Not Mutants nor Ninjas nor Turtles, but Teenagers

It's that time of year again. A few new students just showed up on campus along with all those returning for the Spring semester. While we do have our fair share of nontraditional students, we do have a lot of traditional undergraduates. This has me thinking, of course. And what I've been thinking about is how traditional undergraduates are teenagers, even if we don't always think of them that way.

I know I make a big thing about how our students are not us at that age, but consider the fact that I was seventeen when I started college. (I didn't skip any grades or anything. Just the vagaries of the cutoff date for entering kindergarten where I grew up. I've got a December birthday.) This may be atypical, but it's not unheard of even today. Also, you can never forget the fact that their brains are still maturing, even after they turn 20. For most people, until they reach their mid-twenties, they have more in common with teens than they do with us.

We need to act and plan accordingly. I've talked before about the emotional responses of students, and how they really aren't us at that age, but it goes beyond that. We assign books for common read that are tough for adults to get through, program for our own interests, and use vocabulary that may or may not have any traction with this audience. We market to them on Facebook instead of taking advantage of word-of-mouth networks. We forget about their needs and think about how they "should" do this or that, instead of looking at what traditional undergraduates actually do.

I'll admit I don't always hit the mark with our programs and other efforts, but I've learned a lot by watching teen and youth services librarians. That's why I've built graphic novel collections wherever I've gone. That's why I've included gaming in my programming efforts. It's why I've spent so much time in my career building relationships with the students. If you build relationships, you build trust. When you build trust, you have an opportunity to do all the things we academic librarians want to do.

I'm not sure what else to say here, but I want to plead with people to please please please stop treating traditional undergraduates like they have the same reactions and sensibilities that we do. Yes, treat them like adults because they need to learn how to act like adults, but don't expect them to react like adults because they aren't.

You take away the mutant, the ninja, and the turtle, and you've got teenagers. That's exactly what a traditional undergraduate is: a teenager. We need to act accordingly.

Puppy Power!: Therapy Dogs in an Academic Library

I ran a therapy dog event last week. It went so well that this blog post will probably sound much more gushy happy than I've ever sounded, but really - I knocked it out of the park with that event.

In case you aren't aware of this idea, there are lots of college and university libraries that bring trained, certified therapy dogs during stressful times of semester (for my school, the event happened during the week before exams). The point of these events is basically for students to pet and play with the dogs.

How did it go at my library?

IT! WAS! AWESOME!

1. The dogs themselves were fantastic. Some were lap dogs, others wanted to play. All were sweet and gave boatloads of love to the attendees.
2. The volunteers who brought their dogs were wonderful, too. All of them talked to the students - asking their names, majors, where they grew up, etc.
3. The turn out was astonishing. When the dust and dog hair had been cleared, and all the counts counted, I realized that over 10% of the student body had come one or both nights. I was especially happy to realize that most of them were freshmen.
4. I saw, and got to talk to, many students who I've never seen in the library before that event. One student was telling me about his dogs at home, another talked about possibly changing majors. They were in the library and relaxing.
5. The best part? Student reactions. I overheard one student say, "This is the most fun I've had at college." Another clapped her hands, danced a little, and said, "yay!" when she got into the room where we held the event. One student wrote "DOGE" on the sign in sheet as her reason for attending.

I could cite research and talk procedures of running these events all day, but there are others better sources for that kind of information than my blog. If you're trying to get an event like this started at your library, let this post serve as the answer to why these events should be done.

My biggest bias in my work is towards the needs of the students, and bringing therapy dogs in served their needs in spades. Puppy power!

Storytime: You Have to Play to Win, by Cory Eckert

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In grad school, I was going to be a teen librarian. I had no questions about this; it was all I wanted to do. As a result of this absolute certainty, I paid no attention whatsoever to any avenue that might have taught me storytime skills. This meant that I arrived at my first job, serving 0-18 year olds, with a ton of ideas about what to do with the teen program and zero tools in my storytime toolkit. I don't think I had ever even seen a storytime. I had worked in a school library, and done a lot of read-alouds, but even kindergartners aren't that excited about shaking their sillies out in front of all their peers. I had never done a fingerplay, or integrated a puppet into a song. I had never even heard of a flannel board, much less a draw and tell story. One thing I sort of intuited from what I was reading on the internet, and that you may not know, is that storytime is not just reading books out loud.*

Beyond that, want to know what storytime really is? It is a non-stop workout that involves keeping the attention of 10-100 toddlers while integrating early childhood development material, language awareness, body movement, and music, all while making it seem like so much fun that kids don't notice they're learning. In the beginning, I did not do any of this. I just read books out loud and sang (stiltedly, self-consciously) a couple of songs. The songs had to be tied to the theme, and there had to be a booklist on a parent handout that showed what Every Child Ready to Read skill it all related back to, etc. Kids did not really have fun at those storytimes. Nor did I, nor the parents.

The turning point for me was when a mom told me that her daughter, who never participated in shaking her sillies out during storytime, sung the song to her baby sister at home. This is how I began to understand that the way in which kids are learning at storytime cannot be measured by the metrics I was trying to use. This gave me room to loosen up, stop taking myself so seriously, and get comfortable in my skin. This might seem counterintuitive coming from someone who is always on about how misunderstood youth services librarians are in the profession, and how we don't just play but instead work very hard. It's not really counterintuitive. Babies and toddlers learn by playing, so we have to play with them.

