LibraryTechtonics

Christopher Penn, a “civilian” non-librarian, and the brilliant mind behind the likes of PodCamp and FinancialAidPodcast, sent me this Lifehacker post via email.

Ever wish there were a Netflix for Books? Well there is, and BookSwim is its name. You build a queue of books you want to read on their web site, they ship books from your queue, you keep the books for as long as you want, and you return books with pre-paid postage. Their base plan lets you keep 3 books at a time for $20/month, while their biggest and baddest premium plan costs $36/month for 11 books at a time. With over 150,000 titles, BookSwim looks like a promising service for the bookish sort.

Are libraries with the size, labor, and financial resources doing this? Can libraries do this? Will libraries do this?

Granted, when LibraryPlanet posted about Book Swim a ways back, the “obvious” was pointed out:

BookSwim – paid membership required. Public library – no membership required. BookSwim – unlimited “rentals”. Public library – unlimited “rental” (return by due date – usually 30 days). – Derek Punsalan

and

Or you could, you know, go to your local library. They might not have 150,000 titles, but that’s what interlibrary loan is for. – Brad Linder

That said, back in May of 2007, Book Swim is still around, and being pimped by Lifehacker, a popular blog of all things easy life, as recently as August 22.

And, while people can get videos and DVDs at the library, usually for free or for a much smaller fee-per-”rental” than a monthly Netflix subscription, there are still hordes of Netflix subscribers, with more subscribers everyday.

I think what’s being missed by libraries here is the user culture. Users like it easy, convenient, and with the fewest penalties possible. Delivered directly to their door or desktop makes it priceless. It’s just not as easy as saying, “You can do that at the library, you know,” or “It’s free at the library.” Our services don’t fit the behaviors of these non-standard patrons, so we are irrelevant to them unless we offer something similar to what they already know and like.

I don’t know that libraries as institutions have the infrastructure to handle any sort of paid user subscription model, but I could totally be wrong. Then, yes, there is the cost of postage, labor, packaging, etc. And then there’s adding a new process and business style to the library. I recognize that it’s not without it’s obstacles, and I’ve heard the many arguments against it before. I also recognize that we’re already implementing these ideas, in various ways: reserve online, in person, on the phone, we’ll call you when it’s ready. But really, it’s just not the same.

So, I ask: What would be a way for libraries to take advantage of this very successful model, that people are willing to *pay* for to get what they want and the convenience of getting it? Could it make us some money? Would it be good enough to bring in the Netflix/Book Swim crowd?

Once again, my apologies for not having comments turned on. The move to WordPress and a much easier comment management system are slow on my end for various reasons, so it’s my bad. However, I’m glad to add trackback links to this post, or any comments people want to send in email, until I’ve got the blog all sorts of really happy and functional again.

Just last night, a patron came to the desk and asked, “Do you know of any good places to search for plane flights online?”

As a matter of fact I do, my friend.

I’ve been a big fan of Kayak.com ever since some friends of mine recommended it to people coming in from out of town for their wedding. This travel metasearch culls through different airline and travel search sites to help you find flights, hotels, rental cars, and cruises. An account on this free service can can store customized searches complete with alerts, a log of past searches, your home airport, and preferred airlines, which makes searching very easy if you come back often. Once you find your desired travel choice, clicking on a link will take you to the site where you actually book and pay for your chosen options.

The service is very easy to use, and even with so many search options, it’s pretty streamlined and intuitive. I showed the patron how to use the search, inputing the home airport, the destination airport, and the dates of travel, and he said, “Wow, you did all the work, now all I have to do is find the flight.” It is that simple, but there are also enhanced features to the site that help you refine your search, like widgets that let you specify the time spans of when you want land going and coming, adding area aiports to your search, the number of stops, and tweaking your travel dates and times. Other features include a matrix view of all of your flight options (a la, say, Orbitz or Travelocity), a graph to show you the prices over a period of time to help you time when you buy, popular sales and travel destinations, and prefab searches for major cities across the globe (on the bottom of the home page).

And those are just the toys for the airline flights. The hotels search uses Google Maps to map out the hotels and their proximities to each other and places of interest (you can even input an address of your choice and go from there), and you get details about each property as though you were looking directly at the hotel site. Car rental searching is just as easy.

The patron periodically had questions, but usually by the time I walked over to help, he’d figured it out. I was able to answer questions about how etickets work, travel insurance, how to pick out seats, and how airlines vary in their policies. A few other patrons came up to the desk as I was discussing the etickets with the patron, and they said, “Wow, this really *is* Information! Who knew you guys knew all this stuff!”

