Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton-Jan

CIL2010: Digital Manager Sound Off

This session is about people who manage the digital aspects of library services.  We all have different titles: David is the Digital Branch and Services Manager, I’m the Digital Futures Manager, Bobbi is the Digital Branch Manager, and Matt is the Library Innovation and Technology Manager for Boulder Public Library.

We all spend a lot of time in meetings.  We do a lot of communication and acting as liaisons between IT and the rest of the staff.  Groups & teams often want the techie present at their groups just in case a technology issue comes up.  We spend a lot of time on project management, doing initial planning and then passing the work and projects off to other parts of the organization.  We all deal with the people stuff while the techies deal with the techie stuff.

All four of us didn’t start off in technology and had very little formal training on digital services, web design, or technology in general.  We all learned on the job.

A question was asked about whether we design the digital spaces like the physical spaces.  I answered that I was explicitly told to make our digital presence match up to the quality and branding of our physical spaces.  David’s director told him to think about making connections from the physical to the digital and using the digital space as a supplement to what you can achieve in the physical space.  Bobbi says that there are big differences in the image put across by their buildings and their website.  Her library is so diverse that it’s hard to make the digital match the physical.  Matt talked about inheriting web presences from previous managers. In the shorter term, he’s trying to bring together the various disparate web presences.

Who edits the content on the website?  Matt does some content editing on the overall look & feel, the Facebook page, and spends more time recommending best practices.  Bobbi’s library’s website is still under the marketing department, but with the new site there will be content creators from other departments.  I don’t create any content, but set up best practices and get a baseline amount of content going to show proof of concept.  Our library has dozens of different content owners who edit their own content.  David’s library also has a distributed method of content creation.  David has a weekly video blog and tries to add other content to the website weekly too.  He wants to set a good example for the other staff to model.

Question about archiving email and other records: David’s library doesn’t do that.  My library does require archiving of our online content, including content we’ve taken down, and Matt’s library is looking at the same issue.  We all agree it’s hard!

Question about how much time we take to build communities or researching trends.  Matt invests a good amount of time in this, Bobbi wishes she had more time, I wish I had more time, and David does too.

cil2010, computers in libraries

CIL2010: Analyzing, Evaluating, and Communicating the Value of Web Presence
Amanda Clay Powers & Michael Porter

Michael started by saying: Don’t let “that’s the way we’ve always done it” or “we’re too busy” kill our libraries.

Return on investment for social media: what is it, what it is for libraries, and why you should care.  Michael recommended a website from Oliver Blanchard: Social Media ROI: http://smroi.net.  Having a social media presence nowadays is merely the equivalent of being listed in the yellow pages.  Social media is just a tool.  They are not a silver bullet.  You have to use them effectively.  At the same time, you do get results from these sites.  Michael showed a video for “Socialnomics” showing the ROI on social media, statistics for social media use, business success stories, and that companies using social media have better profits and revenues.  Free and low-cost marketing naturally has a higher margin of return on investment.  Many libraries see ROI as a term of “corporate fear.”  For libraries, ROI is not a matter of money or earned profits.  Michael has a ton of resources listed in his slides on calculating and researching ROIs, which will be in his presentation on Slideshare later.  Michael says there is nothing wrong with analysis and the metrics are out there to grab if you take the time.

Amanda Clay Powers now gets into the nitty gritty.   She shows the analytics page for a Facebook Page.  You can download the data and manipulate it any way you want.  She showed an example of a library rave (yes, they had a rave) with photos that they posted to Facebook – and they got good responses to that content: higher page views, photo views.  Amanda asks us to take a step back and think about what the target is for the library’s participation in these spaces.  What is the data good for?  What is the real value of assessment?  Is it about convincing people that these spaces are a good idea or are we beyond that now?  It’s about building relationships, Amanda says.  Get your unique and rare resources noticed!  Use Twitter to promote these and share the content from them.  Are you being re-tweeted?  What gets “liked”?  What provokes comment?  Who’s engaging with you? Who is doing it and why?  What are you doing that is “sticky”?  Amanda encourages us to create our own assessment tools, not a cookie cutter idea of what others think is important.  Engagement is interesting, page views are not.