We're not school. Part of why kids and parents voluntarily come back again and again, and make connections with us personally and as an institution, and champion us in voter campaigns, and tell their friends how great we are, is precisely because we're not school. In order to teach during storytime, I had to give up on the whole teaching idea and embrace the idea that we are creating an experiential whole literacy time, where kids learn all kinds of physical and social skills by playing and doing, and I have to play and do to get them comfortable. This comes out in all sorts of ways: not reading a book all the way through (which teaches parents who might have limited literacy skills that talking about a book also builds print motivation), abandoning songs when kids aren't into them, singing to random strange kids in the grocery store line to learn to go outside my comfort zone, and more. This letting it all out in front of a crowd is a muscle I have to develop, even as an extrovert. It goes against everything we're socialized to do, as educators, as women, as grown-ups. As such, it's been really good for me. I credit three year olds with being my favorite life mentors (Also, my favorite humans. The feeling is mutual).

From Saroj Ghoting, “According to the National Institute of Child Health and Development, early literacy is defined as 'what children know about reading and writing before they actually learn to read and write. To clarify, early literacy is not the teaching of reading. It is building a foundation for reading so that when children are taught to read, they are ready.'” Of course we build this foundation deliberately, and want to be taken seriously within our profession for how much work goes into it. Of course we want parents (and other patrons) to know that we educate ourselves in this practice extensively, so that they don't think we can be replaced by volunteers. But our service population is toddlers, and toddlers literally are not developmentally able to learn without playing, so we must have fun. Bonus! We're teaching parents how to play with their kids once they get home, which is a key component in early literacy. Print motivation means that kids are motivated to want to read books. That means they have to think reading books is fun, which means you have to think reading books to them is fun! So, brand new children's librarians, have as much fun as humanly possible. After all, you have the best job ever invented, and your fun is changing lives.

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*For some great reading on essential storytime skills, check out Melissa Depper's blog series on the subject: http://melissa.depperfamily.net/blog/?p=2081

Cory Eckert is the Youth Services Manager at the Octavia Fellin Public Library in Gallup, NM. She received her MLIS from the University of Arizona in 2010 and learned what a flannel board was in 2011. She is the idea girl behind Guerrilla Storytime. She tweets at @helenstwin and blogs at Storytime Underground.

Dear Soon-To-Be Public Youth Services Librarian, by Angie Manfredi

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Soon, so much sooner than you know, there will come a time when you look back to the summers in your life as an idyllic time full of youthful shenanigans, vacations, time spent relaxing, and enjoying lazy, hazy, crazy days. 

One of those bouts of nostalgia might hit you on a day while you are ladling 70 cups of cheap pink lemonade into Dixie cups and your sweat is streaking the glitter make-up you have caked on your face and 60 small children are eagerly waiting for you to make your reappearance. Perhaps you’ll think of those simpler times at the end of the week after you have facilitated over half a dozen programs with a total participation of almost 200 people. You might miss those unhurried days the most when you realize you can’t remember your last day off and you’ve forgotten what any other job task besides working the desk is.

Yes, your idyllic summer days are numbered the minute you decide to work as a youth services librarian in a public library. Now that you’ve made this fateful decision, your summers are no longer your own. Now they belong to the insatiable behemoth known as … SUMMER READING.

Summer reading is the beast that steals your free time, saps your will to live, and turns you into a non-stop programming, book-recommending, high-energy machine. Summer reading is the reason you never manage to respond to e-mails, the reason you forget what off-desk time is like, the reason you can't focus on anything except the next big event. Summer reading, my soon-to-be-sister/brother-in-arms, is the reason I once had vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce for dinner almost every night for long stretches.

I am sure you have heard the rumblings from other youth services librarians, the mutterings about their exhaustion, their overload, their frustration when a particular program doesn't work. It's hard to miss that noise when it comes to Summer Reading because it becomes such a huge part of your professional life as a youth services librarian. Perhaps you are intimidated. Perhaps you are already exhausted at the mere thought of planning such an intensive slate of programs and outreach. Perhaps you're not even sure what the benefits of all this effort is when it seems like all it causes is stress and fatigue and parents complaining about reading requirements.

But I am writing this letter to you today not to scare you off, to warn you of dire consequences, or to encourage you to seek an avenue of librarianship that won't involve the same combination of sweat and glitter make-up as Youth Services. No, instead, I am writing to tell you the exact opposite - the great secret no one ever really tells you about the monster that is Summer Reading.

It's the most fun you'll ever have. It's quite simply the most fun time to be a youth services librarian. There's nothing like summer as a youth services librarian, those days when one program after another rolls into each other in a bliss of children and teens genuinely enjoying themselves: singing, dancing, playing, engaging in model literacy practices as they learn that the library is a place just for them. THAT'S what summer is really about, all those programs, all that time spent counting minutes and pages read. THAT'S why we do it, why we work ourselves into a blur of exhaustion - because during Summer Reading we Youth Services librarians are probably at our most exhausted but we're also at our best.

So this is the letter I send to you - my future colleague, my future survivor, my future costumed superhero/ine who saves the day time and time again in summer.

Hang in there. Remember the gifts of what all this work is: the community goodwill, building in teens and children an excitement for the library as a place and for reading whatever book they want¸ and helping young patrons stem their learning loss over summer.

What we do in these summer months, all the planning and effort we put into what we do, it's worth it. It matters. You might not always hear this articulated, you might lose it in the exhaustion and the grumblings. But it's true; it's the truest thing of all.

You'll never get those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer back, my friend. But you'll be having so much fun, I promise, you won't really miss them.

