Is Good Enough good enough?

September 2, 2009 · Posted in Best Practices, Libraries, Worst Practices · View Comments

I don’t know, but it’s what I’m thinking about thanks to Jason Griffey

Think about the services in your library, and the amount of effort and resources poured into making your services as good as they can possibly be. What if good enough is really enough, and instead we should be expanding our range of services instead of seeking perfection in any single one? How does that change the way libraries operate?

He cites a Wired magazine article – The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine which he quotes

…it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough…

Aaron Schmidt responded in the comments

This is great, mostly because just yesterday I was thinking about just the opposite! My thoughts aren’t fully formed but my basic line of thinking is that good enough services are probably wholly unremarkable and don’t leave any sort of impression on our users. Doing Things Right (even if we have to do fewer things) with pride and quality, on the other hand, could make libraries stand out and make our users admire us.

I admire and respect both Jason and Aaron, so as a proper little librarian, I hurried off to do some reading to decide if I agreed with either, both or neither of them.Turns out I’m still not certain.

Sometimes good enough is good enough. Insisting on great product can mean you miss the boat, time wise. It can mean you’re so invested in the finished product that you’re resistant to changing it. It could mean you produce a Porsche when a Saturn could produce the same result, getting you from point A to point B.

Let’s say you can spend a lot of time and money developing a new system or product. Since were talking about libraries and it’s timely lets say it’s a new service that helps patrons find a new job. You could insist that you’ve covered all your bases, considered every possible problem, question and need before you make it available. But while you’re doing that there are people who need your help who aren’t getting it. Or you could make it available when it’s good enough. People will have access to a service they need and you’ll learn as you go what needs improvement. Remember holding on to it until it’s perfect doesn’t guarantee you’ll wont run into problems later. In this case, as long as you’re willing to make modifications as you go along, and you should be, it is good enough.

I can also see problems with doing things that are good enough. Patrons who encounter problems and obstacles to their goals may become frustrated and never come back. They wont be around to know when you’ve improved the system or service.

So I’m not sure where the line is. What do you think?

How social media can hurt your library

August 26, 2009 · Posted in Best Practices, Facebook, Libraries, Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Twitter, Worst Practices · View Comments

photo by DCvision2006 on Flicrk

We’ve all seen warnings and stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of status updates or photos on social medial sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

CNN is has a new one with some social networking don’ts

1. Don’t announce interviews, raises or new jobs

2. Don’t badmouth your current or previous employer

3. Don’t mention your job search if you’re still employed

First I think number 2 should include – “or coworkers”, really nothing good can come of that either. But the point I want to add for librarians (library workers) everywhere is

4. Don’t badmouth your customers.

We all get frustrated, we all have bad days, I understand that, but venting on social media sites isn’t the solution and it could cause real problems for your library. Your customers may read what you wrote, they are more tech savvy than you give them credit for. In addition to some old fashioned hurt feelings this can lead to some real problems for your library. They could complain to someone at the library, which means staff will need to spend time dealing with this issue. They could email it all their friends or maybe the newspaper, this is bad PR no library needs. Or they could just never come back, which is contradictory to the mission of libraries, and loosing patrons is never good for libraries. Libraries don’t need bad PR, especially not now when so many are facing funding cuts.

If you don’t care about how it will affect your library keep in mind your boss may read what you wrote, there are endless ways this could happen. I can’t imagine a library manager anywhere being happy that an employee is publicly badmouthing patrons. There are a wide range of outcomes depending on what was said, how the library handles custom service issues, but being fired is a possibility.

Think being anonymous will protect you? think again. Think having a private account will protect you? It might, unless there is a glitch & its made public, even briefly, or until you *friend* the wrong person.

Your best plan is not to put anything online you aren’t prepared for the whole world to see. Just don’t do it. Think twice before you post that next Facebook or Twitter update or write that next blog post.

Additional Reading

Rating 3.00 out of 5

Tags: blog posts, Blogging, Customer Service, customers, Facebook, Libraries, patrons, Social Media, social networks, Twitter

Socialminder = Fail

November 11, 2008 · Posted in Worst Practices · View Comments

I’d like to apologize to anyone in my address book/contact list/ Linkedin network who received and invite from me to Socialminder (no I am not giving them any linky love). I got several invites from friends yesterday. Because my friends are awesome and so well connected, it’s not unusual for us to get beta invites to cool new tools. So this morning I clicked on the link and signed up to check it out, not realizing that somewhere in the process I was spamming all of my contacts. What does Socialminder do? how well does it work? I’ll never know, because thanks to this serious social media faux pas on their part I wont be going back and I wont be encouraging friends to try it out either.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

Tags: apologies, Social Media, social minder, socialminder, spam, Worst Practices