LibraryTechtonics

Thanks a whole lot, Mayor Menino

When the trustees of the Boston Public Library meet next week, they will decline to renew the contract of BPL president Bernie Margolis, in effect firing the man who has preserved and expanded the strengths of the nation’s oldest public library in the face of strained and diminishing financial resources.

Wow, I thought Mayor Giuliani was off his rocker for making ferrets illegal in NYC based on bad information, but this is just about on par on my Man Gone Wild scale. I can totally feel the love for libraries off this guy. >:(

But I thought *I* was your research bitch?!

The company bills itself as a “revolutionary search engine that does your research for you.” A student can ostensibly provide the site with at least 100 words from an outline, class notes, an assignment or just random thoughts. Ten to 30 minutes later you are supposed to get an e-mail notification that directs you to a custom Web page with the results.

“Researchbitch.com will do the research for you, but it will not write the paper,” the company cautions.

OK, OK, Researchbitch.com isn’t all that new (it’s so cute that the URL actually redirects to myresearchbot.com), and it’s not all that serious, especially given the user experience reported by the good folks over at Webware. Seriously, when will kids ever learn that all they need to do is call, email, or stop by the library (or have their parents do it, which I’ve seen too many times to count) and just give a librarian a few keywords to get us started?

Here’s an MSN article on a few of the other social networking sites out there that aren’t Facebook and MySpace.  This article doesn’t cover the full gamut — you’d be amazed just how many there are! — but it’s a nice, light, Saturday post with a nice, light article.

I’ve heard of (and heard good things about) Eons.com before, and we might actually do a program on that service at my library in the spring.

The idea of the Web Innovators Group meetings, or WebInno for short, is to highlight new and interesting web and mobile technologies, and to give people a chance to chat about these technologies while doing a bit of networking. You get 30-45 mins for schmoozing and networking. Then, “main dishes,” chosen sites and services (often start-up companies) get 5 minute time slots to address the entire crowd, and “side dishes,” companies and services available for one-on-one discussions at tables around the room.

During the schmoozfest, I ran into a few of my new media/social tech Twitter peeps, and got the good word from them, and in the process was introduced to Laura, who works for the most interesting service: thisisby.us, based in Allston right near the Harvard Business School. She described the site as “YouTube for writing,” where writers can post their writing for free using a very simple web interface, and pimp their content wares to the world. The fabulous kicker: 50% of the ad revenue goes to the writers posting content to the site, and 10% goes to the people who comment on them. For serious.

According to Laura, the majority of the writers who post to the site are stay at home parents, people who have a day job but want to write, and people who find blogs too difficult to use, but love the simple thisisby interface. That’s not all of the writers, but those are the user groups that stand out. Getting the content out on the web is easy using the social bookmarking links on every content page, a function that pushes tons of traffic to the content. Just goes to show: social bookmarking is great viral marketing! Definitely a site to keep and eye on, I think. I’d love to talk to Laura about whether she’s considered some sort of partnership with, say, NaNoWriMo, for posting people’s novels after the November contest is over.

Because of the wicked crowded nature of the group, and because I chose to hang with my Twitterati pals, I didn’t get to the side dishes. However, the main dishes at WebInno14 were hard to ignore, addressing the entire room. And, well, they left us all hungry.

• Frame Media struck me as yet another flavor of feed aggregator with nothing new to offer.
• GoLoco, a rideshare Facebook application with a good idea, had a really bad business plan: connecting with people for rides is free, but sharing the cost through the application comes with a 10% fee to put the passenger’s money in the driver’s account. On a platform where a Free Gift application was developed because, well, who wants to pay $1 per gift in the native Facebook Gifts application. Who wouldn’t just say, “Hey, can I give you cash when I see you?”
• DesignMyRoom had an interesting concept, but it really didn’t seem a good fit for the target “My First Apartment” hip crowd. It seemed a better fit for the gung-ho DIY home owner, or perhaps as a licensed application to a company like Ikea.

It seemed like they all missed the point of knowing the user, and serving the user. All good ideas, just pointing in the wrong direction when it comes to the business and execution plans.

Libraries can learn from this by not making the same mistake when it comes to services, either in person or online. Spend the time understanding your patron user habits, and the culture of the communities associated with the services, before you spend the time setting something up, whether it’s through a simple survey, a quick-and-dirty focus groups, or just some informal interviews with friendly patrons. Because there’s no sense in setting up a Twitter account to advertise to teens when all they use is Facebook.

Even if this month’s WebInno wasn’t all that exciting in the presentation department, it’s always a valuable experience, even if just for the opportunity to network and ask questions. Are there any web technology or new media freebies happening in your area? Have you ever been? What have you learned?

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.