Embrace the glitter make-up and, I give you permission: have the ice cream for dinner.



Angie Manfredi is the Head of Youth Services for Los Alamos County Library System in Los Alamos, NM. She has held that position for the past six years. She has survived five years of summer reading and still feels like she has so much to learn about how to survive and thrive in the next five. You can read more of her work at her blog, Fat Girl Reading, or follow her on Twitter @misskubelik. 

When Good Programs Go Bad: Forgetting the Patron Perspective, by John Pappas

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How much effort are your patrons willing to expend in order to attend a program? The quick answer: not much, at least not if they don’t think it will be worth it.

You really need to know your audience and their concerns and shouldn’t ask for too much effort for too little reward. Or, to put it another way, if a program requires effort, time, and planning for families or adults to get there, then they will definitely expect something palatable in return. The question remains: “Are you providing enough return for their investment?” Emotional investment. Investment of time. Investment in their children, their education, their future.

For instance, it’s important to remember that families with two bread-winners, in a working class neighborhood, may not be willing, able, or even awake in order to attend weekend family programming. They are also not able to attend the standard early morning storytime. A Saturday becomes sacrosanct in a way that outweighs the possibility of attending library programming. In order to reach them you will need to tip the scale in the library’s direction or you could try the “backdoor”. The “backdoor” may be focusing on daycare centers, day programs, and schools. All are alternatives I’ve employed successfully. But always remember, even if their level of interest is high it may not be enough to gain their time. It is important to respect that element.

Let me give you an idea of what can happen when you ask for too much effort. I was part of a community photo-archiving day. We asked members of our community to bring their old photos to the library so we could scan, label and catalog the photos into our archives. What more could you ask for? We were offering to preserve their memories so others could learn and reflect upon those pictures, and the library was going to get to keep the archives populated with shiny, happy pictures. Recipe for success, right? Erm... no. It flopped, and here is why: Our demographic was an older population. We are asking them to:

1      Crawl into their attics.

2      Find old photos.

3      Lug photos out of the attic.

4      Drive to library.

5      Find PARKING!

6      Lug box of photos into library.

7      Wait in LINE!

8      Scan and then...

9      Lug photos back home, put them in the attic and hopefully take a nap.

Bottom line was that this was a great program with a serious ROI deficiency. And I apologize, gentle reader, for so flippantly tossing out an already overused twerm (twerp + term = twerm. A twerpy term), but ROI is the only way to capture the idea. Through the eyes of the older patron, this little gem of a photo-archiving program was a massive pain in the ass.

After it flopped so resoundingly, we brainstormed a few ways of sweetening the pot for another try. Some possibilities were including a CD ROM of the digital items, having a display of some of our more obscure images in our archives (my personal favorite was a collection of 1950-60s billboards that were really cool - pure retro eye-candy), or move the scanning into the community. Take it on the road! We thought we could find the places where our patrons wanted to be and be there. These increased the return for the patron while decreasing (or holding steady) the investment.

If you’re newish to programming, let me warn you (or remind you, if you’re experienced): please be careful with the incentives. They are a dangerous game to play. Do your attendees expect an external, physical reinforcement? Will they continue to expect it and will it lessen the actual impact or <gasp> quality of the program?

A standard at many a public library is the “Lunch and Learn” (or whatever permutation of “feed them and they will come” chosen). A good rule of thumb is to imagine what would happen if you said “Next month, due to a random occurrence beyond the scope of my ability to fix, there will be no lunch for this program.” Will they show up? Bring lunches? Skip it entirely? How important is the incentive to the buy in? I am confident that the removal of food at our “lunch and learn” would not greatly impact the attendance. Sure, we would lose a couple of attendees to the flirtations of a Hardees value pack and the History Channel but most would still attend because they are getting something out of it. The return is still higher than the investment.

However,  that is not always the case. Our family evening storytimes (complete with a pizza dinner) went in the opposite direction. After realizing that my programming budget would not support the amount of pizza patrons were eating and expecting, we had to cut it. Mind you, this was after having to create rules stating that families could not have pizza until after the storytime or after a number of books were read by the parents with their child.

Either way, the people went away with the pizza.

Bottom line: Before pitching, ditching or revitalizing a program, I try to view it from the perspective of a patron’s time, expectation and investment. Then hope that it balances out. If it doesn’t then perhaps the investment you are asking is too much.

John Pappas is a Branch Director at the Upper Darby Township and Sellers Free Memorial Free Public Library in Upper Darby, PA. This is his second post for this blog; the first was "The Seven Rules of Avoiding Poutreach." Say hi on twitter  @zendustzendirt or on Google +. He writes, raves and rants occasionally on his personal blog Point of Contact.

The Modern Book Club (meets in a bar), by Leah L. White

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Starting a library sponsored book club in a bar can be a wonderful experience. You connect to your community in ways you just can’t replicate in a library building. I currently run Books on Tap for the Northbrook Public Library, and before that, I helped run LitLounge, a co-sponsored book club between the Morton Grove and Skokie Public Libraries. Here are a few things that I have learned.

Making the Case

If you’re reading this, you are probably already convinced that starting a library book club in a bar is a great idea. But sometimes your manager or administration isn’t as keen on the idea, and if that is the case, you must make a good argument for why the library belongs in this location. The idea of a library run program with booze freaks some people out! So, if you find that you’re getting some resistance (or even if you’re not), you should try writing a proposal. Writing out your reasoning will not only help you formulate your argument, but also gives your manager or administration something to take to the board.