cil2010, computers in libraries

CIL2010: Website Redesign: A Public Library Website Redesign: (aka The Trip to Hades & Back)

This was my second session at CIL2010.  I spoke about our library’s website redesign, which is still in process, and my recommendations for people managing or taking part in a website redesign process.  You can view my slides below.  Please leave your own comments on website redesigns on this post as well – I’m thrilled to get additional ideas from my community of readers.

cil2010

CIL2010: Website Redesign: Georgetown University
Kristina Bobe, Stephen Fernie, Shian-Chih Chang, & William Wheeler from Georgetown University

Their new design was user-centered, not staff-centered.  They wanted to create a design that helped users help themselves.  How can I get help?  What hours are you open?  Simple questions.  Focusing on a process with users as the focus was a change for the library.

Master Task List: Know your users.  How are they searching?  What do they want to find?  They did some simple user task analysis by writing down questions that people had, what content was on the website, on little pieces of paper and tacking it up on a bulletin board.  They came up with a master task list that helped them develop the website’s new navigation.  Then staff looked at the map of content and figured out where things were missing or where they were misplaced.

Usability: They asked many students the various questions for sample invented tasks (e.g. “You have an assignment on Ghana.  Where do you start?”)  They tracked the clicks users made, and asked them why they clicked there and what they expected to find there.  What they found was information about how users think about link naming and the location of links.  They tested it on a group, refined their content, and re-tested it.  They went through 10-12 iterations of testing throughout a 19 month redesign process.  Also, they were happy to have hard evidence about what users want and how they think.  That helped to settle some of the battles over the website among the staff.

Content Management: They chose Drupal for their CMS.  Drupal is extremely flexible with open source advantages and an active development community.  There is a lot of customization that needs to take place with Drupal.  Their site is running 30 different modules, which makes implementing new things challenging sometimes.

Subject Guides: They chose to use LibData for their subject guide management system.   It’s built on Apache, MySQL, and PHP.  Previous subject guides were managed in ColdFusion and were not very flexible or importable.  They wanted a new system that was easy for the librarians to manage and had exportable data.  They wanted something with an accessible database back-end.  They made the guides more visible from the homepage as well with multiple pathways based on user need — not category of resource.

Communication: They created a wiki for communication about the website redesign.  It enabled documentation and communication on and off campus, replacing three different other intranet sites/services.  People were used to doing things their own way and needed constant reminders that things were on the wiki.  There was also the feeling among staff that they were fatigued by having one more place to check for something.  Just make decisions about technology and go forward.  Task analysis is fundamentally important.  Task analysis should not be guesswork and should not be anecdotally based.  You need to communicate with people both in-person and via online means.  They feel overall that they made an important step forward but they’ve illuminated some more future needs as well as a result.

CIL2010, computers in libraries

CIL2010: Organization 2.0

Meredith Farkas presented about problems libraries have with implementing 2.0-style projects due to cultural or other issues.

What is the problem with implementing social software at the library?  A lot of libraries go into spaces where our users are because we want to be there with them, but we don’t do it well and we embarrass ourselves.  Many people treat technology like it’s free like beer but it is really free like kittens…they take maintenance, ongoing effort, and staff time.  If you have one person alone who is managing technology for the library, then you’re in a bad space.  If that person gets hit by a bus then no one else can take it over and the library is in big trouble.  Just doing the hot new thing for the sake of it is not helpful and does not serve our users best.  It’s not like some of our job duties get taken away — we’re just expected to do more with the same amount of time and money.  There is also the problem of a new technology being hot and sexy, but once you have to actually maintain them they lose their sexiness.  Meredith noted the large quantity of 2.0 graveyards – blogs that haven’t been updated since 2005.

