PLA Blog

This was a discussion forum Monday morning primarily attended by Collection Development managers of various public library systems. Discussion topics were proposed by attendees as they introduced themselves, and floating collections was one of the big topics. Several libraries had implemented floating (including mine), and we were able to share some best practices. Other topics included AV vendors and downloadable media. Recommended e-mail discussion lists were

publib http://lists.webjunction.org/publib/

Urban Libraries’ list (must be a member of Urban Libraries Council) http://www.urbanlibraries.org/join/index.html.

While I was occasionally able to share information about my library system, this forum wasn’t useful for branch staff, such as myself, who are more interested in sharing best practices of day-to-day collection maintenance and development. When I asked about a better forum for such discussion, I was referred to the publib discussion group. After the session, I was able to connect with a few other attendees who were like-minded, and we are planning on sharing weeding guidelines, training, etc.

This session on Sunday afternoon was a discussion forum sponsored by the RUSA-MARS division of ALA. It’s subtitle was “Best practices for managing and serving public computer users.” The facilitators created a list of questions to promote discussion that fell into 3 broad categories: technology, patron behavior & needs, and policy. 

Technology questions focused on whether you offered automatic or manual sign-up, commercial or homegrown solutions, guest logins or not, wireless access, and Microsoft Office or other productivity software. Patron behavior/need questions focused on how patrons login, what they do on the computers, how long they stay, with what do they need the most help, what services do they request that you don’t offer, and are there questions about the priority of one patron’s tasks over another’s. Policy questions focused on levels of access, ability to download files and software, whether or not you filter/block some sites, policies for problems with patron behavior, and policies about priority of patrons’ computer tasks.

We were seated at round tables and discussed the answers to these questions with folks at our table. Near the end of the session, we reported on our table discussions to the larger group. While the discussions were useful in some cases, it was up to each individual to jot down any ideas for use back at his/her home system. From the title of the session, I had thought that I would be given a handout with best practices to take hope with me. My library system already has automated sign-up for computers and several policies in place for dealing with many of the issues that came up so perhaps other librarians found this session more helpful.

Today I had the pleasure of watching the author/actor/mother/multi-tasker/closet organizer Jamie Lee Curtis speak at the PLA President’s Program. She made all the room laugh with her hilarious jokes (she offered to organize everyone’s closets) and saved the best for last, a storytime from her latest book, Big Words for Little People.

(picture taken by Laura Kortz)

Yesterday I attended a wonderful PLA Program titled “Early Literacy Training for Child Care Providers: A Proven Program for Success.” The program was presented by Elaine Czarnecki, Dorothy Stoltz, and Connie Wilson, all of Carroll County Public Library in Maryland. The three discussed their project with local caregivers with assessment results, training design and development and handout examples. For the full report, visit www.library.carr.org .

PACs in the Library 2.0 World (PLA)

This session was a panel consisting of four presenters, each addressing a different aspect.

Ross MacLachlan of the Phoenix Public Library
Endeca: Developments in the OPAC World

The Phoenix Public Library uses Endeca because:
it is a search engine
it harvests data
it enables guided navigation
it is commerce driven
it is API-based

They wanted their site to be:
customer-centric not librarian-oriented
easy to use with not a lot of halls to go down

They have been able to:
Integrate Endeca data with bibliographic data
Integrate Endeca data with library data
Integrate Endeca navigation API

They opted to adopt BISAC (Book Industry Standards And Communications) and abandon Library of Congress subject headings because it:
Facilitates browsing
Is hierarchical (LC is not entirely hierarchical with its comma and dash conventions)
Take advantage of order records that come with BISAC headings
Is configurable in Endeca

Within the first 3 months, circulation increased 15%, web traffic increased by 27%. In a post-implementation study, the site received a 92% approval rating.

——

Grace Lillevig, Harris County Public Library, Houston, Texas
PAC 2.0 Patron Reviews

Patron reviews are available on almost all other sites (retail, social, etc.). Lillevig presented four options for adding patron reviews to a library website.

1. Blog
Often used for staff-generated reviews only because an account is required
Easy to set up
example: Madison Public Library. Patron role: comments only.
example: Seattle Public Library Shelf Talk. Patron role: comments only.