Some things to include in your proposal:

• The purpose of this book club is to attract and engage residents who may not already be attending library programming and possibly don’t even have library cards yet.
• These types of programs attract new patrons, of varied ages and backgrounds, and give the library a hip, new image.
• Make sure to include any area libraries that are already doing this sort of program already.
• A good library to reference is Oak Park Public Library, who has been running Genre X for over 7 years now without any issues.

Also pay close attention to your wording in the proposal. Sometimes getting people on board is as easy as changing your wording from “book club in a bar” to “book club in a restaurant”. And who doesn’t like restaurants?

20s and 30s?

It is pretty common for libraries to label book clubs like this as being specifically for people in their 20s and 30s, but this is going to vary from community to community. For example, Northbrook doesn’t have a large population of people in their 20s - so my target patrons are working adults between the ages of 25-50. Most of my actual attendees are 40 and up, and I try to keep this in mind when I’m thinking about book selection, advertising, and pretty much everything I do. For example, since most of my attendees are commuters who ride the train to work, I put flyers, and posters at our local commuter train station.

Location, Location, Location

The location of your book club can really make or break you. So do your research. Grab a library buddy and hit the town! Trust me. This part is fun. While out and about, think about whether the space you’re in could actually accommodate a book club. How loud is it? Is there a private room? Are there any large tables? And how is the service? You are going to be working closely with these people, so make sure you actually WANT to work with them.

Once you think you have scouted a location, ask to speak with a manager. This isn’t something you can just pop in and start doing – you absolutely have to communicate with your location. Find out when their slow days are and explain that you could bring 10-20 people on a slow night. That way, this is a good deal for them, too. And this part is super important, so I will bold it…are you ready? Make sure they know you need separate checks. I cannot stress enough how important this is, and remind your server at every meeting that you will all need separate checks, regardless of the number of attendees. If they are cool with it, then you have yourself a location.

Book Selection

Similar to location, book selection can make or break a book club. Put some serious thought into what books you think your target demographic will be interested in reading. What’s fun with this type of book club is you get to pick books you could NEVER pick for your in-library clubs. Think about hip, interesting reads. Honestly, think about what YOU want to read. It probably would be a good fit for your club. Still feel stuck? Try Book Riot, the Bookrageous podcast, or IndieBound. 

Promotion

Think outside the newsletter box. Don’t get me wrong – you need this in your newsletter. But make some cool posters and put them up all over town. Promote heavily on your library’s Facebook page. And most important, have some sort of presence at the location itself. Get some posters in the bathroom. If they will let you, create a deposit collection and stick your flyers in the books.

Hopefully this will help get you started. This program is so much fun and so very rewarding. And if you do it right, you can start a social outlet for the people in your community.


Leah White is a Reader Services Librarian at the Northbrook Public Library and a 2012 Library Journal Mover and Shaker. You can find her on Twitter, @leahlibrarian, or check out her website: leahwhite.weebly.com.

Citizen Science in the Library, by Allison Scripa

"He sits on the branch a while longer and then..."
is a Creative Commons licensed picture from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Citizen science is a method of conducting scientific research that uses people without formal scientific education or training to gather the data needed for the experiment. In some cases, the data has already been collected and volunteers help mark up it up to make it usable by scientists. This technique helps gather and/or process large amounts of data that would be impossible for one scientist, or even a team of scientists, to gather and process on their own. This is important because large data sets reveal trends that would be impossible to see on a smaller scale. Many citizen science projects focus on some type of environmental monitoring, however subjects can range greatly.

So how does this fit into libraries? Well, we’re all about lifelong learning. Citizen science projects don’t just help the scientists running them; they provide an opportunity for people participating in them to learn something new about their world. Proponents of citizen science believe that participating in these projects may increase a person’s scientific literacy. An understanding of scientific principles and how experiments work is crucial to all of us in order to understand and make decisions about public policy and our own personal health.

Further, citizen science projects generate knowledge. The information collected is often made available to participants or freely on websites. You get to see your contribution to the project along with others from all over the country or the world.

Here are a couple of examples of successful citizen science projects:

eBird A joint venture between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, eBird provides a venue for participants to report and keep track of birds they have seen. This data is made publically available through the eBird website, with dynamic maps, charts and graphs available to anyone interested and provides valuable information about bird populations and migration patterns.

Project Budburst Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Project Budburst has participants report the timing of phenophases of plants—the stages in a plant’s life such as first leaves, fruiting, or leaves changing color. Participants can choose a specific plant and follow it over time (preferred) or submit single observation reports. Data collected is available on the Project Budburst website and reveals changes in timing that may occur as a result of climate change.

Because the goals of citizen science—education, generation, and dissemination of knowledge--align so closely with ours, these projects are “outside the box” as well as a fun way to bring science programming into libraries.

Interested? You could hold informational programs, just telling your patrons that these projects exist, by discussing one project in detail or several projects that are centered on a theme. You could speak about these projects yourself (lots of information is included on their websites) or you could bring in an expert. As an example, if you wanted to talk about some of the bird-themed citizen science projects, you could reach out to your local ornithology club to see if they have someone who is willing to talk about bird watching and a specific project. You could also vary the age groups you target with these programs; many citizen science projects are targeted to children. Many craft projects tie into the environmental themes. This is an easy way to introduce or augment science programming in your library. In conjunction with a program, you could gather resources—both print and online—that will support those participating.

