Similar Posts:

• Do You RSS?
• What Do You Think Libraries Will Look Like in 2015?
• Do you know what information is?

The fabulous Buffy Hamilton gave her Pivot Points of Change presentation at my library’s Staff Day last week.  The points were inspired by post from Seth Godin in which he states changing everything is too difficult. Buffy applied this to libraries and librarians for the 9 pivot points of change.  This is a slightly modified version of  her original 9 pivot points of change for school librarians.

1. Instead of thinking you can only participate in face to face conferences, consider how you can participate virtually
2. Keep your traditional means of connecting with patrons and colleagues, but innovate at every possible touch point through social media and social networking
3. Keep reading your print journals, but use a feed aggregator or information portal to access and organize your favorite blogs, journals, podcasts, youtube videos, and twitter rss feeds to stay on the cutting edge
4. Keep networking with colleagues face to face, but cultivate a personal learning network to broaden your PLN (Personal Learning Network) to include librarians and other professionals from around the world who can inform your thinking, practice, and philosophy
5. Keep your traditional productivity tools, but use cloud computing to encourage collaboration and information sharing
6. Continue sharing your library program goals and reports through traditional formats, but also compose these in a different format, such as a mindmap, video, or other multimedia/visualization medium
7. Keep your traditional services and materials, but expand those services and “containers” of materials to reflect patron needs
8. Keep positing literacy as a primary focal point of your library program, but expand that definition of literacy to include new media literacy and information literacy as mainstream literacies equal in importance to traditional literacy.
9. Keep your traditional sources of authoritative information, but let the research topic and mode of research guide the integration of social media information sources and tools for delivering that content in your subject guides

Similar Posts:

• Pivot Points for Change
• Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go
• The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

Andy has put together a list of 5 Universal Truths That All Librarians Can Agree Upon Right Now.

1. Perception of information is changing
2. Literacy is changing
3. Libraries are now part of greater information chorus
4. Communication is our friend
5. The underlying philosophies of the library have not changed

I like the focus on the positive and of course I want to know – do you agree?Similar Posts:

• Top Ten Links 2.3 – All About Ebooks
• Top Ten Links Week 10
• Top Ten Links Week 18

Voting ends Wednesday December 18th. Yes even you library people. You’ll find some great new blogs to read and trust me there are names in there you’ll recognize!

The Edublog Award Categories….

1. Best individual blog
2. Best individual tweeter
3. Best group blog
4. Best new blog
5. Best class blog
6. Best student blog
7. Best resource sharing blog
8. Most influential blog post
9. Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
10. Best teacher blog
11. Best librarian / library blog
12. Best educational tech support blog
13. Best elearning / corporate education blog
14. Best educational use of audio
15. Best educational use of video / visual
16. Best educational wiki
17. Best educational use of a social networking service
18. Best educational use of a virtual world
19. Lifetime achievement

Similar Posts:

• Voting for the Edublog Awards is Open
• My Nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards
• Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention

My Nominations for The 2009 Edublog Awards are:

Best individual tweeter – Marianne Lenox and her blog
Best new blog - Emergent by Design by Venessa Miemis
Best resource sharing blog – Librarian in Black
Best librarian / library blog – The Unquiet Librarian by Buffy Hamilton

Deadlines for nominations is Tuesday 8 December!  Then the voting begins, ending Wednesday 16 December! Award Ceremony: Friday 18. So make your nominations today! PS there are more categories than I listed.

Found out about the Awards on Information Wants to Be FreeSimilar Posts:

• Voting is Open for the 2009 Edublog Awards – Go Vote!
• Voting for the Edublog Awards is Open
• Make your own READ poster & Superhero

CC image courtesy of ap. on Flickr

If you’re thinking about transliteracy you almost have to be thinking about the digital divide. What does it mean? Is it real? How will we close the gap?

This New York Times piece Will the Digital Divide Close by Itself? From the Google’s Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age provides a look at and arguments about the digital divide from two different perspectives.

From Jim Steyer, chief executive of CommonSense Media and co-sponsor of the event

“every kid needs to be digitally literate by the 8th grade” and called for a major public education campaign to make that happen. He argued that technology and learning are synonymous and that schools, parents, and kids must get up to speed in the next five years.

On the other hand:

Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix, contradicted him directly, saying it would take well more than five years to bridge the divide.

Mr. Hastings, an avid education philanthropist and proponent of school reforms, argued that at the advent of any new technology — television, cars, even rockets — people get riled up and wring their hands over a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

He said that gaps narrow naturally as the market evolves and prices drop, enabling more people to bring new technology into the home and schools.

Most interestingly:

“We need to shift our expectations,” Mr. Hastings said. “This is a natural part of the evolution of technology.”

If I understand this correctly he is saying that the digital divide is part of an evolutionary process where technology and access to technology will be ubiquitous. I’m not sure I make the connection.

Most importantly:

Failed school reform might point to the need for more efforts outside of the classroom.

This is where libraries need to step in. We need to help students close the digital divide because what that means, what were talking about is the same thing as transliteracy. Becoming transliterate closes the digital divide. If schools can’t or wont, libraries need to step forward. We’ve done it for years with literacy, we need to do it now with transliteracy.

More on transliteracy:

• Libraries and Transliteracy
• Transliteracy group on Ning - there’s a special forum for librarians, but you’re welcome anywhere in the group
• Transliteracy Research Group
• Transliteracies Project

Similar Posts:

• Libraries in a Transliterate, Technology Fluent World #intlib10
• Transliterate Divide – Working Definition
• Why Transliteracy? An Introduction for Librarians – a Tech Talk with Michael Sauers

As always conferences are amazing, stimulating, intense and tiring, but worth every second of it. I was able to talk with so many amazing people, and yet there were so many others I wanted to connect with and didn’t manage to. *More reflection at the end, but for those who want the nitty gritty….