2. Wiki
Includes content from users
Easy to set up
Open, closed, or moderated
example: Palo Alto City Library. Patron submissions are moderated before being posted.
example: East Bonner County Library. Patron submissions are posted directly.

3. Custom database
Time, money, and expertise required
Customizable
example: Denver Public Library. Patron submissions are moderated before being posted.
example: Harris County Public Library. Patron submissions are moderated before being posted. Uses PERL. Book reviews, movie reviews, and Spanish reviews are all kept separate on the site.

4. Commercial options
May integrate directly into catalog
Some include content from other sources/libraries
Sometimes less control and/or moderation
example: Chilifresh.com. Has some (but not a lot) of content so far (still building).
example: Aquabrowser My Discoveries
example: Evanced Solutions Summer Reader. This product is completely separate (does not integrate with PAC) and is staff moderated.

Things to consider:
Moderation
Staff time
Cost
Customization
Usability

——

Kitty Little, Queens Library
Language and Access

Globalization means that you must know who your customers are.

Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the US, which has a big impact on everything they do. The Queens Library PAC has multiple skins for the site in multiple languages, created by staff fluent in those languages. The Ann Arbor District Library PAC is available in multiple languages but use machine translation instead. They have a suggestion tool for fixing translations but have received none in the six months the languages have been available.

The Queens library uses MARC 880 fields (support vernacular). They also use BISAC and are happy with it. Spanish language subject headings are native in their catalog.

——

Amy Cantu, Ann Arbor District Library
Blogging the PAC: Staff Training and Buy In (PDF)

(department heads, etc.). The AADL site went live in 2005 and is one big blog, pulled from a variety of specifically focused blogs (director’s blog, library news, etc.). All staff are invited to blog, and some are required to. Staff may blog using their staff account (real name) or separate blogging account (name of choice, many use a cute pseudonym).

Make it relevant:
Media mentions
Local events
Hot and new
Staff interests

Make it Fun:
By-lines and beats
Informal style -ok to have a personality, ok to be controversial
Tagging
Comments

Make it simple:
Easy input - Drupal (very robust open source software)
Few rules
No worries

Most comments are made on the director’s blog and the teen gaming blog. They’ve received ~20,000 comments in 3 years. They haven’t had problems with spam or inappropriate comments. Staff were very concerned about cursing/etc. in comments but it’s not been a problem at all.

——

Answers to attendee questions:

TLC is the reseller of Endeca for libraries (much more affordable than retail price). Being a development partner can also decrease the initial cost.

At HCPL, a staff member reviews every single review submitted. Summer reading reviews are so numerous it’s a full-time job to moderate, which is a considerable cost in staff time.

The Phoenix Public Library has integrated reviews and ratings from Amazon (free) and Rotten Tomatoes (fee) into the catalog but you have to click through to those sites to add your own (so not completely integrated).

——
I found this session interesting and informative, but it was not necessarily the information I was expecting. I’d like to learn more about how libraries are making their PACs more 2.0-y in the sense of hacking/altering their ILS to integrate tags, user content from social media sites, allowing patrons to integrate their library accounts with their accounts/content from social media sites, etc. Much of this information relates more to the library website than the PAC specifically. Still, I learned a lot and thought this was a very valuable session.

This year’s Caldecott/Newbery Banquet was one of the best I’ve attended. The speeches were awesome and the entire night was delightful.

Karen Breen, 2008 Caldecott chair, presented the Caldecott Honor:

• to Laura Vaccaro Seeger for First the Egg, published by Roaring Brook Press/Neal Porter Books
• to Kadir Nelson for Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story of the Underground Railroad, written by Ellen Levine, published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic
• to Mo Willems for Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity, published by Hyperion Books for Children/Disney Book Group
• to Peter Sis for The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, published by Frances Foster Books/Farrar Strauss Giroux

Breen presented the 2008 Caldecott Award to Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic.

Selznick began his speech as he began the book, with a stunning visual delight, taking us on a journey to Paris where a young man lay asleep until the phone startled him awake. Selznick’s illustrations (created especially for this occasion) were displayed on the big screen with dramatic musical soundtrack. The illustrations told the story of Selznick being informed that he would receive this award, with Hugo representing Selznick, traveling from Paris back to the very Hilton where we sat watching. Here Randolph Caldecott rode by on a horse in a flurry of excitement, and that image of the iconic award namesake became the medal on the cover of Selznick’s book. Bravo!