Perhaps the best way to incorporate citizen science into your library is to actually engage in a project. Here at Virginia Tech, we have created a “Citizen Science Challenge” at one of our residence halls. In this particular hall, students are divided into “houses” (think Hogwarts), and are in a competition to win a “House Cup” at the end of the year. For one portion of the competition, teams are participating in 3 citizen science projects over the course of the year. Those teams who submit the most data to the projects earn the most points for their house. Before each project commences, we have speakers from related departments on campus coming to talk about how the project ties into the “big picture” of science and, more specifically, into research at Virginia Tech. At the end of the year, the teams can participate in a poster session competition, for which there are glorious prizes—tours of unique labs and cool places on campus—and of course lots more points! We are in the beginning phases of this project and have yet to see how it will all turn out—but we are very excited. Please feel free to contact me (ajscripa@vt.edu) to talk more about our program or about other ideas to bring citizen science to your library.

Resources for finding projects:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology Citizen Science

Scientific American

SciStarter

Zooniverse

Allison Scripa is the College Librarian for Sciences at Virginia Tech. She occasionally tweets @ajscripa

Banned Books Week Part One - The Read Out

In case you haven't caught on to the fact from tons of related posts on every social network under the sun, it's Banned Books Week. From the ALA website:

"Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular."

At my college, that celebration takes the form of a Read Out. I pick some campus space outside of the library, bring a bunch of books and some snacks, let the community know where I'm going to be and what I'll have with me, and then sit back. We take turns reading passages from our favorite challenged and banned books, and discussing why they were challenged and/or banned. I always have food available - in prior years it was cookies and cider, but this year we're holding the event during lunch at the dining hall. I always have a bit of swag - usually buttons. That's it.

The first time I did this, I wasn't sure how it would go. Would people even come? It's an academic/intellectual topic, after all. I wondered if students would care. I needn't have worried, though. Students did show up, and they show up every year. It's not as well-attended as some of the other events I run, but it attracts a decent group consistently. Makes me so proud of my community, especially considering this year marks the 4th anniversary of the first Read Out.

So, what are you doing at your library and/or with your community for Banned Books Week?

A Librarian’s Guide to Webcast Wrangling, by Nikki Dettmar

"Cat Sat on Computer" is a Creative Commons licensed, Flickr picture by dougwoods.

You’ve already mastered The Seven Rules Of Avoiding Poutreach covered in John’s excellent guest post?  How about in online outreach and education, such as webcasts, where communication cues from your target audience are hard to come by?

Librarians don’t actually do webcasts as part of their jobs and only attend them for professional development, you say?

I started hosting (leading the technology of) and/or presenting (leading the content delivery of) a regular webcast series within months of starting my first library job in May 2008. To date in 2012 I am still doing webcasts at the same place and they haven’t fired me, so apparently something’s going well with them.

With the increase of both embedded librarianship and online education, especially in academia, chances are good you will be asked about presenting on a webcast at some point in your career. I am intentionally not covering specific webcast technology platforms in this post since they are changing as rapidly as chat reference tools (Meebo widget anyone?).

Here are some tips to help you not just prepare for but enjoy giving a webcast presentation:

Be SUCCES(s)ful – I highly recommend reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath, where both great marketing ideas and the elements of SUCCES(s) are covered. Briefly, SUCCES(s) for webcasts translates to Simple (focus on a core message), Unexpected (get your audience’s attention and hold it! Example: try colorful Creative Commons licensed images for slides that enhance your ideas instead of 7 rows of bullet points and screenshots), Concrete (one memorable concept/idea per slide), Credible (you know the information resources you’re discussing are awesome – your inherent professionalism through solid content and delivery will convince your audience they are too), Emotional (think of your audience as individuals to connect with instead of a faceless crowd), and Stories (find ways to personalize, people always remember stories better than statistics).

Keys of Content - Write down the main and supporting concepts of what you want to say but not every.single.word. Your audience can hear the difference between reading from a script and presenting information that you are both knowledgeable and enthusiastic about. Using acronyms is fine after you first explain what they mean, ideally with both the full meaning & acronym written on your presentation slide, but jargon should be avoided since it tends to confuse rather than help people better understand what you have to say. Practice your presentation a few times but avoid the temptation to be ‘perfect’ – be yourself!  

Elements of Audio – Do you have chorus, drama, speech & debate, Toastmasters, or college DJ experience? The vocal delivery tips you’ve learned there are helpful to keep in mind when speaking in general, but especially on a webcast where the audience is reliant upon your voice for context and meaning. Having a vocal tone somewhere between the expressive emotion of motherese (AWWW! WHO is SUCH a caYUTE LITtle bayBEE?!) and the clarity of a dry staff meeting presentation (During the third quarter our reference questions increased by 15%) is just about right. Do some expert vocal research – “Morning Edition” on National Public Radio is well experienced in clearly delivering memorable news and information to commuters who may not yet be properly caffeinated.

Silence ≠ Disinterest – One of the most common mistakes webcast presenters make is either being nervous about audience silence and commenting about it, or assuming that a lack of verbal comments means the audience isn’t interested. Nothing could be further from the truth – the audience wouldn’t log in if they didn’t want to hear what you had to say, and they may not have a microphone available to use on their headset. Most webcast platforms have personal status icons (like ‘thumbs up’) that can be used in response to a yes/no question and multiple-choice polls. Try a question near the start of your webcast with clear directions on how to use these tools, and provide immediate feedback based on the audience response (i.e. “I see most of us have used PubMed before but there are also quite a few who haven’t. Thank you for participating and I’ll make sure to keep this in mind as I explain how to search”). Towards the end is an ideal time for a poll based on your content, which naturally leads to time for questions & answers as a conclusion.

