Empowering Library Users to Work with Digital Media
I have been in awe of the Digital Media Lab at Skokie Public Library since I first heard about it. The Skokie Public Library Media Lab is a space (a whole room!) where patrons can use an amazing array of software and hardware to create digital media. This is the kind of space and service all libraries should be offering patrons to support transliteracy.
Learn more about starting a digital media lap from Richard Kong
Teaching Tech to the Public – Follow up from Internet Librarian
This Those of you who were in my Web 2.0 for patrons presentation might remember a woman in the audience mentioning the classes she teaches at her library. I promised to get with her and share the follow up. I emailed her and found out that Liz Hubert is a Adult Services Librarian at the Barrington Area Library in Illinois
This is the information Liz shared with me.
We do not currently have a wiki or a blog for our patrons, the program is entirely face to face and people can take (or choose not to take!) what they wish. Very shortly, we’re going to be putting videos of all of our classes on our webpage. Those will be linked with handouts so that people can watch the class and follow a written description at the same time.
I choose classes to teach based on the popularity of the service or website, how often I have questions about it at the desk, and how useful I think it will be to our patrons.
I take a very basic approach to all of these classes. Unless I’ve noted otherwise, in each session (usually an hour) I help students set up accounts and show them the basics of the service (for example, I show them everything from friends to walls to account settings in Facebook). Here’s a list of classes I’ve taught.
- Delicious
- Bloglines (we started out teaching Bloglines but we now teach Google Reader primarily)
- Flickr (we showcase this one because we have our local history collection on Flickr-more than 15,000 items)
- Shelfari
- Internet Safety (buying and selling online, scams, junk mail, etc)
- Blogs
- Digital Scrapbooking (we’ve used several services for this)
- IGoogle
- Facebook (account creation and basics)
- Advanced Facebook (account settings and privacy)
- Craigslist/Freecycle/Etsy
- Internet Dating (we’re offering this one with a singles mixer in February)
- Skype/Meebo
- Wikis
- Google: Beyond Searching (Images, Maps, Labs, etc)
- Shutterfly
- Yelp
- Web Media (Pandora, Last.fm, Hulu, Boxee, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc)
- Business Twitter
These classes have really been a hit at my library. They generally fill up right away and there are often wait lists. I do my best to be as casual as possible when I teach them-I want people to feel comfortable asking questions. I have my email and phone number on my handouts so that people can contact me with questions or refreshers. I’m now also offering open sessions a few times a month so that people can come in and ask questions about anything they’re having trouble with.
She said they advertise upcoming classes on Twitter, Facebook, in their newsletter, and plasma screens in the library. Class size is usually 10-12 students at a time, but occasionally as large as 30-40 .
If Your Patrons Continually Use Your Catalog the Wrong Way the Problem Isn’t Them, It’s You
I was reading through an article (Found via What I Learned Today) on The Chronicle of Higher Education website about improving library catalog search functionality, when this comment caught my eye.
The problem is people are trying to use the catalog the wrong way. Instead of a keyword search like on the internet and online databases, the catalog offers something unique– direct access to exactly what you want through a browse or exact search using subject headings, authors, titles. An old idea but it still works–give it a try!
CC image used courtesy of JanneM on flickr
“The problem is people are trying to use the catalog the wrong way.” Wow. Really. Are we really still blaming the patrons for the archaic, non-intuitive functionality of our catalogs? Wake up and smell the musty old books people! If libraries were a business and we were selling books using our catalog we’d have gone bankrupt ages ago. Frankly, if this is the attitude we’re spouting off we are damn lucky if we don’t go out of business tomorrow.
The right way IS the way your customers are using your services. Continuing to insist they use them the way you want them too will only lead to your failure.
Your product is what your customer says it is. If they continually use the catalog the “wrong” way, the problem isn’t them it’s you.
There is a great essay, Somethings Just Don’t Translate, in The Big Moo that illustrates this point from a non-library perspective. A very successful Italian businessman who sells handcrafted housewares decided to expand his business to Washington D.C. Many people came into the store to browse but no one was buying. When he finally approached a woman and asked how she was finding things, she replies that she didn’t understand why he was selling the bud vases in packs of 6 and the water glasses were sold individually. What this customer saw as a bud vase was a drinking glass for people all over Italy. What she saw as a water glass were flower vases in Italy. He changed his definition of the items to meet customers definitions.
If this man had insisted that Americans learn the correct (Italian) uses for these items, do you think he would have been successful? No. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or functional the items are, if customers can’t find what they are looking for, even if it’s right in front of their face, the business will fail.
It doesn’t matter how well organized your collection is, how extensive your services are, if your patrons can’t use them, if they can’t find what they are looking for, you have failed.
Insisting you are right wont make people to search the catalog the *correct* way it, will make them stop coming to the library.
Web 2.0 for Patrons
One of my presentations from Internet Librarian 2009 with Jennifer Koerber, Sean Robinson, Rebecca Ranallo
I’ll be posting an update to this when I hear from Liz.
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- Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies
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