Why does social software fail?  The use of social software is not seen as furthering the library’s mission.  It’s treated as someone’s pet project.  It’s not planned for strategically like other technologies.  Once the newness wears off, people are less motivated to contribute.  Staff are not given time to work on social software.

Library 2.0 is a state of mind.  We need to work to meet changing user needs.  We need to trust our users.  We need to get rid of the culture of perfect.  We need to be aware of emerging technologies and opportunities.  We need to look beyond our library niche world for applications, opportunities, and inspiration.

Tips for Building Organization 2.0: Know your users.  Treat technologies as tools.  What do your users need?  What does your staff need?  The need should come before the tool.  She gave the example of setting up RSS feeds by subject for different departments’ materials in the catalog.  Put links to our collections in Wikipedia on pages that reference your unique information and collections.  Add your original photos and other images to Flickr.  The development of library services should be an iterative process, a perpetual beta.  Be agile and don’t get attached to the current version of any given project.  Be brutal and cut what you have to cut.  Realize that great ideas can come from anyone anywhere.  Nurture talent in the organization by encouraging suggestions and innovation and recognizing the achievements of the staff…no matter their position..  Time is a big issue too – we need to give staff time for creative endeavors. Encourage network building.  Meredith treats Facebook like her electronic rolodex. Query the hive for information, feedback, and participation.  Be transparent – have a library suggestion blog and let users, staff, and others make suggestions and comment freely, openly, and transparently.  Have a relevant staff person answer the question (not a marketing person!).  Finally, devote time to all of this.  You might need to create new positions at your library.  You might need an emerging technologies librarian.

cil2010, computers in libraries

CIL2010: Black Ops Ninja-Style Technology Projects

This session was a panel presentation on how to quickly implement technology projects with covert, black-ops, ninja-style approaches.  The panelists included myself, Amanda Etches-Johnson, and John Blyberg.

The session has its own hashtag, #CILninjas, with a live-stream of comments and questions which is worth perusing for your own enjoyment and edification   Update: Our hashtag for the session was a trending topic on Twitter during our presentation and for a little while after.  Wow!!!  The power of Twit-brarians!

So, without further ado, the tips:

John – Getting people on board by finding key advocates and embedding them throughout the library organization as cheerleaders.
Amanda – Stick to project goals that fulfill your library’s mission and goals.
Sarah - Blend into the environment and sneak up on people, ninja-style. Sometimes you can make some changes without anyone really noticing.  Or you can sneak a project through. Slowly introduce your idea through covert emails, mentions at meetings, and then when you announce your project it won’t seem so foreign or inconceivable to people.  People respond better to the familiar, even if it is something they’ve only heard one other time.  Example: adding circulation contact links in the catalog on the My Account pages.
John - Have a vision in your mind that you can help people be passionate about (oftentimes because what is there is not passion-inspiring).  He gave the example of SOPAC implementation at Ann Arbor District Library.
Amanda – Follow evidence-based practice. Start with a literature search and ask your colleagues what their experiences are.  If there isn’t evidence to support what you want to do, don’t give up, but at least then share what you have done with others so that there is now information for others to use to support their projects.
Sarah – Avoid collateral damage.  Don’t step on any toes power-wise.  Don’t hurt anyone else’s unit, or staffing, without their say-so.  Involve everyone who needs to be involved early on.  Get users involved early.  Let them help define the project’s goals, you help them with the how.  Respect the knowledge and insights of your coworkers.
John – Answering a question about what if you fail with your project?  Deploy like a fire jumper.  You drop in and you hold an area.  If you’re not committed to devoting all of the resources necessary to make your project a success, there’s no point in doing it.  But it’s okay if you fail.  You learn from failures.  “People learn from a legacy of failure.”  If you are wrong about a project, admit your mistake and analyze why you couldn’t make something work through a post-mortem.  Was it because the idea was bad?  Was it because there weren’t enough staffing resources involved?  Apply those lessons for the next time you want to try something out.
Amanda – Don’t focus on the small, inconsequential items.  Use a team-based approach for decision-making.Teams can focuso n smallerr
Sarah - Answering a question about pushing forward on something without asking for permsision vs. getting stakeholders on board early: It’s a judgement call.  If you know from experience that their objections will not be based on fear instead of reality, then push ahead.  My tip: Trust and follow your instincts.  If it sounds like a good idea to you, believe in your instincts.  You’re not stupid.  If you’ve done research and thought about it, it’s likely a good idea.  Example: We had a really junky horrible graphic design for our new website that a paid designer produced (paid well).  It was crap.  But we paid for it.  Our new web librarian, Nate Hill, came in and on his second day showed me a mock-up for a new design he’d done just as an exercise.  It was head & shoulders above what we had from the designers.  My instincts said to use the new design, and we did, and it paid off.
John – Know when to quit.  It’s not about what you’ve put into it, it’s about what you get out of it.  It’s important to not dig your heels into a bad project when you know it’s bad.  Question from audience: sometimes it’s okay to implement a stupid project just to show that it’s a stupid idea.  Use your judgment about when to implement something.  It may undermine trust in your expertise or projects in the future.
John – Win over the hearts and minds of your users.  Give people stability so they can do their jobs at the end of the day.  If what you’ve created is not rock-solid, don’t do it.  We need to move from a culture of reaction to a culture of innovation.  If there are problems, solve them at the root so that it doesn’t plague you moving into the future.  Figure out why it’s a chronic issue and how to fix it.  Be high profile about being “the fixer” who makes their lives easier.