For other librarians who present webcasts, what tips and strategies have you found helpful while developing or giving them? Please comment below and thanks for sharing!

Nikki Dettmar is the Education and Assessment Coordinator at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region and @eagledawg on Twitter. When she’s not trying to keep up with her family, she encourages participation in Thursday evening Twitter chats about medical librarian topics (http://medlibschat.blogspot.com) and has a personal blog at http://eagledawg.net.

The Seven Rules of Avoiding Poutreach, by John Pappas

The author.

Poutreach: (n.) Where librarians grudgingly go out in public to sit behind a booth avoiding eye-contact with strangers.

I have come to the conclusion that most librarians undervalue outreach. Could be they are intimidated by professionally walking outside the library; frightened of opening themselves to the whole of the public, or are too busy. To the outreach librarian the job is defined by relationships - not by number of contacts, questions or size of our catalog. Relationships with civic organizations, chambers of commerce, governance, teachers, parents, businesses, higher education, professors, the homeless, students and the public at large. If it has a face, we want to listen to it. It is our bread and butter.

In my job, there is a certain amount of the unknown that goes into attending events. Farmer’s markets are loud and dirty. Job fairs are busy and stressful. University campuses can be rowdy and uncontrolled. Sometimes there are pirates or zombies. Librarians feel out of their element and with good reason.

When uncomfortable most people cocoon, but cocoons do not work at an outreach event. If there ever was a time for your forced extrovert to shine, it is then. I have seven rules to help make it easier. They are easy, practical, and you probably already know most of them.

1) Garner your goals: Research the crowd. Who is attending? How many? What are their expectations? Will people browse from booth to booth? Answering these questions help you set goals and expectations. For example: At a college event I was told to expect 800 attendees. The event was not mandatory so I figured half - 400. Even on my best day, 400 people in 5 hours is 80 people/hour which is more than one person per minute. The best I could do solo is 150-250. So that was my goal, really more of a floating target.

2) Modify your message: Do you focus on awareness of library services, library use/sign-up or public exposure for the library? All three are valid. All three are important. All three can include a toilet paper roll craft. Back to my example from number 1: These students are the proud recipients of a brand new joint library. They already have guaranteed access, so cards are out. This event was purely about awareness. Since it was a registration event, I assumed most students would want to be in and out without too much hassle. No time for conversation, Dr. Jones. I need a pitch. No wait....!

3) Practice your pitch: A pitch is hard. This is the part where I lose most librarians (I lose almost all of the rest at rule #5). Arrive early. Do not bring a book. Do not open your laptop. Look for early attendees, event-organizers, lost people. Whoever is there is there for you to practice. Eventually a person will find my booth and say those dreaded words...

“Oooo! So what is new at the library? Har. Har.”

I have found my first victim. I am going to talk your ears off and see what sticks, what falls away and what makes you respond. This is an art. Try it. Your pitch with refine itself over use. Make it simple. Make it memorable and make it quick. You don’t want people walking away with a "1000 points of light." You want them walking away with one message that blows them away that they will share with others. So your pitch should be three lines about 5-7 words each. No more and less would probably be better.   Your pitch is an idea, not a script. Modify as needed. My basic pitch for the college event - Your student ID is your public library card. Since most were heading to get their student ID card and had to wait in line, it was the perfect seed to plant with the material I had.

4) Remember your results: I tend to count the material I hand out to people. So I knew I had 150 small ebook business cards I would hand out with my pitch. Some people use a hand counter and others just wing it. Either way, you have a floating goal. Try to realize it but don’t be disappointed if you don’t. I assign myself a quota but quality of contact is just as important as quantity. SUCCESSFUL OUTREACH IS NOT MEASURED BY THE NUMBER OF CARDS SIGNED UP. Sorry about the all-caps, it won’t happen again.

5) Be proactive: For the love of all that is holy DO NOT JUST STAND BEHIND YOUR BOOTH! (I lied!) Talk to people. Make the first contact and most will stop to talk. I credit this to my dashing good looks, but it might be the swag[ger] I usually bring. Really, it is due to the social capital inherent in the library. People trust, like, and are willing to listen to librarians.

6) Be ready for anything: It is Thunderdome out there. Memorize your funding and be able to explain it quickly and know your selection policy. Be prepared for technophobes and techno-freaks of every variety. A few of my more interesting experiences:

• ·   Gang of irate homeschooling moms at a street fair.
• ·   Drunken business men at a Chamber of Commerce meeting.
• ·   I’ve been converted, de-converted, re-converted and even once, perhaps, the victim of a drive-by baptism.
• ·   A delightful Greek family once offered to take me in like an orphan.
• ·   Harassed by drunken pirates!
• ·   Chased zombies!
• ·   Seated between the student LGBTQ student group and a Mormon group (The great mediator!).
• ·   Asked to leave because the crowd around us was too loud (I appreciate the irony).
• ·   Got to ride a police Segue with a semi-automatic rifle.
• ·   Had my aura read?Spoke to a demon. (Allegedly a demon, as I couldn’t actually see it but it did find me hilarious). “Can I get a library card with my married name?” Of course. “Good, because I changed my name and had $350 worth of fines on my old one.” You do realize that I work at the library, yes?

