Katharine Schopflin and Brie Grey-Noble report on discussions from Internet Librarian International, on how libraries are making use of new technologies.
One of the themes which emerged from ILI 2011 is the new ways we can move outside of traditional library settings and to go where our users are. Many libraries – in all sectors – have been doing this for years. The need to connect with the users has, in the corporate sector, taken librarians to client and strategy meetings, in the academic and public, let users renew their books online and led to hundreds of special collections being digitised. But the technological opportunities and the online spaces inhabited by our users have proliferated. More and more our users can be found online. Social media and applications for mobile devices are growing in popularity. How do we provide services that take technological change and development into consideration?
Katharine: Klaus Tochtermann of the German National Library of Economics’s opening keynote presented the challenges and the opportunities raised by this question. He spoke of success stories and exciting plans to make their holdings more available using semantic technology and linked open data. But he also told us about their experiment with the www.bookcrossing.com website, whereby they released a number of registered and geolocated physical books across Germany. This struck me as a fantastic idea, but I wasn’t surprised to hear there was staff resistance and some users even tried to return the books to the library, rather than registering them for another user. Although the opportunities are there,we need to show users that we are prepared to redefine what a library means in order to reach out to them.
Brie: One question raised by the possibility of offering services online is: what happens when our users are inside of our libraries and can’t find the e-resources that they are looking for? Linda Vidlund and Cecilia Petersson of Uppsala University Library addressed it in their presentation. Students still flock to the campus libraries at Uppsala University and it was quickly becoming obvious that they weren’t aware of the vast selection of electronic materials that were available in their library’s collections. The high cost of academic materials and textbooks had prompted the incorporation of more e-resources (including e-books) into their collections. However, students weren’t using them. A promotional campaign was launched in which posters with QR codes were put up around the campus. Students could use their mobile devices to scan the codes and learn more about the collections. Inside of the libraries, small electronic displays were placed on the shelves to promote specific resources based on their placement. Students could scan QR codes displayed on the screens to learn more about the e-resources available to them.
What I especially enjoyed about Linda and Cecilia’s presentation was that it showed an awareness of the changing needs of our clients and users, but also recognized that we can’t forget the importance of promoting our collections and resources to the users that visit our libraries and information centres. E-resources are fantastic, but as this presentation showed us, they run the risk of being overlooked by our users. As librarians and information professionals it is up to us to ensure that our collections do not become invisible and that can mean that we adapt our ideas around promotion and outreach to satisfy both our in-person and online users and clients.
Katharine: I also really enjoyed the sessions on e-books and mobile devices. Again these are a means of delivering services which are inherently problematic with the traditional library model – even the one that’s largely based around e-delivery, as ensuring that your services are available on the devices your users use is not the same as creating an online information centre. Suppliers often don’t help: the Amazon Kindle uses proprietary software and does not work with the industry-wide epub standard, and publisher HarperCollins has placed limitations on the number of loans a library can make on a purchased e-book. Do libraries buy devices to loan or try and provide multiple download platforms for the gadgets their readers already have? Jennifer Baxmeyer and Trevor Dawes, discussing a project to loan e-readers at Princeton University, encountered a further problem with the Amazon Kindle being unsuitable for the visually impaired. For an individual consumer, that’s not a problem. For a library delivering an information service, it is.
Brie: A number of the presentations I went to brought up some interesting ideas about user communities. It is clear that in order to be successful we must be willing to grow and adapt with our users. People are using libraries, but the ways in which they are interacting with libraries is changing. While many people are still visiting our library buildings to borrow materials and use resources, there is a growing number of people who prefer to interact with our services online. Using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with our users is one way of reaching out to them, but it may also be useful to consider creating unique online spaces where they can actively contribute to library services. All three presentations given during the Innovative Services to Engage Users session emphasized the importance of engaging our users and encouraging participation both online and in-house. This can be achieved with regular updates to a Twitter account, soliciting feedback on library policies via your library’s Facebook profile or giving users a platform where they can contribute to a discussion around a particular topic. In addition, discussions can be started online and continue, in-person, in the library or vice versa. Overall, these presentations emphasized the need to take our services to the user and retire the expectation that they are going to come to us. Our success will greatly depend on our ability to identify and interact with our users wherever they may be.
Clearly there are challenges as well as opportunities in using new technology to reach our users. However, we’re an adaptable profession and this conference showed that there are plenty of people willing to share innovations and solutions that will keep our services relevant and our users engaged.