Question: How do you say no without offending them?  Ask them to do some research and show there is a user need and ability to support the project.  Oftentimes that will end in the project dying out anyway.  Make sure that the person suggesting the idea has some personal investment in the project and is willing to put in time and effort to support it.  Otherwise they’re telling you what to do, and that’s not a recipe for success.  Amanda will often paper-prototype the website requests she gets and tests it to see if it would or would not fly.

Comment: Don’t show all of your cards.  Keep some of the basic suggestions in reserve so that stakeholders can make the suggestion themselves and sound like they have had a contribution to the project.

Comment: There are positive ways to say no.

cil2010, computers in libraries

CIL2010: Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet & American Life Project

Rainie’s opening keynote covered a huge statistical dump of Pew’s recent findings. The web is huge, and mobile devices are a big part of why it’s expanding.

• 62% of adults have broadband at home
• 75% use internet
• 80% own a cell phone
• 53% connect wirelessly to the internet
• more than 2/3 use the cloud
• 48% of adults own laptops
• 37% own DVRs
• 43% own mp3 players
• 37% own gaming consoles
• 18% own personal gaming devices

Among those who do not use the web (a full 20% of Americans – !!!) are older adults, people with disabilities, and non-English speakers. Oftentimes, Raine says, people who do not use the web regularly are fearful of the technical and social threats on the web (internet predators, hackers, etc.).

The use of social networks and sharing technologies is still going strong, despite all the rumors of Facebook’s demise (or people giving it up for Lent, Raine says).

• 57% of internet users are social network users
• 37% share photos
• 30% share personal creations (film, artwork, writing)
• 30% contribute rankings and ratings
• 28% create tags or other taxonomies
• 26% post comments on sites and blogs
• 19% use Twitter or other status update features
• 15% have a personal website
• 15% remix content
• 14% are bloggers (Raine believes this # is higher because blogs aren’t identifiable as a separate web format anymore)

Raine recommends Manuel Castells’s book The Internet Galaxy. There are different online cultures:

1. The Techno-elites: identified by openness, peer review, a meritocracy of the web,
2. The Hackers: identified by the belief in the freedom to create, appropriate knowledge, and redistribute knowledge through different forms and channels
3. Virtual Communitarians: identified by a belief in horizontal free communication, the primacy of self-directing networks
4. Entrepreneur: investors, people pushing the front lines to develop a business model
5. Networked Creators: democratized the voices in media, challenging traditional media gatekeepers,inserting themselves in what were previously considered to be “expert” affairs, and enhancing their civic and community roles (37% of internet users contributed to news stories, 20% contributed to health content, and 19% contributed to civic and political activities)

The people who produce content online helps them expand their social network and increase their social standing. People who have chosen to read what a creator has written creates connections that were not there before. Creating content can assist in getting exposure and experience that can help you get a job or get into school. People who are online content creators have learned — largely through getting criticized and flamed by the “literal net” people out there.