7) Try anything once: The event itself is an adventure. It is like a first date. Expect a handshake and maybe a peck on the cheek at the end. You may not get a second. You may get lucky but outreach relationships do run their course. Sometimes it is time to stop attending if one grows away from the other. Your time is still important.

8) Bring Duct-tape: No more explanation is needed. Always bring duct-tape.

9) Have something for everyone: Have a pitch for patrons, soon-to-be-patrons and those that are out of district. Always have something prepared for those that are not eligible for a card. It could be a web resource that you developed or public programming or an author event coming up. It includes people and those people talk. Who do they talk about? You.

10) Have fun: Be approachable. Smile. Laugh at jokes and make a few. Many groups are uncomfortable about library services. Some may not trust a government organization. Some are intimidated by the structure. You are an ambassador to those groups. Make it count.

John Pappas is the Outreach Services Coordinator at the Rapid City Public Library. He likes mammalian paleontology, Zen Buddhism, Norwegian Death Folk Fusion Metal and Power Yoga. Say hi on twitter @zendustzendirt or on Google +.

Why Are Academic Libraries Getting the Short End of the Stick? Can We Do Something to Turn Things Around?

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I read an article by John J. Regazzi a short while ago, and I can't stop thinking about it. The gist of his piece, "Comparing Academic Library Spending with Public Libraries, Public K-12 Schools, Higher Education Public Institutions, and Public Hospitals Between 1998–2008," is that academic libraries are getting the shortest possible end of the budget stick. Not only are we worse off than we were ten years ago, we're worse off than any other category he considered.

Before I move onto why this article has stuck with me, and what I think we can learn from it, here's the abstract:

"This study compares the overall spending trends and patterns of growth of Academic Libraries with Public Libraries, K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and hospitals in the period of 1998 to 2008. Academic Libraries, while showing a growth of 13% over inflation for the period, far underperformed the growth of the other public institutions in the study. Academic Libraries lost nearly 25% of their share of higher education total spending, suggesting a shift in higher education priorities. Academic and Public Libraries are shown to have very different investment and spending priorities with Academic Libraries as a group reducing staff and investing in their collections, while Public Libraries have expanded their staff and services significantly, but not collections. Patterns of spending and investment differ markedly for Academic Libraries by size of institution, while size of library or community is not a differentiating determinant for staff or services growth."

And here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

• It's hard not to increase our spending on collections, especially electronic collections, when the suckers keep getting more and more expensive.
• The fact that our parent institutions (colleges & universities) are growing their overall budgets while ours remain flat or even shrink... well, it hurts.
• I'm wondering if we should (academic libraries & librarians) stop being such good sports about it all. Should we fight more?
• I'm also wondering why are we still so focused on products and not services.

Beyond everything else, one thought stands out: we're doing something wrong and we need to make some changes. Refocusing our missions seems a good first step. As an information literacy/instruction librarian, I'm admittedly biased, but I think we should be concentrating on educating our communities instead of on providing more and more content that they may or may not know how to use. More is not always better. I also think we should concentrate more on outreach and marketing to our parent institutions, specifically to the decision makers. Even better, we should recruit our most vocal advocates to go talk for us.

Other than those broad ideas of how to fix this situation, I'll admit I'm somewhat stumped, but I'm not giving up. Libraries are too important to the health of our parent institutions, and to the success of our students and faculty, no matter our size/mission/location. Like I said already, we're obviously doing something wrong. We obviously need to change. But how? 

How about you? What do you think about this disturbing trend in academic library budgets? Do you have any advice about how we can turn things around? 

What Makes a Program Successful?

Source

The new academic year starts in less than a month, so we are in the process of wrapping up summer projects and girding our loins for the fall. Part of that loin girding is figuring out what programs we're going to run - are we going to repeat what we've done in the past? Come up with something new? A combination of the new and the old?

In making decisions about the future, I of course have to think about the past: which events were successful, and which were unsuccessful? When thinking about the unsuccessful events, I try to consider what made them unsuccessful and whether or not there's something I think I can do to improve things in the future. And I always have to remind myself that sometimes success or lack thereof isn't something I had control over - weather and unexpected competition on campus have sunk my programs more than once.

In looking at my past successes and failures, I've come up with a few measures I use to judge:

• What was the cost per participant? One of my best attended and most successful programs ended up costing less than $1 per attendee.
• How many people attended? I always compare attendance with the size of my community. Events that might seem poorly attended somewhere else, based on numbers, might be a big success on my campus. I once attracted enough students that they represented just over 5% of our undergraduate population. That's a HUGE success for a dry event on a Friday night.
• Did people enjoy themselves? Watching body language can tell you a lot, but nothing beats actually asking people if they had fun. Another way I know people have enjoyed themselves is when they ask if/when we'll be hosting the event again.
• Did I achieve the goal(s) I had for the event? Sometimes the goals have nothing to do with attendance. For instance, my Banned Books Read Out isn't hugely popular - we only attract 20-30 students every year - but my goal for this event is political awareness and education. Talking about why people have challenged books isn't always fun, but it does always result in learning.

What about you? If you run events at your library, how do you decide if it is successful? Unsuccessful? And how about the other side of it? How do you decide that an event you attended was successful?

Schoolin' My Community, or, Outreach and Cultural Literacy

If you've got me circled, friended, or followed, you've probably seen me blather on and on about the cultural literacy series I started at my college. The blathering is due to how successful it's been. In response to my excited posts on social networks, a few people have asked me to share more details. I figured it was about time that I do so.


