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Business models, marketing, and public libraries

It seems like there is a big focus right now on using marketing and applying a business model to public libraries.  Admittedly I have a little internal prejudice against these things, and was drawn to libraries initially because I was hoping to escape commercialism, trending, and spin.

I have a slightly different perspective now - I feel strongly that focusing on customer service, analyzing patron needs, and promoting and advocating for libraries are essential activities.

But I worry that marketing and business models are too focused on the needs of the majority.

For my non-librarian friends I will post the Library Bill of Rights, which was written by the American Library Association.

Library Bill of Rights

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.
I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.


One of the library's essential responsibilities is providing for the information needs of all patrons, and that includes both the marginalized and the obscure.  Surveys, usage statistics, and comment boxes are great for justifying popular needs, but people who are not library professionals may not understand the value of purchasing resources which are interesting to the very few.  Libraries do not operate under the same motivations as businesses, and should not be answerable for to the same measures of success.

In this economy, while governments are evaluating if libraries are necessary budget expenditures (they are!), the business model is an even more tempting paradigm for assessing worth.  When money is the issue, it makes sense to look through the eyes of people who understand how to make it.  What's the market share of libraries in the business of information?  Is it providing a good return on investment?  There is some interesting research which shows that libraries are indeed a good return on investment, both in academics and at the public level.

To me this is good news, but also beside the point.  To me the library's value rests just as much in it's unpopular services and materials.  Libraries are a place where the unpopular can and should be included.  They are an expression of free speech, not because they are places where the marginalized can go to be heard, but because they are places where the marginalized can go to read. 

Please Take This Important Survey About Privacy

1.  I don't mind that Google knows me better than I know me.
     a) Agree
     b) Disagree

2.  Please indicate your level of fascism
     a) I always follow the recipe
     b) I own a cat
     c) I own a cat, which I dress in clothing
     d) If I had a time machine, I'd go back and fix things real good
     e) Yuppie go home

3. When I search for information I
    a) Talk to my friends
    b) Visit the library
    c) Write a letter to someone important (signed)

4. All the best cars are
    a) Bicycles
    b) Volvos
    c) Red

5.  People like me.
    a) Agree
    b) Disagree

Just go ahead and post your answers to the comments section.  If you don't have the internet, put your answers on a 3 by 5 index card and mail them to me with the box top from your breakfast cereal.

The Future of Reference

Sometimes I look at the possibilities for knowledge in this world and I have to sit down.  Thinking back to when I was a kid, we were starved by today's standards.  I remember being about seven or eight and sitting around with my friends trying to think up bad words.  I think we came up with about four, and some of them were kind of iffy by the standard of the truly offensive.  Ditto with sex, my knowledge in childhood was this cobbled together patchwork of rumor, hearsay and bald-faced lies. These are the most obvious examples where I felt a lack of good information, but there's also the fact that if I wanted to know how tall the president was, I would have to go through a complicated process involving books, magazines, and possibly quite a few adults. 
Now I can simply type "how tall is president Obama" in my Google search box and come up with over a million possible answers.  I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to interact with any hostile natives in the library, and I don't have to shuffle through books or magazine. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a kid nowadays.  Wouldn't you just be so worldly?  If something you didn't know came up, you could just pretend to be texting and secretly Google it on your phone.
So if everyone knows everything, and it's all right there, why do we need reference services? 
One thing this semester's reference class has driven home is that the success of a reference transaction is measured in more ways than just accuracy.  A reference transaction is also an opportunity for patron service, and patrons' needs encompass elements of social interaction, convenience, and discovery as well as just a quick answer.
For a long time libraries were the only information game in town.  Now that patrons can use the internet to answer their own reference questions, we worry that patrons won't need us at all.  Google and other search engines are superior to librarians by more than one measurement.  They are available at any time, answer ready reference very quickly, and are increasingly able to find results for more complex natural language queries.  Users don't have to understand the difference between a subject and a keyword search, and they don't have to deal with any sort of social interaction (including the embarrassment of ignorance or questions of a delicate nature).
So the future of reference has two possibilities.  We can try to out-Google Google.  We can become quicker and more convenient.  We can try to hammer our technology and conventions into a more intuitive and user-friendly shape.  Or we can embrace the ways that we differ. 
Our strength is in our humanity.  Librarians have critical thinking skills.  We have the ability to make judgments about the quality and relevance of resources, and to make reasoned arguments for our choices.  We can see and describe the larger shape of human knowledge (rather than just presenting a list of resources).  We can choose the unpopular and the obscure, serving those who are not looking for the most frequently chosen result.  We can teach.  We're real people, with the potential for developing warm relationships with our patrons.
The fact of the matter is that most patrons don't ask a reference question in order to learn how to research.  The ask because they want to know something, even if they're not sure what that is.  Librarians should not be satisfied with just being Information Service Providers, we should also strive to be Knowledge Facilitators.

But what about when the armageddon comes?