They produce content to create “social posses” to solve problems or address needs. Raine cited an example of a gentleman who had some bumpers off of his car stolen. Through looking at online photos, all of these people online were able to identify a local suspect. That person defended himself quite poorly online and drew more attention to himself. They saw that he was selling auto parts on eBay and other sites. They used Google Maps, online photos, and went to his house and after his mother and grandmother to get more information. They put up a petition to have him arrested by local police and although he was not arrested yet, the number of auto thefts of the type he was accused of has dropped of dramatically. The wisdom of possess allow people to say, with authority, “we will fact check the hell out of you.”

People produce content to construct the “just in time and just like me” support groups. A librarian found that she had a rare form of lung cancer and found a support group online with similar people. When she heard she was a candidate of a rare form of treatment, she asked for help from her group. They gave her experiences, advice, and she later built an extensive site dedicated to lung cancer resources and research. These communities matter to people and are space-neutral; they can speak directly to people in their circumstances. (Sarah’s note: I can attest to this. In the months since my post about my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I have received hundreds of comments, emails, texts, and Tweets from others with this illness, mothers looking for advice for their EDS-suffering children, a lot of newly diagnosed patients, and many, many people who are just like me and simply wanted to know they were not alone).

People use the social media sphere as “the 5th estate.” Only about 30% of stories that were covered in traditional media were also covered in blogging or social media. For this reason, social media has become a new place with new people with different priorities (self-selected too, not chosen by a media entity). Techies are absolutely over-represented in the social spaces. Links have become the social currency of the web, not long stories, links. Off-beat stories with quirky humor get more attention than traditionally written stories.

So what does this mean for libraries? Libraries can be a node in people’s social networks as they seek information t o help them solve problems and me their needs. It’s important for libraries to be in that space. Libraries can be the expert curator, navigator, and helper in that space. Libraries can teach new literacies: screen literacy (graphics and symbols), navigation literacy, connections and context literacy, skepticism, value of contemplative time, how to crete content, and ethical behavior in this online world..

CIL2010, computers in libraries

**drumroll please**

I’m happy to announce the brand new Librarian in Black store!

I’m still adding new products with different designs, but you can take a look at what’s there now!  Right now there are men’s & women’s short & long-sleeved shirts, a hoodie, coffee & travel mugs, stickers, buttons, and magnets.

My tagline is the focus: “Amazingly informed and therefore properly opinionated.”  I know my readers are quite informed, and I hope you are all equally opinionated.  You’ve earned it!  Now wear it on your sleeve!

If anyone wants a particular type of product that I haven’t put into the store yet, let me know.  It’s really easy on Zazzle to add a new item, so pick your item (I’ll even do items with color if you ask really, really nicely )

And if you’re going to be at CIL, come find me.  I have freebie LiB swag to give away to the smartest, most wonderful people in the world: library lovers and tech monkeys!  If you fall into both categories, you absolutely get bonus points

At a time when we’re looking at reduced staffing in libraries, reduced salaries, reduced benefits, and reduced morale, it might be a good time to ask your boss about telecommuting (working from home) opportunities.  Maybe your union could concede a 5% pay cut if every staff member gets two telecommuting days per month.  Maybe you agree to a transfer or a reduction in health care if you get to work from home a half-day each week.  I can tell you from experience that telecommuting is a positive thing: for both the employee and the employer.