Pulled from notes and tweets – some of my favorite quotes/idea and what I’m thinking about.

• If you could tell the world 1 thing about libraries in 30 secs or less what would it be?
• Good enough is the new perfect
• Lean into your discomfort – change doesn’t happen without discomfort.
• Be clear where your lines are drawn.
• Your librarianly obsession with Star Wars will not endear you to your patrons.
• The future is here its just not evenly distributed.
• Privacy is dead, get over it
• “If I’d asked them what they wanted they would have said a faster horse” – Henry Ford
• “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” Gen. Eric Shinseki
• If we keep identifying with books – libraries are dead.
• We should reward success and failure, punish inaction
• We have more autonomy as college students that we do as adults
• “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage
• Assume everyone is going to be an ally
• Understand what your org hidden org chart is
• Ask for the sale
• When people see something new they think you’re taking away the old, so start with what is staying the same
• 70% of patron interaction occurs remotely.
• Quest to Teen: Are you ever bullied online? Teen: Nope, I’m private, but sometimes my friends annoy me
• 70% overlap btwn teens & boomers. Volunteer 4 xs more & engaged in the issues

Books I’ll be reading -

• Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke–the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific
• The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – this one has been sitting on my to-read shelf for months

Jason Griffey created a wordle from the tweets, take a look at it full-sized it’s awesome.

Griffey's Wordle from IL 2009 Tweets

*I was fortunate on my travels home, I did make it home with only minor delays (comparatively) and missing one bag which showed up 24 hours later, intact. I am grateful I was able to attend and extremely grateful for all the people who talked with me in hallway, coffee shop, sessions halls, exhibit halls, at dinner & coffee, and on the street. I wish we’d had more time to talk. I wish I’d had the nerve to approach more people I only know by name, I’m a little socially awkward. (Once I get to know you, you can’t shut me up) I vow to do better next time. Until then, ciao!Similar Posts:

• Persuasion, Influence & Innovative Ideas
• Emotional Customer Service for Library Professionals – Andrew Sanderbeck
• 10 Reasons You Should Attend Internet Librarian 2011 #IL2011

One of my presentations from Notes from the 2009 Internet Librarian Conference with Erin Downey Howerton

Similar Posts:

• Intergrating Libraries & Communities
• Market yourself market your library – Lori Reed
• Micro Interactions, Conversations, & Customers: Sweet Tweet Strategies

Notes from sessions at the 2009 COMO conference in Columbus GA

Emotional Customer Service

Change exercise – identity crisis, exchange name tags & three facts keep passing along like telephone

How can we use in workplace?
Where is quality control in info exchange?
Importance of communication

Patrons come to lib for more than just books, dvds and info and internet access they call come to feel good
What retail stores will you not go back to?

Think about emotional need of patrons, not just physical need

Thoughts lead to feelings that lead to behavior that lead to events that lead to belief systems

Belief systems can be created upon a lie or by what someone told you

How do we overcome that belief system? Consistent good customer service experience

Is every customer a good customer for our library? Is the customer always right?

Seek first to understand then to be understood – St. Francis

Most times we don’t’ seek to understand we seek to respond
Judging stops the listening process
Our goal is to understand even if you don’t agree with them.
Its not fair – fair is a perception

Empathy – are we empathizing with our patrons
Sympathy vs empathy

Customers who leave angry might never come back or might come back angry

Giving training isn’t enough you need follow up to measure success

Giving instructions often aren’t clear to the other person

Stop asking people if they understand

Your patrons only care what you know when the know that you care

Average adult can only listen for in the morning 7-11 minutes before they mentally leave the room, in the afternoon only 4-7 minutes
3 ways to get them paying attention again.
Get others talking
Do an activity
Get them to laugh

The Customer Experience
• Service is often see as merely task/transaction
• Experience is created by consistently exceeding customer physical and emotional expectations
• Expectations judgment customer make as they do business with you
• Challenges to look at service from outside in what are the customers physical/emotional expectations at each moment of contact/connections

Survey of visits to public libraries
Customers noticed
• Bright lighting
• Colors
• Smells
• Positioning of displays
• Employees present/nonpresent
• Asking for help/not help/too much help
• Employees taking amount themselves
• Space
• Noise
• Checkout lines
• Attitude of employees
• Eye contact
• Acknowledgement of patrons
• Going with patrons vs saying its over there
• Having to wait inline
• Acknowledgement/no acknowledgement in line
• Greeting in leaving

Other patrons have told use they would like this to be a quiet areaSimilar Posts:

• There is something to be said for brand loyalty
• Steven Bell – Design Your Way to a Future Proof Library
• Managers – The Message You’re Sending About Time is Affecting Customer Service

I took my slideshow on transliteracy and turned it into a video.  I was curious about how easy it was to turn a slideshow into a video (its super easy!) so I thought I’d try it.  Most of my presentations aren’t meant to stand alone and so don’t really translate well to video. When I was putting the transliteracy one together I wanted it to be able to stand alone, so I thought I’d give it a try. A little self indulgent I know But anyway here it is.

Learn more about transliteracySimilar Posts:

• Libraries and Transliteracy Slideshow
• Transliteracy is 3D
• KLA Libraries and Transliteracy Presentation