Several years ago, Selznick was feeling dissatisfied with his work when he had the opportunity to meet Maurice Sendak, who informed Selznick that he hadn’t come close to reaching his full potential. Selznick undertook an unofficial apprenticeship to Sendak, unbeknownst to the master. Selznick also found inspiration in the work of Remy Charlip, the author and illustrator of one of Selznick’s childhood favorites, Fortunately. Selznick had the good fortune to meet and become friends with Charlip, and they had many discussions about books and art and movies. Selznick says that beautiful little coincidences inspire his work, one of which is that Charlip turned out to also be a fan of Meliese’s Trip to the Moon, a great source of inspiration to Selznick.

Selznick had a flash of inspiration, desiring to make a book that read like a movie, as Where the Wild Things and Fortunately do. The secret, he says, is in the page turns - only the reader can move the story forward.

Selznick reminded us that, regardless of anything else, of the fanfare of these awards, kids want good books and that’s what we as librarians are in the business of doing.

——

Nina Lindsay, chair of the 2008 Newbery committee, presented the Newbery Honor:

• to Christopher Paul Curtis for Elijah of Buxton, published by Scholastic Press, a division of Scholastic
• to Jacqueline Woodson for Feathers, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons
• to Gary D. Schmidt for The Wednesday Wars, published by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin

Lindsay presented the Newbery Award to Laura Amy Schlitz for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, illustrated by Robert Byrd, published by Candlewick Press.

Schlitz was visibly overwhelmed by the thrill of the evening, but delivered her eloquent, witty speech from memory. She is a storyteller and held the audience in the palm of her hand the entire time.

I so enjoyed this evening, much more than I have some past years. It was my pleasure to listen to these two master storytellers, as different as they are brilliant.

In the past two days I’ve attended two presentations, spanning six hours, on The Catalog. In that time, no one talked about one of my major concerns: users can’t search for the articles in our collection, which means they can’t find them withuot our help. Perhaps this is such a big issue that it’s not worth mentioning, or maybe it’s so small that no one else cares, or maybe it’s just a dead issue and I should stop caring. Or maybe the panelists have never worked reference.

Anyway, that’s why it was such a pleasure, last night over dinner, to talk to someone who works for one of the larger serials/database vendors.

Me: How are librarians as negotiators?

Not bad. Some better than others. But many are surprisingly good.

Me: Has anyone really impressed you? Not just as a negotiator, but as someone who’s just really smart and informed about what patrons want.

Rick Anderson at Utah. Mark Sandler at CIC. Beth Bernhardt at UNC Greensboro. And there are a lot of really smart people at the California Digital Libraries.

Me: What do you think about open access?

No effect. What really matters right now are consolidation and consortia and everyone’s shrinking budgets. It’s harder and harder for anyone to make money.

Me: Which vendor has the best patron-focused database interface?

Reed Elsevier’s Scopus is really nice. Not that anyone uses it, or any of the competitors’ interfaces for that matter. Nor should they. Google’s better than any of them and it’s what people use to find articles. Then it’s just a question of accessing them.

When I first arrived at the Conference, I purchased a 5-day pass for the Anaheim Resort Transit bus.  Now I’m experiencing a mild case of buyer’s remorse because EVERYTHING is within walking distance and the weather is absolutely GLORIOUS.  This morning I walked 6 blocks to my first meeting and I barely broke a sweat.  If I were back home in the land of humidity (Florida), I would have passed out after only half a block and my hair would be a big frizzy mess.  Now I understand why people pay so much money to live in California.  It is truly heaven on earth.

This session discussed community spaces created in certain libraries, and how the vision of spaces in the library has changed over the past several years. This manifests itself not only in interior spaces but the exterior of the library as well. This program really suffered from the lack of handouts since the first 2 speakers had some really good comments that I’m not sure I can quote accurately, nor do I know how to spell their names. (Yes, they might be listed in the program guide, but really, why should I have to look it up? They should have had their names listed on the PowerPoint presentation or on a paper handout. The whole issue of handouts is for another post!)