I work from home 1 or 2 days per week.  This was my only condition for getting hired at SJPL.  I live two hours away, and even making that commute only 3 days per week is hell on earth.  Every day I get to work from home is one more day I don’t go crazy.

To all the telecommuting haters out there: telecommuting works!  It’s cheaper, increases productivity, saves energy, reduces traffic, and increases morale.  Below are some stats you can use to convince your supervisor that telecommuting is a good idea!

The number of Americans who worked from home or remotely at least one day per month for their employer was 17.2 million in 2008. (WorldatWork Telework Trendlines 2009)

40% of U.S. employees hold jobs that that could be done at home (50 million). (Telework Adoption and Energy Use in Buildings and Transport Sectors in the United States and Japan)

The EPA estimated that $23 billion could be saved in transportation, environmental, and energy costs if there were a 10 to 20 percent increase in telecommuting. (EPA Study)

33% of Canadians would choose telework over a salary raise: 43% would quit for another job that allows telework. (Innovisions Canada)

Organizations could save 1 office for every 3 teleworkers (that’s about $2,000 per teleworker per year, or $200,000 per 100 teleworkers).  With telework, AT&T saved $3,000 per office for approximately $550 million by eliminating or consolidating office space people no longer need.  About 25% of IBM’s 320,000 workers worldwide telecommute from home offices, saving $700 million in real estate costs.
(Innovisions Canada)

Dozens of reputable studies have proven that teleworking 1 to 3 days per week increases overall employee productivity by 10% to 45% — a great way to trim overtime and related costs. That means that 2 to 10 teleworkers (depending on your situation) equates to one “free” extra worker.  The increase in productivity for half-time teleworkers would equate to over 5.5 million man years of work.  Specific company stats are below:

• American Express telecommuters handled 26% more calls and produced 43% more business than their office-based counterparts.
• Compaq Computer Corporation documented productivity increases ranging from 15 to 45%.
• Surveys and pilots conducted by IBM Canada (where about 20% of its workforce teleworks) indicate that employees can be as much as 50 per cent more productive when they work in telework environments (Innovisions Canada)

Cisco saved over $277 million in productivity in one year by letting employees work from home using the company’s own virtual office technology.  In addition, employees garnered fuel cost savings exceeding $10 million per year. (Cisco)

Gen Y’ers are more difficult to recruit (as reported by 56% of hiring managers) and to retain (as reported by 64% of hiring managers) but they are particularly attracted flexible work arrangements (ranked as 8 on a 10 scale for impact on overall job satisfaction). (The Edge Report, 2008 Robert Half International Survey)

72% of employers say telework has a high impact on employee retention. (1999 Telework America National Telework Survey)

Telecommuting programs reduce unscheduled absences by 63%. (16th Annual Unscheduled Absence Survey)

Productivity is hugely increased among telecommuters.  And it’s not just the staff themselves who think so.  Over two-thirds of employers report that supervisors view a measurable increase in productivity among their telecommuters.  Specific company stats are below:

• AT&T workers work 5 more hours at home than their office workers (Chicago Sun Times, 10/99)
• JDEdwards teleworkers are 20-25% more productive than their office counterpoints (Chicago Sun Times, 10/99)
• American Express workers produced 43% more than their office based counterpoints (Colorado Telework Coalition)
• Compaq increased productivity 15% – 45% (Colorado Telework Coalition)

A great resource for more information on telecommuting is the Telework Research Network website. They offer a great deal of research, a huge list of pros and cons with statistics, and a lot of information for both companies and individuals wanting to telecommute more.

San Jose Public Library’s Database Delight program, a 23 Things-style online training on databases, has been going strong for one week now.  For the first week, we have had approximately 100 SJPL staff members participate in learning about our major article database suite with EBSCO (which we’re calling EBSCOhost Research Databases for lack of a better name).