Now they know.

As if I didn’t love Kayak.com already, a theme for a recent weekly newsletter was “Novel Trip Ideas,” like visiting Dickens’ London and staying in A Room With a View in Florence. Too cute. It’s definitely worth checking out. Heck, it would make a cool library program series: get a bunch of widely-traveled patrons together, have them give presentations, include a mini lesson on sites like Kayak.com, travel reservation tips (especially for online booking), and show of your travel book collection while perhaps having the traveling presenters talk about which books, sites, and people recommendations helped them plan their trips. If you do it, let me know, I’d love to hear how it goes!

For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been working on an exciting project that came to Reading Public Library around about the beginning of July. Figures I’d be writing about it just as it’s going to end, but better late than never!

My friend Jason Haas, who is working with The Education Arcade over at MIT, approached me about possibly bringing a project to the library involving teens generating news content for sharing online. It sounded promising and exciting, although the timeline was going to be really tight: the initial meeting with Jason, Scot Osterweil, our director Ruth and my supervisor Lorraine was on June 28, and the program start date was set for July 16, the height of summer reading program season.

But the project was just too exciting to pass up, so we went for it. The goal was for each teen, or group of teens, to produce a local news story that had a national context, as well. The competition was limited to teens who live or go to school in Reading, going into 9th grade through 12th grade, but the content type for submissions was wide open: photo essays, podcasts, videos, articles, you name it. If it could be shared on the web, it was an eligible format. In partnership with NBC, MIT would provide resources such as hardware, mentorship, and anything else the competitors needed. They also arranged for office hours as well as workshops with Kathy Abbot, a producer at NBC in NYC. Every teen who submitted an entry received a $25 iTunes gift card, and the grand prize (which will be announced on Monday, August 13) is a trip to 30 Rock to see the NBC studios and meet NBC staff.

For serious, kids. And it was just Reading, MA.

We knew it might be tough to bring in kids during the summer without the help of school, so the media blitz began as soon as possible. The initial press release went out the week before the program started, and was published in the local papers, as well as the July 12 issue of the library’s Off The Shelf newsletter (scroll down to see the “What’s Your Story?” article) and via the high school student and parent email list, with their permission. We also posted flyers at all of the local teen hangouts, and a slide version of the flyer on the local cable channel bulletin board, not to mention tons of word of mouth marketing. I even sent out a special message to the Netguides.

Our efforts were well rewarded: 30 people attended the information session on July 16, and 13 kids signed up on the spot, which was more than we anticipated. Several more students signed up after the general meeting, which took sign-ups to 18.

After that first meeting, the program really took off. The schedule and communication guidelines were firmed up and published in the July 19 issue of Off The Shelf (scroll down to the “Report It Now! Mit-Nbc Journalism Competition - Sign Up By Monday, July 23″ article), and everyone participating in the competition was added to a secret Facebook group (it sounds more mystical than it is, it was really to protect the privacy of the minors in the group), which was used as the online home base for the competition. The NBC staff interacted with the kids in Facebook, as well as through the meetings at the library, one of which was actually facilitated via iChat, since the producer wasn’t able to make it because of official producer business. Topics ranged from obesity and eating disorders to Habitat for Humanity projects and much more. It was impressive to see how seriously the kids took the project, but also to see how much fun they were having creating their news.

For the most part, the kids who produced video were able to film with their own video cameras and edit with either iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, nothing more sophisticated was required. Truthfully, those are the tools the teens use for their school projects, so it wasn’t a huge learning curve for them. What really seemed to be most helpful were the office hours, the meetings with the producer, and the Q&A on the Facebook group.

The projects were due in this past Monday, August 6, at 6pm, at which point there were 7 submissions from 10 participants (there were several groups and several individual projects). We’re currently in the judging phase, where the MIT and NBC crews are reviewing the projects. On Monday, August 13, someone from NBC will be here to present the winners, and we’ll get to view and talk about the projects. I’m hoping to make it a public viewing, but as with many a quick-lined project, we’re still working on that part.

The Netguides program I started back in February is doing really well. We’re averaging about 8 appointments a month, which isn’t too shabby, and many of the participating patrons will make a next appointment request after their first. I’ve also set up a few patrons on a recurring appointment cycle, which 5-6 regular weekly appointments in a row, with the intention to reassess their skills at the end of the cycle, and decided how to proceed with regular appointments going forward.

The Netguides themselves are awesome. They really have immense patience, and they really want the patrons to learn. The volunteers are also very honest and open with their evaluations of the patrons they work with, which has been really helpful in assessing their needs and helping them with trouble spots.