Issues of access and technical skill aside, electronic materials have a huge practical advantage in terms of storage space and use (easier to search for and to search within the text).  As users grow more and more comfortable with accessing electronic information, there seems little reason to turn back to the physical.  While there may be a fondness for print, a sentimentality for the smell of old books and holding a new novel in one's hand for the first time, electronic materials are also growing increasingly user friendly.  Although e-books are not yet be the preferred format for American readers, Anderson provides a short laundry list of necessary improvements such as "instant on-off, no boot-up time, high-contrast, high-resolution, jump instantly to a chapter or bookmark, durability, storage, up to 50 gigs to accommodate multimedia, compatibility with all networks, integrated animation and video, and acceptable digital rights management and intellectual property protection" (Anderson, 2009, p. 75).   Most of those features seem well within the grasp of a few more years of technological development, with the exception of the tall order for acceptable digital rights management.

In the past few centuries, as print became more practical and copyright laws grew to protect not only the work of the creator but the investments of industry, ownership of content has been increasingly divested from the hands of the consumer.  Now that we are returning to a more interactive media culture, precisely which content can be owned is becoming increasingly nebulous.  It seems as though we are on the brink of major decisions which could either change the culture of publishing and producing or could put a price point on each line of text.  Exactly how it will all shake out will be very interesting to watch.  Libraries must not only work to provide the best current access to quality resources, they must preserve that access for the future.  Libraries act as a reservoir of knowledge, holding information to quench the thirst of patrons.  If costs continue to increase, if copyright and ownership tighten down to charge per use, if resources can be taken away or leveraged at the whim of the distributor, libraries could face astronomical costs. 

And what if all our wonderful technological infrastructure goes south?  In a bleak depiction of the collapse of our world due to over population and exhaustion of our natural resources, primarily petroleum, Hecker describes a secular return to the monastic libraries of the dark ages.  He envisions academic libraries, perhaps in conjunction with public libraries, as precious repositories of pre-collapse culture and information.  In his future, library staff will band together to conserve physical materials, which will be the non-renewable resources of the post digital society.  While his dire warnings may never come to pass, it is worthwhile to think of the consequences of digital collapse, as so many other articles speak only of the infinite possibilities of technology.

Anderson, B. (2009). E-book Growth. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 28(1/2), 74-6.

Hecker, T. (2007, July). The Post-petroleum Future of Academic Libraries. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 38(4),

183-199.

A Happy Library

I don't work at a library yet but I am doing this resource building project for a non-profit.

The project was born in a bar, as all good projects are.  I was talking to the program director about wanting to build a cheese library when he said to me "you know, our library is really sad.  Two sad shelves of out dated-books.  It's just really sad."  We started talking about the possibility of me doing some volunteer work and I began to get really excited.  I was in 202 at the time and had visions of building a beautiful database for which I would create a custom classification system to catalog all the wonderful new resources I would find.

Then when I sat down to actually meet with the director and his co-worker, they began to talk about how it wasn't just books they needed, but they wanted to improve the staff culture of resource sharing.  They told me that each staff member had their own go-to resources, but that there wasn't really a practice of sharing those resources with each other.  No problem.  At this point I was taking Web 2.0, and I had wonderful plans to get the staff to build their own wiki, which would be populated with blogs and RSS feeds of their Delicious bookmarks.  I would show them how to set up feed readers, and they would spend their days reading and sharing electronic articles.  They would be so happy!

So next we took a staff survey, and I came to a staff meeting to talk about the results and show off some of my new favorite web tools and resources.  I was able to wow them with some of the possibilities, but the take away was really that while tools and resources were exciting, the staff was not so interested in actually using them.  They voiced the opinion that they would like resources for their clients to use, and that those resources should be electronic.  Fair enough.

Which brings me to where I am now.  We've decided to use a wiki to list electronic, held print items, and recommended off-site print items in four main categories.  Staff and clients will be able to use the wiki to find information for the clients.  We will focus on electronic resources, but will also aim to beef up the print library.  The recommended items will also serve as a wish list for the organization.  

So how does publishing affect this project?  In a broader sense, we are exploring the print versus electronic issue. In order to make this project useful, it will need to be easy to integrate usage of the resources into practices with and by the clients.  There are computers available for clients to use at the organization, but they are mostly in another area of the building.  Clients may not have computer or internet access at home.  While print resources don't require any special equipment, there is concern that items which are lent out will not make it back to the organization.  Will teens (many with literacy issues) sit and read a book in an office building? 

Because we will be purchasing at a low volume, we will not run into the complexity of issues raised in a larger library.  My plate is full with this project, I can only imagine the headache it would be to expand this more basic question into the details of which serials justify a $14,000 subscription.  As librarians and library students we get excited about all sorts of things that the general public doesn't really give a hoot about.  I think that not only must you balance between print and electronic, you must balance between what is practical (what will actually get used) and what is essential to the library's reputation or image.