Future Focus Panel #InternetLibrarian @Misty3Jones @BobbiNewman @JDysart @LarryMagid

Misty Jones, San Diego PL
Bobbi Newman, National Network of Libraries of Medicine
Gary Shaffer, USC
Larry Magid, tech columnist

Magid:

Magid has a guide to media literacy and fake news: http://www.connectsafely.org/fakenews/

Likes to go to the source, often gets assistance from librarians.

We need to start from the same set of facts.

Shaffer:

Saw libraries as a marketing opportunity. Get out of the four walls. Tie-ins with concerts in town (download the music) or movies (read the book).

Newman:

Made a point of talking to people from different types and sizes of libraries.

Jones:

Had a psychology background, which prepared her “more than you would believe for libraries.” Made a switch and fell in love with it. We do change people’s lives every single day. Always be an essential, vital part of the community. Changing, redefining to be what the community needs you to be.

After-school tutoring program. The schools had a waiting list of 800 kids.
Got lots of kids. Also parents taking computer classes.

Newman:

I don’t think technology is the solution to social problems. It’s a tool that helps, but not everything. Collaboration. Everyone wants to partner with librarians. Have the key to your community.

Magid:

Agree about technology. Technology doesn’t create problems either, but amplifies them. Virtual reality, augmented reality. Google Lens can try to identify buildings from pictures.

On the other hand: Looking forward to car that will drive itself. When he gets older, that will solve a problem for him.

Privacy and security implications.

Newman:

Inequity is a concern. The self-driving car solves a problem for you, but not for society. Those who need Google Echo the most may not be able to afford it.

Shaffer:

Your community is whatever your organization is trying to solve — city, corporation, university. Yes, lots of people want to collaborate with you, but you should be picky. Figure out exactly how it would work. Do a reference interview.

Jones:

Not all partners are the right ones. Started one with UC San Diego extension. Certificate programs for underserved communities. Library is the educational place for everyone.

Shaffer:

High public trust, but you have to protect it.

Newman:

Library partnering to do education on care for Alzheimer’s patients. Public libraries participating with health organizations (e.g., having a booth at health fair).

Shaffer:

Starbucks in a public library. Revenue after royalties went to library. Became a recruiting track: customer-service-oriented Starbucks employees could move into library as jobs open.

Magid:

Artificial scarcity of electronic media. On a waiting list for an e-book at NYPL.

Jones:

Our biggest challenge is relevance, staying nimble. Media (Netflix, et al.) are competing for our time. Libraries are competing, too. Make the library an experience. Tie into the community and do what they need from you.

Newman:

Big money: there are organizations campaigning against public libraries. Stuff that can’t be measured easily on spreadsheets.

Shaffer:

Perception: raised $32 million for a library. People kept saying “libraries are going away.” There’s 10,000 people a day walking in the door. Perception that libraries are a book warehouse. Also perception that all information is on the Internet. Staff need to convey the relevance. What is the one thing you can tell your city council? Go to foundations; they have to give away money. But don’t take the money if they want you do something that’s not in your strategic plan.

Jane Dysart:

By the time someone is talking about de-funding your library, it’s too late. You have to build those relationships in advance.

Magid:

You have to get the word out. Writing articles this week about the conference for CBS News and San Jose Mercury News.

Jones:

Shove the library down people’s throats. I can turn every single conversation to the library.

Shaffer:

Shove it down their throat with kindness. Don’t get upset with people when they don’t understand. Find something that resonates with them. Do a program about how to navigate the Equifax program.

Magid:

47% of the public believes the media makes stuff up. We’re in the same information business. People are questioning the legitimacy of knowledge. Make sure that libraries are put forward as a bastion of truth and light. Form alliances with anyone who will listen.

Newman:

You’re a big effing deal; act like it.

At the top of Google Search Results #InternetLibrarian

Trey Gardner, Koios (helps libraries promote themselves)
Corinne Hill, director, Chattanooga Public Library
John Andrews, Washoe County library

Cats vs. cardigans

Cats – “organic” search results.
Cardigans – you get ads at the top if you type in something you could possibly buy.