The prize bidding is going well too!  All of our prizes are posted on Flickr as a set, and for each week someone participates, they get one bid on any of the 46 prize packs we have available.  Despite my worries that the donated prizes wouldn’t be flashy enough for staff, we’re actually getting some really positive feedback about what we have.  We had to get all prizes donated by the staff themselves, since we are not allowed to spend any city money on prizes for staff (it’s seen as paying the staff twice to do their jobs), or ask for donations from local businesses (it’s seen as a conflict of interest in that we might favor businesses who donate for future city projects).

Personally, I just love reading through the prize descriptions, which were written by our insanely witty Digital Futures intern, Robert Sese.  Below is one example: the Search Engine Love Triangle Prize Pack.

Do you wake up with Google in the morning but sneak off with Bing during lunch? Do you see Yahoo when you’re on that business trip to Chicago? Then the Search Engine Love Triangle Prize Pack is for you!
1. 2010 Bing calendar with some super sweet background images theoretically used at some point on the bing.com search page. Each month also has a query typed into the search box to give you something to search for each month. February’s search query? “Pollen”. The first month’s free, but you have to get the calendar to see the rest (or you can view the image at a higher resolution and you can probably read the search terms off the calendar).
2. bing sticker. Stick WHEREVER YOU WANT.
3. bing pen. Write WHATEVER YOU WANT.
4. Yahoo yelling device. I thought the Yahoo item was one of those push lights, but it’s actually someone yelling the word “Yahoo…oooooo!”. I forecast you will press this button at least 5 times, but no more than 13 times in your lifetime.
5. A white and black 3/4 sleeved Google font having t-shirt that says “i’m not your damn search engine.” A bit aggressive for my taste, but most people will probably just recognize the font and say “that’s a Google shirt”. Size small 100% cotton.

The  feedback we’ve gotten from staff so far has been absolutely fabulous.  Since it only takes a half hour or so per week to participate, we’re hearing that many of our staff in all positions are participating: Aides, Pages, Library Assistants, and Librarians. We’ve had a few technical glitches (IE 6 displaying comments strangely, some Flickr prize items’ commenting was invisible for a while), but everything is fixable or work-around-able.  I think we’ve worked the kinks out and are now going full blast!

For me, the best thing about the project is that staff are learning stuff!  Here are three sample comments from staff about the first week’s exercises:

• Offering quick overviews of SJPL’s databases is a great idea. I am a hands-on person so the exercises at the end are a good way for me to reinforce my learning.
• Ebsco is where you can send patrons for their Consumer Reports questions! i.e. Do you have the Consumer Report that recommends the best toaster? I also learned something new from Science News for Kids-that there is a new element on the periodic table, Copernicum.
• I found this to be a nice idea. It should be an ongoing project to help us all keep our database skills sharp. This would especially be good for non-librarians. I often find myself instructing the clerical staff on how to use databases. They are always so pleased to learn about a new resource. With this project, they can become as aware of database searching as librarians and can help the public even better than they already do.

Furthermore, staff are making suggestions about ways to improve the database and pointing out things that they don’t like.  Here are a couple of examples:

• I am not very satisfied with the language translation feature. It would be great if they included more languages (for example: Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and more.)
• When you select “new search” the database preference does not reset automatically to “all”. There should be some kind of a prompt so searchers are aware of this or they are likely to get no results for a subsequent search in a different subject.
• The blue bar containing the tabs at the top of the page is surprisingly easy for the eye to miss. It would help if the tabs were more “tab-like” or otherwise more prominent.

So, maybe the database vendors will be listening – and will see the staff comments and requests and respond!  We’re covering a different database each week, mostly from all different vendors.  This is a great opportunity for the vendors to see a real hands-on evaluation of their products.  I hope they’re listening!

I am very, very pleased with how this experiment has turned out so far.  I encourage other libraries to pursue a similar program with staff and also with library customers!  I have been contacted by two library systems, one consortium, and three small libraries who are now building similar learning programs after this model.  I am so happy that our library’s work is helping others!  After all, learning is a shared experience and one that we can all help each other with.  If you want more info on how this program was started or how it’s working, see the Database Delight website “About This Project” section or contact me.