Some of the weak spots in the system have had to do with scheduling. Wrangling teens, as you may know, is a little like herding wet cats. Overall, the system works well:

1. I have a chart that tells me what days and times students are available which matches the chart on the appointment request bookmark, which is what I use to match them up with an appointment.
2. I set a tentative appointment on the Netguide side *first*, to guarantee a volunteer’s availability, and pop it into the calendar in the Yahoo! Group marked TENTATIVE.
3. I call the patron and offer them the date and time (if the patron is not home, I leave a message asking them to call; only then do I give them the details, which forces them to call).
4. If all goes well, I can mark the calendar appointment as CONFIRMED, and the Netguide knows to come in. If an entry is marked TENTATIVE on the day of the appointment, they know not to come in.

However, the problem seems to be with getting patrons to call back. I can email the Netguides, they all check email regularly. Most of the patrons, naturally, don’t have email addresses, because they don’t really know how to use them. This bit makes the scheduling process time consuming, and causes a lot of back and forth from the patron to the Netguide and back again. My Super Volunteer Marie does a lot of work helping out with the schedule, but still, it’s exhausting for us both.

After talking it over with my supervisor, I have a new plan (I love talking to my supervisor, she’s wicked smart and an awesome problem solver). We meant to have drop-in hours scheduled for the Netguides before, but that didn’t work as well as I’d planned. Several of the kids opted for the minimum 2 hours per month, with the potential to maybe work 4 hours, which meant that I could only really use them for 1 class or 2 appointments, but not both. And I know that, at least for now, 12 kids is really the max I can manage and still do all the other things I do at the library, so adding personnel is not the answer.

So, the new plan is:

• Up the minimum monthly requirement to 3-4 hours per month, to solve the not enough hours covered problem without increasing my volunteer load. This shouldn’t be a problem for most Netguides, since many opted for anywhere from 4-10 hours a month. If it is a problem, I can reserve those Netguides as class assistants, and that can be their monthly schedule.
• Schedule everyone for regular hours every month, so that each Netguide has a *set* schedule, like, say, every Tuesday night from 7-9p, or every other Saturday from 10a - 12p. This gives everyone a little more certainty of scheduling, including me, and allows me to make a set schedule several months at a time.
• Offer patrons time slots in the range that the Netguide shifts happen. That way, Marie and I can fit the majority of appointments into prefab slots when we know someone will already be scheduled for a shift. We can still offer the “Other times” option to people, but this will make the appointment process way less painful and exhausting.

I think it’ll be a vast improvement, so I’m very optimistic.

I’m also making some serious changes to the regular class schedule. Now that we have the Netguides to cover very basic topics (basic computing & internet, Office applications, etc.), I won’t be offering most of them on the schedule anymore. The basic topics really work best on a one-to-one level, anyway, and it leaves the schedule open for the more in-demand stuff and more interesting, progressive topics.

To test the waters on whether this is the right direction, I put out a SurveyMonkey survey (linked from the library home page), that I also printed out for people who aren’t so good with computers. This allows patrons to get their 2 cents in before I finalize the schedule.

My current draft schedule has the patron faves on it: Getting Started with eBay; Geek Out, Don’t Freak Out: Digital Cameras; Excel: Formulas, Formats, & Sorts; Word: Tables & Images; and other stuff. But then I’ve also planned for a few new and interesting things, like how to download free audio books via Podiobooks and sites like it; and a 3 class series for digital pictures, including a Geek Out for digital cameras, a class on downloading and editing, and a class on sharing photos using email, photos sites, and cute widgets that do cool things online. The schedule is still a draft, and doesn’t go public until after the survey results come in, so I still have space for changes.

I am a little worried about how the patrons will take the shift from basic stuff in a class environment to basic stuff one-on-one. To be honest, the basic and beginner classes always filled with the same people, and they sign up for the classes before anyone else can, so it’s hard for anyone else to get in. All the same, I’m wondering if people will just say, “Yeah, but when is the *class*?” or “When are *you* teaching it?” or even “I don’t really want to make an appointment, can’t you just tell me when someone will be here teaching it?” I think it’ll be a matter of education, on the site, at the desk, on the schedule, in the newsletter, everywhere we can. Besides, how much better does it get than making your own class at the library, right?

Overall, I think the Netguides + classes formula has been fabulous, and I think it will continue to be successful, especially with the changes I have planned. I’ve given the Netguides a hiatus for September, so that we can figure out schedules, have meetings to check in on skills and such, and recruit/train and/or refresher train as necessary. Besides, we need to make room in there somewhere for a pizza party or two!