Organic search looks for:
* Structure
* Content – fresh, original content
* Linking – good links to you
* Engagement – how long do people spend on your site

Are you answering the searcher’s need?

Paid search:

It’s not necessarily the highest bid. Google adds in a “quality score.”

Objections to buying ads:

Do people actually click on ads? Yes, 5-15% of the time, especially on mobile.

Isn’t this going to be expensive? There are Google ad grants for non-profits. $10,000/month = 250,000 views = 10,000 clicks.

Chattanooga PL got one of the ad grants.

How do we push our services out? ILS are siloed, they don’t show up in search results. Wants to get people to use databases. Also wants to promote services, such as e-books and language learning databases and classes. Apply for a passport at the library.

Wants to have a confident logo. Doesn’t want to have web URL, Facebook, Twitter, phone numbers, locations on printed material — wants people to go to the web site for that info.

Keeps the library’s image/brand out there. Even if people don’t use the services, they remember it and support it.

Washoe County:

Promoting Brainfuse (job search program) and Mango Languages.

We try to promote all services all at once. With a Google ad, it comes up when they’re looking for the service. If they were looking for the library, they would find it.

People think about e-books — free if possible — but they don’t think the library has them. Has a program that creates online book lists and promotes it on Google. Topical online displays: “What is DACA?” “More like ‘It’ ”

Easier process to have friends of the library group handle the Google non-profit grant application, don’t have to go through city council, etc.

Changing Models & Roles: Competencies and Professional Development Insights #InternetLibrarian

Kim Huntley and Heather Mathis, Toronto Public Library

Less activity at reference desk, increased diversity, effects of technology, maker culture, self-checkout, funding reductions and competition in public sector.

Consulted with international public libraries.

Surveyed librarians to see what they were doing. Largest portion providing information services at reference desk (c. 28%). Community engagement, which they wanted to emphasize, was just 1%. Large percentage of reference questions were directional or tech help.

Met with librarians to ask them what they thought they should be doing.

Developed six roles:

1. Service leader- models service excellence, leads projects
* Professional development program for new librarians – two weeks of dedicated training in a large branch, monthly training sessions for a year
* Continuous professional development for all TPL librarians
2. Information professional – one-on-one, in-depth reference, reader’s advisory
* Community librarians: outside traditional library, such as prisons
* Book-a-librarian: 30- to 60-minute appointments for projects such as starting a business or job search.
3. Collection curator: Traditional formats and digital formats, such as the Virtual Reference Library, which has Ontario history.
* Merchandising – in-branch displays, blog posts, social media
4. Learning catalyst – Supporting self-directed continuous learning. Technology, multiple literacies, lifelong learning.
* Digital innovation hubs (makerspaces), pop-up learning labs (mobile), after school youth hubs
5. Culture creator – Community-focused, events, programming with big impact, partnership with other community organizations
6. Community activator – Individual relationships, working with partners
* Welcome event for Syrian refugees. Bookmobiles and story hours at the hotels where they were first housed.
* Civic engagement fairs: position the library as a safe place to discuss serious issues

Each librarian fulfills these roles to a greater or lesser extent.

Developing further training, creating a logic model, defining competencies, prototyping new service models.

Librarian spotlights in staff newsletter.

Not the old model of the reference librarian sitting at the desk waiting for somebody to ask for something.

From Stacks to Success #InternetLibrarian

Tiffany LeMaistre and Nathaniel King, Nevada State College

Commuter campus, Henderson, Nev. Diverse.

Bookless library opened Aug. 2015. C. 1.5 million e-books.

Management demanded data for their dashboard showing student outcomes.

Students using library have higher GPA, higher satisfaction (retention).

* Ownership to access
* One-shot library classes to instructional design
* From warehouse to service

“Bookless” is a misnomer. Actually a 600% increase in the number of books students had access to (but e-books rather than physical books).

Study: Estimated 55% of published literature is open access (2015).

Before they went to demand-driven collection development, they had to do a lot more title-by-title selection and cataloging.