The first speaker was Jeffrey Shearer, and he commented that library buildings have moved from being “an artifact of grandness” to more flexible structures. He spoke of the trend toward creating warm and inviting libraries and that communities want to create a sense of place in their libraries, and they want to have an emotional connection to them. Shearer noted some of the ways in which libraries can create a sense of place are to:

• Understand the nature of your community
• Understand adjacency to places where people want to be
• Create distinct areas in your building but make sure they flow into other areas and fit in with the building as a whole
• Learn social distinctions and the use of space in your community

The next speaker was Jeffrey Hoover who spoke about what draws people to libraries. He noted that, in the past, people were drawn primarily by quality collections and secondarily by interesting events or compelling spaces. Now however, these three are much more equal at drawing people into the library. He stated that ’spaces need to support meaningful, delightful, repeatable experiences’, and “businesses must organize memorable events for their customers.” When planning spaces, they need to support different types of activities, from an isolated, individual activity to participatory activities.

We also need to consider the shape of the space and types of enclosure since a “difference in shape denotes special spaces.” A large space implies an area for impersonal interaction while a small space implies an interpersonal exchange. A low ceiling gives the space an intimate feel while high ceilings feel more formal. Hoover also spoke about the importance of light (natural, artificial, task appropriate) and some contrasting darker areas and having various types of chairs that patrons can move. It was very interesting that none of the presenters or panel speakers thought that signage was really necessary since your space should be intuitive.

The rest of the program was devoted to interactive voting on our part. We were shown pictures of various spaces in libraries designed/built by the panelists or their library systems. We were given about 4 usage choices for each space and had to vote on our first impression about the usage of the space. The voting was a neat way for us to be involved. However, instead of the presenters having a dialogue with the audience about the results of the voting, they primarily talked to each other about whether the results fit their perception of the spaces or not. In fact, when I made a comment that in many cases, the use choices we made (we could only choose one) didn’t mean that we didn’t think the space wasn’t also appropriate for the other choices, one of the speakers got on my case. Some of us were left wondering whether the session was for the presenters or for the audience! And I never did figure out what the subtitle of this session meant.

This session was on Saturday and was sponsored by ALA’s Office of Literacy & Outreach Services (OLOS). They have created a draft toolkit document that they hope will help libraries better serve our aging populations. The presenter solicited feedback from the audience about material that should be added to the document to make it more useful. She also mentioned that the RUSA division of ALA is approving guidelines at this conference for service to older adults, and these will be posted on their website after the conference. OLOS is also creating a website from which they will offer links to resources for working with older adults. In addition, they are starting a discussion group for this topic, and the first meeting will be at ALA Midwinter 2009.

Early in the session there was a discussion about what terminology to use when serving our older population. There are basically 3 groups of older adults: frail elders, active elders, and baby boomers; each of these groups has different needs and interests. This session was primarily a venue for sharing ways that libraries can facilitate lifelong learning for these groups and make the library relevant to their lives. Some libraries offer books by mail, deposit collections, Wii gaming, computer classes, large print and audio collections. Many other ideas were shared for potential ways to improve/offer service to older adults:

• Offer interpreters, loop systems, microphones or real-time captioning during programs since many older adults suffer from some level of hearing loss
• Have a wheelchair or scooter available for them
• Teach staff to be aware of the possible need for assistance when older adults visit
• Evaluate the height of everything, especially signage
• Evaluate the amount and placement of seating–often older adults must wait for their ride
• Make sure book drops are reachable by driver within the vehicle
• Tap into baby boomers talents to help redesign library facilities and/or services
• Offer culturally relevant and local historical documents in large print
• Use larger font size on all your print materials and your website
• Partner with local organizations already offering senior services–offer to showcase materials on topics for which they already do programming or piggyback on other community events
• Offer library card campaigns at senior centers, retirement communities, etc

In addition, several ideas were offered for successful programing for older adults:

• gardening, travel, or genealogy
• computer/technology training (how to use a cell phone too)
• book signings by local authors
• revisiting local history
• oral history projects
• gaming programs (for social interaction as well as physical activity)