., it’s fair to say that despite the fact that we know what we’re here for and the sort of service we provide – an essential component of marketing, it is in fact the promotional side, the stuff that everyone erroneously thinks as ‘all marketing is about’ that has been rather lacking. Aside from our now defunct newsletter (we’re moving it to a blog), email signatures, a few links on our portal, the odd poster, and, most importantly, induction and teaching sessions, we simply haven’t promoted our embracing of social media systematically or strongly enough. This is something I’m keen to change and which requires some careful thought. The aforementioned moving of the bulk of of our online delivery to a blog should help matters, but what I think is just as important is getting  the message right when we’re in front of our users in the classroom. In that forum we need to be able to demonstrate confidently how our social media presence will help them. How we’ll go about that, and what exactly we will say, I’m not sure as yet, however, what  I am certain of is that we won’t be asking students to become our friends just for the sake of it.

Every way that we can

It’s probably the most difficult problem that librarians around the world are currently facing : how to get the instiutions in which we are based to understand what it is we actually do and moreover to recognise our value and relevance. I realise I’m not saying anything new or groundbreaking here, but I honestly believe that if we don’t start addressing this issue of issues more comprehensively and conclusively, and soon, then in this leaner and less forgiving age, we may genuinely run out of time to get this message across. Earlier this month, this fact zoomed even more inexorably into focus for me, after hearing about sweeping staff cuts to a library service that I’d always regarded to be as safe as houses.

So where are we going wrong? Well for one thing I’m convinced we’re still not being bold enough about communicating the value we bring to our organisations, and for another that we’re still assuming that stakeholders have a better understanding of the myriad complexities of librarianship than they do. Yes we all have our champions and supporters, but they are far outnumbered by those who, if pushed for a description of what it is we do, would inexplicably trot out the old ‘stamp, shelve and shush’ cliches. We can no longer afford to be complacent or assume that our services will be eternally funded. Going back to an earlier post, like Bertrand Russell’s Christmas turkey, sooner or later we may stop being fed and suddenly find that we have no future.

So what can we do about it? Plenty. Its no accident that I spend so much of my time marketing my own library service through newsletters, plasma screen adverts, boomarks, online and printed guides, Youtube videos, consultation exercises, focus groups, teaching and training, our portal, emails, Twitter, surveys, Facebook, inductions, social bookmarking and internal committees. Rather it’s in recognition of the fact that I’m more convinced than ever that the services we offer need to be communicated and promoted in every way that we can, and that all the avenues that are open to us must be fully explored and utilised. I see accountability and statistics as equally key, so that we can incontrovertibly prove that our services and resources are sufficiently used, that our staffing levels are appropriate, and that our contribution to teaching and research is both tangible and vital. Of course, statistics do not constitute a cast-iron guarantee, but they’re incredibly useful safeguards against uninformed assumption.

Can we market ourselves too much? Can we spend too much time seeking to prove our worth? I don’t think we can. In a world where the activity of an information search has been popularly distilled into sticking a word a Google and hitting return, we cannot assume that our incalulably more complex raft of services will be understood, never mind embraced. And I suggest that this should be our other primary objective going forward: to simplify our services and to explain ourselves in as straightforward a manner as possible. This should lead to better  understanding of, and more importantly, sufficient buy-in to, our services and in turn to some much-needed professional security.