Survey on open education resarouces: students agreed it was valuable, but hard to find and that the library should manage it. Textbook cost was one of the reasons students might decide to drop out. Worked with faculty considering changing textbooks.

Instruction wasn’t sustainable: fastest growing college in N. America. Students said they already knew what was being taught. Put library guides in Canvas (educational portal students use for other things). Grades were better for students were participated in a given module, compared to those who didn’t. Moving one-shot content online.

Challenge of not having a physical collection:
Losing the scholarly atmosphere, for example. But that wasn’t going to work for their campus.
Space as a service. In Las Vegas area, a lot of people work in service industry. Inspired by Four Seasons Hotel’s service philosophy. Research shows students who feel well served by college services are more likely to stay. Hiring people who have that service attitude.

Research showing plants make people feel better, so lots of plants in the library.

E-books are accessible on any internet-connected device, but they do lend devices, too.

Do print reserves if necessary, and has a small off-site print collection that doesn’t get used much.

ROI of Marketing: Increasing the Value of Library Services Through Promotion #InternetLibrarian @benbizzle

Ben Bizzle

Branding is every connection with your customers.

Two of the biggest challenges: lack of awareness and barriers to entry.
People think libraries are just buildings full of books.
It might take 14 clicks to download an e-book

2008, his director said libraries were at war with the trinity of evil: Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon.

His library’s weapon in the war? A boring web site that probably looked old-fashioned even then.

The world’s judging you by your web site.

Today the web site looks modern, responsive, works on all devices.

Advertising seemed heretical. Would you rather spend $50 for advertising or $5,000 on a service nobody uses? If 10 people were using it, then 20 people are, you’ve doubled the value.

Social media: have a robust promotion on Facebook. People need to see that your page is updated. Facebook advertising has reach, can be targeted. $50 ad reaches about 10,000 people. For example, with Freegle (song-downloading service), you can calculate how much your users saved over pay services. Because of promotion, the library’s cost was about 19 cents a song compared to about $1 users would spend elsewhere.

Genealogy night. T-shirts: who’s your granddaddy? Pull up your genes.

Theme for arts and crafts show. (Called it “vaudevillian,” but it sounds more like a sideshow theme to me: strongman, magic act.)

Regional interest: Elvis week.

Poster: should be cool, make people think.

Wet t-shirt *throwing* contest.

Creative team, not just one person.

Billboards. “Spoiler alert! Dumbledore dies on page 596.” “Cheap date? You get dinner, we’ve got the movie.”

Videos:
https://m.youtube.com/user/publiclibrary1

Speed dating at the library didn’t work out too well.

Controversial: “At least I know my book will be good in bed.”

Diana Nyad quoted Mary Oliver, “Are you doing what you want to do with your wild and precious life?”

Coasters for a bar. Downloadable at http://www.librarymarket.com

Woman found out she was illegally adopted at birth. Librarians helped her find her family she didn’t know she had.

Homeless people were proud to be in a library video.

Advertising isn’t about making you agree. It’s about making you never forget what you just saw.

Magic Sauce for the Future: Community, Collection, Collaboration #InternetLibrarian

Jeanne Holm, Senior Tech Advisor to Mayor of Los Angeles

220 languages spoken in the city. They’re hiring (age bubble: baby boomers retiring?)
A smart city uses tech to connect its citizens.
Efficient, effective, safe, equitable, resilient, innovative.
Los Angeles open data. Call 311 to get something fixed or a question answered. Publish that data in a knowledge base.

Open data site: https://data.lacity.org

Citizen ideas, twice weekly citizen hacking nights using the open data.

Dara science federation: 14 colleges and universities. Students, some of whom get jobs.

Homeless: Every night 30,000 homeless. Many more “housing insecure.”

Sustainability: environment, economy, equity. Using behavioral data to reduce air pollution.

Earthquake early warning system. Has API and can connect to fire depts., hospitals, ports, etc.