How did an academic librarian come to found a cultural literacy series? Well, it all started over a year ago when I read "Tea, Shortbread, and 3 Things Worth Knowing," by Shawkat M. Toorawa, in The Chronicle of Higher Ed. In it, Toorawa lamented his students' lack of background knowledge. They didn't know about things like the Sex Pistols or Keats or Garrison Keillor, things that Toorawa thought were part of our common cultural vocabulary. Please forgive the cliché, but wow did this ring a bell for me. I've run into this problem too many times. As an example, I'll never forget the time I was trying to get a class to talk about "The Little Match Girl," by Hans Christian Andersen. I wanted them to discuss the differences and similarities between Andersen's story and Mark the Match Boy (Horatio Alger, Jr.'s version of the story). We were inside, with all the windows closed, and I could have sworn I heard crickets.


Because of my experiences, I wanted to create something like Toorawa's program. However, turning the idea into something real was more complicated and took longer than I imagined. The event that really got things moving was finding the right combination of campus partners. I told them about my idea of running something similar to the program discussed in the article; they suggested people to invite and helped me plan specifics. For our test run, we wanted something "sexy," so I asked a popular biology professor to talk about zombies. He took "zombies" and turned it into "the early religious, scientific, philosophical, and literature foundations of modern concepts of zombies." It was fascinating, engaging, and, best of all, educational. The second session, given by a communication professor about '80s teen movies, went in a similar direction: she started talking about tropes and teen movie conventions but ended by discussing the way teen movies these days ignore abortion as a possibility.


Figuring out the logistics of the program was another part of the process. After discussing other options, the planning group decided to hold the talks every other week (weekly seems like too much, but monthly is too little), at lunch time (most members of the community are on campus at that time of day), in our student center (the dining hall is L O U D), with free pizza and soda. Finally, the talks are limited to 30 minutes.

We're calling it "Three Things You Ought to Know About..." and it's been wildly successful so far. People from almost every aspect of our campus community (faculty, students, staff, administrators) have attended. I've been approached by other professors who want to do a session. Students are asking when the next one will be. I can't imagine how it could have gone better than it has. This is programming librarian heaven.

So now it's your turn. Have you tried anything like this at your library? How did it go? If you've never run a program like this, do you think it would work for your community? Why/why not? Also, feel free to ask me questions about the program we're running.

A Qualified Success: National Gaming Day

Humans vs. Zombies has spoiled me. The first time I ran it at my library, I had just under fifty students attend, and the second time I had sixty-four. This is on a campus that has roughly 1,200 students, too. I'm used to running gaming events that students love. So, when we only had eleven students show up at our National Gaming Day board game event this past weekend, I was underwhelmed.

My boss was there, and after he and I talked, I can guess at some of the factors that contributed to the smaller turn out:

1. There was a football game happening on campus at the same time as our event. Further, it was the last game of the season.
2. It was gorgeous outside. Sunny, a little breezy, and cool but not too cool. I'm not sure I would have been inside if I hadn't had this event to run.
3. The event ran from 1 PM to 4 PM. When planning the event, I thought about whether or not college students are typically up before 1 PM on a Saturday. At this point, I think they're probably awake, but I don't know if they're out and about (unless there's football involved).

There are some other factors that may or may not have been involved, like where National Gaming Day fell in the course of the semester. For my institution, it fell between the second to last and the last week of the session (our semesters have a twelve week session and then a three week session). Also, it was an off weekend for our program that is geared towards non-traditional college students. Finally, maybe the choice of board games over console or live action role playing contributed.

Here's the thing: considering all we had going against us, we actually did fine. This was our first foray into National Gaming Day territory, and we learned a lot from the event. Also, the students who came to eat pizza and play Clue and Sorry and Uno and Scrabble had a great time. Finally, some of the students who came on Saturday have never been to an event I've run before.

I've decided to call this one a qualified success, and to apply what I learned this year to our event next year. Honestly, though, I missed the zombies.

How about you? What makes a library program successful in your opinion?

There are Zombies in the Library! Or, Programming at a Small, Liberal Arts College

Savage Chickens, "Night of the Unread"

That's right, I said zombies in the library. Humans vs. Zombies, that is. This is the second time that my library has hosted a session of HvZ, and wow was it a success. To be honest, I think I had more fun than the participants did. Everyone who helped run the event had a great time watching them run around the library, trying to shoot each other with Nerf guns, and listening to their stories about how they took out (or were taken out by) members of the other team. It went so well that I'm thinking about doing it again next semester.

So... no, I don't work at a traditional academic library (and I don't want to). Sure, we have all the things you'd expect of a college library - books and databases and study rooms and all - but our programming runs the gamut. There are things that are more academic. For example, we have a continuing series called Library Forum that serves primarily as a venue for faculty to present the work they did on sabbatical. Another example is how we hosted a traveling exhibit from The Gilder Lehrman Institute last year. Further, at the end of the month, we'll be running our 3rd Banned Books Week event. On the other hand, there are the things we do that are just for the fun of it. Humans vs. Zombies definitely fits in that category. Also, we've had a video game tournament. Looking forward, we're planning our first National Gaming Day event.

The theme that runs through all our programming is this: it reflects the interests of our community. It's how public libraries have been making programming decisions for years, and it works for them. It also works for me. I want to make sure that what we do appeals to our faculty and staff AND our students. By varying topics and approaches, and by including some events that are purely social and fun, I do just that.

How about you? What kind of programming do you do at your library?