Sticky 'Brary

In addition to learning that I need to give audiences time to sign up for a library card at the end of presentations, I've also learned that I should ask the group to "share the library love." When I find myself in front of a group of people (especially volunteer-based organizations like Kiwanis, Rotary, etc.), I've found it productive to make myself available to present to other organizations. Folks who volunteer are often involved in more than one organization and through this simple networking mechanism I've got presentations lined up and on the calendar for the next several months to come. Slowly, slowly, slowly I feel like I'm getting this figured out...

So it looks like the uptick in database usage is keeping on track. Compared with the usage before this bookmark campaign, the numbers for October put us at a 343% increase over August. Not too shabby... Maybe it is time to start thinking about a whole series of bookmarks for our forty-some other databases, no?

I don't know yet if it is just a random fluctuation in the numbers of users, but after slipping the bookmarks for our DemographicsNow database into books on marketing and such (see this post for the original thought), the usage for this month is up 314%. That may be a statistical anomaly but we'll see if it keeps up in the coming month...

So I'm a little sheepish to admit that it has taken me so long to figure out the following, but here it is: When doing a presentation, leave a few minutes at the end to get people signed up for library cards. In retrospect this seems like a total no-brainer but in the past I felt that I had to use all my allotted time to explain the virtues of the library. After having read most of Nudge , I now realize the error of my ways. And what were the errors of my ways? Specifically, I didn't realize how seemingly small hurdles (like coming into a branch to get a library card) throw up roadblocks of inertia to those who would like to use the library's databases but just can't carve the time out of their day to come in and get a card. Once I have a group thinking about the benefits of the library, that is the time to get them hooked up with a card. Asking them to take the information home or back to their businesses and then come back to get a card is just asking too much.

Problem: The business community could make good use of some of the library's resources, especially some of our databases. But they don't know such resources exist, or at least aren't aware that they are freely available via the library. And who has time to come into the library to sign up for a library card? Possible solution: Each business that operates within the City of Spokane must have a city business license. I'm in the very beginning stages of working with the city's Business License office to have them issue library cards to the owners of businesses located within the city limits when they sign up of their business license. We'll see if having a card provided to them will increase the business community's library use. Note: The bookmarks I mentioned a few posts back are nearly ready to go to the printer so I should have some news relatively soon about their effectiveness...

As part of my business reference job, I'm the chair of a B2B leads group that meet 2x per month. The way the meetings work is we go around the table, give a 30 - 60 second spiel of who we are and what we do, and then we try to refer business to each other. Most folks in the group can pretty easily sum up what they do in 30 - 60 seconds, but I have a hard time doing that with the library. We cover every conceivable subject area (and some inconceivable ones) and we offer a slew of services ( interlibrary loan, story times, Internet access, books, movies, amazing databases, reference assistance, etc.). I've found it extremely tough to quickly convey the range of what we do. Enter the power of metaphor. Drawing once again on Made to Stick, one of their suggestions is to take something that people already know and then draw an analogy to that. It saves their brains the effort of constructing something new. So the tag line that I came up with, rather accidentally, is this: The

Cross-marketing. We all have business books on our shelves. People check them out and we know by the subject headings/titles/content of the books what they are interested in. Generally speaking. At the same time, we have databases with powerful business applications sitting idly by. I'm in the final stages of having our printer whip up some card stock bookmarks flogging the online resources. I will then slip them into books that deal with similar topics. Ideally, I'd like to have the bookmarks included with the book at checkout but the logistics of doing such a thing are a bit daunting. So for now I'll just put them into the recently returned titles (and with any luck, those titles will be going back out again sometime soon). I'll report back and let you know if this gives us a bump in our database stats. Any other thoughts about increasing the use of subject specific databases?

In my efforts to do outreach to the local business community, it has become apparent that a significant number of the obstacles to overcome lie within the library itself. Here is a running list, in no particular order, of the things you might want to have hammered out before embarking on an outreach campaign: Solidify with your manager the process for attending local business functions. What paperwork is needed? If there is a cost, how do you get reimbursed? Who gets the paperwork? What forms do you need to file? If it will be an ongoing, recurring event does that change the process? What is the easiest, least time consuming process for all involved? If the reference desk schedule needs to change, how far in advance do you need to alert your manager and/or coworkers? Who do you report your successes to? When? How? If you are out in the community, that is the perfect time to sign people up for library cards as they don't have to carve time out of their day to come into a

In the world of marketing public libraries, or any library for that matter, here is the question that I keep coming back to: What is more efficient, social media/2.0 stuff or face to face interactions? My bias is towards f2f, for the following reasons. One of the biggest -- THE biggest? -- assets that libraries have over the general online world is giving people the ability to pick up a phone (or, horrors, their feet) and contact a real, live human being who gives a damn about their question. Being out in the community in person helps hammer this home. I view a lot of the library 2.0 mania as an online extension of the same model that got us into the bind we are in: staying comfortably within the four walls of our buildings and not having those messy interactions with real, live people. But wait, you say, isn't the point of 2.0 interactions that we are interacting with those we don't normally reach? Yes, but I come back to the original question: is the online or the persona

I really should round up some research on this (or the great library blog reading community could contribute ideas, if you have them) but my gut tells me that the business community trusts the library. Not just to do research and return reasonable results to their questions, but also in sharing information with us. Case in point: Just yesterday I was doing some research for a local banker who wanted to know what the competition was offering in terms of "analysis" or "analyzed" business banking accounts. She only wanted the information from four other institutions so I told her I would call around on her behalf. When I called up the competing banks and told them that I was doing research for a patron and needed to know the fee structure for their analyzed accounts, they were more than willing to help out. I think that if I had called and said something like "Hi. I'm calling from a competitor of yours and I need you to take some time out of your day to d

As I've been wrestling with the problem of getting the local business community thinking of and turning to their public library, the most basic advice to share with myself is the following: fall forward. Falling hurts. It hurts the ego. It hurts the knees. It hurts the ribs. It just plain hurts. But here's the deal: it hurts far less to fall forward than it does to fall backwards. No matter how awkward it feels to attend business networking events (think high school prom, sans date), just being there is enough to move things in the right direction. Remember this: people think libraries are cool, even though they have no idea what it is we actually do.  Armed with this supercool persona that strangers are immediately willing to grant you, put yourself into acting mode when you are doing outreach. You don't have to be yourself. So go say "Howdy. What brings you here?" and eventually you will introduce yourself to the right person and things will open up from

So here's the deal. Among a number of other hats that I wear, I am the Business Reference Librarian at the Spokane Public Library . Confession: I have never owned a business, run a business, been interested in owning or running or working at a for-profit business. How's that for a resume booster? I've been in the library world, in one capacity or another, since 1996. My passion is spreading the gospel of the public library, which in turn depends on a healthy business community to provide my paycheck. So it turns out that my greedy self-interest coupled with my passion and appreciation for the public library can (at least partially) overcome my previous lack of interest in the business world. As I've been doing this Business Reference gig since 2006, I've been collecting "notes to self" about missteps, gaffs, and the occasional success of making the library "sticky" (in the Made to Stick sense of the word). This bloggy thing is meant more as