Internet access: Big wifi signals near libraries, free wifi on Skid Row. Map of broadband: better in north and west, less in South Central. Public-private partnerships. Libraries check out computers and wifi hotspots. People with internet access at home find a job seven weeks faster and make $5K more.

First day of kindergarten, kids get a library card.

Also at libraries: hackathons, makerspaces.

Cross-departmental open data projects, Internet of Things (sensors). Temperature data to provide cooling centers. Gunshot detectors. Air quality to figure out where to plant trees.

Citizen science: people can use their smartphones to participate and provide data.

Federal crowdsourcing: https://crowdsourcing-toolkit.sites.usa.gov

Tweeting to help locate earthquakes. Kids can count butterflies.

Holm teaches kids in poor communities, some of them homeless. She has them come up with ideas to improve their communities and subtly teaches them data science. They have to map things, do demographics, project plans, budgeting. Five days of class time.

Did an anti-corruption project for the World Bank in Africa. People in Uganda can use NASA satellite data to find water. Also use data to detect banana blight. Pay at market using cellphones (safer).

Releasing data and information is about empowering people to make better decisions.

Big Data Still Rules! #InternetLibrarian @aainfopro

Slides at http://conferences.infotoday.com/documents/293/C205_Affelt.pptx

Data scientist #1 job at GlassDoor, but librarians can work with big data, too.

Gardner Vs: volume, velocity, variety, verification, value.

Examples:
* Server log files
* Social media content
* Digital images (security cameras, license plates)
* Geolocation from smartphones
* Internet of Things (sensors everywhere)
* Personal security data (e.g., Nest)
* Video (FB says it will be all video in 5 years; where will the transcripts and metadata come from?)
* Data that “used to be dropped on the floor”

What are we giving up for convenience?

Before, you would sample data; now you can just analyze all of it.

Consumer Reports is working on a consumer-protection standard for IoT products.

IoT considerations:
* Safety and reliability of devices
* Security ramifications
* Preservation of data
* Privacy issues
* Manufacturer obligation to export data?

Could people hack into your pacemaker or diabetic pump?

What about ransomware?

What could be considered evidence in court?

A.I. In legal:
* Cost estimates
* Document drafting
* E-discovery: Elevate, Logikcull
* Judicial characterization: How a judge might rule
* Contract review

Problematic data:
* Polls in 2016 predicting Clinton would win: problems with polling, same-day voting registration (polls use “registered voters”), caller ID (not a random sample)
* Brexit: turnout was incorrectly predicted

Roles for librarians:
* Visulization and report creation: Tableau OPublic, Inforgr.am, Adobe Creative Cloud (Inkscape is a free alternative), librariandesignshare.org
* Research verification
* New class of expert
* Alogrithm accountability
* Municipal government/community organization liaison
* Alerts: news on big data for your org.
* Training in big data tools

Online and Social Media Analysis: Research and Government Customers #InternetLibrarian

Alison Ounanian, Stacey Galik, MITRE

Think tank for the federal government.

Governments using social media during emergencies. Project for Dept. of Homeland Security.
* Current events
* Faster updates
* Analysis of possible future events

Used a social media tool called Crimson Hexagon.

Project was called DHS Smart Cities. Studied the area around Hampton Roads, Va. Vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding. Several military bases in the area. Retrieved relevant social media posts from several sites for Nov. 2014-Nov. 2016. 842K posts — of those, 800K in the last month (Hurricane Matthew). Can separate out “sub-memes,” map by geolocation.

One topic customer was interested in was drone usage.

Comparison with flood incidents in Austin, Tex., in May 2015. More influential posters on the Hampton Roads incidents than the Austin ones. But more emergency management posts on Austin.

Media, government, and citizens all participated in information sharing. Drone footage was useful. Twitter was used heavily. Power outages may send people out with cell phones to document conditions.

Discovery and Discoverability #InternetLibrarian

Marshall Breeding

Different models:

* World-scale – Everything in results (Libraries spend a lot of article databases, want them included in results. Not too expensive or difficult to index billions of items any more.)
* Bento-box
* E-book integration

Patron privacy concerns
Vital that libraries implement end-to-end encryption (https, TLS)
Third-party sites (such as Google Analytics): make sure user’s info is anonymized. Ghostery is a tool users can use to tell them how they are being tracked.

Most public libraries using online catalog or discovery module that came with their ILS, but some are using different ones.

Most public libraries use some kind of e-book lending. Want it to be integrated into catalog, not just a link.

Jarring to go from a library web site to a catalog that looks different.

Can assemble something with Drupal. The less you have to work with the code, the better.

Want everything under the library’s domain; most essential part of library’s brand.

Various systems use headings, keywords, concepts.

Discoverability: experiments with linked data.

(Google Structured Data Testing Tool)

Room for better, more intuitive display, linked data to supplement.

(ROI) Truth to Power: Measuring & Talking about What Matters #InternetLibrarian @mebs

Mary Ellen Bates

Slides here: http://conferences.infotoday.com/documents/293/B202_Bates.pdf

“What gets measured matters,” but
“Not everything that can be counted counts.”

How data vs. Why data
How data may be useful for internal staff, but it’s not ROI.

Outcome data: the value, the impact of what you’re doing.
(Referring to previous session: being a trusted advisor may take a lot of time, but if you’re doing it for someone high up in your organization, that’s the best ROI you can get.)

Cost of material vs. circulation:
20% of cost * # circulation = value (assuming they would have paid at least 20% for a used book)
Journal routing saves $ vs. article purchases
ILL also saves article purchases (c. $40)

Show impact on revenue:
Patents
Supporting your city council
Student success
Patron engagement goals
Solicit testimonials of impact (especially when you do a big-deal research project). You can just send an e-mail; people don’t usually volunteer their gratitude.

Show impact on your organization:

Supporting employee development -> improved employee retention. (A tech company had employees bringing kids to work, so the library included children’s books. People have cited the library as a reason they’ve stayed with the company.)

Effective outreach to stakeholders resulted in [an action on stakeholder’s part]. Why did they contact the library? It was in order that they could do something. What was that thing?

Show impact on org’s staff:

Look at information flows, pain points. Librarians are “information whisperers.”

* Time spent searching (and not finding)
* Duplication of effort within team
* Underutilization of resources

A librarian watches for search boxes on intranet and takes it upon herself to give advice.

True cost of your time:

* annual salary * 1.3 = fully loaded (with benefits, etc.)
* 52 weeks – 4 weeks = 1,920 work hours/year (vacation, holidays)

Salary / work hours = hourly rate

Many of the people we support get paid more than we do.

Outsell said a library interaction saved a user 9 hours.

If 1 hour of your time (@ $68) saves 9 hours of someone else’s time (@ $102), you saved $850.

If you teach people things like how to use your subscription databases vs. fruitless Googling, you saved a lot of money over the course of a year. Same thing if you created a UI to make it easier and more effective to use.

What are your org’s strategic goals for this year?
Do you read your org’s press releases? Do you follow their social media?
Do you follow new ad hoc teams that are set up to do things? (Suggest targeted services for them.)
Read between the lines.
For-profit: increasing no. Of products
University: student job-placement rates
Non-profit: Strengthening relationships with partners

Describing the less-measurable:
Ask users why they are asking that question. (Ask nicely.)
What will this be used for? What’s happening to this information next? (Might also help you format the information so it’s most useful. Help you put it into a presentation, inform a team, guide a decision.)

If your deliverable isn’t frictionless, your clients will go elsewhere.

Follow up after high-value research project:
* What difference did the library make for this project? (Even if the answer is bad news, you can ask what you could do better. And you don’t have to put it in your report!)
* What impact did this make for your outcome?
* What would it cost to achieve [your goal] without [our services]?

Look for programming that will help people.

Embed widgets at pain points
Embed content
Curated daily news!

Look for underutilized resources. Promote it to likely users.

Face-to-face contacts. Feed stuff to “ambassadors” of your services.

Use new language:
Describe yourself by outcome, not activity
“We’re here to make you more successful. What do you need?”

Not: We centralize acquisitions, but we save money.