Phone a friend…Do you have a friend, either a professional colleague or someone you know socially, who really likes the genre of books for which you are now responsible? That person will probably be thrilled that you asked. Finding professional colleagues willing to share their subject expertise is always so helpful. We are indebted to professional and social friends who have helped us at different times during our careers when we have needed to champion and grow sections we didn’t know about and love.

Who are you helping…Maybe you aren’t a fan of science fiction or romance novels yourself, but consider the people who love these books in your community. Can you respect your section of books because of who you are reaching? We are all familiar withthe community members who won’t tell us what they would like to have in the library. However, they are happy when things they like arrive. While we would prefer people to tell us what they want instead of us having to guess, seeing new materials checked out does make us feel good.

What professional resources are available…Don’t forget that there are plenty of professional journals that provide reviews of materials. Use them. Some journals and publishers also provide webinars about new materials as well. One of us is very partial to the Booklist webinars, but this is the same person who loves Booklist anyway! Another one of us likes to use different kinds of lists that other people, librarians and genre aficionados, put together.

How can you promote your section…How can you get people interested in your section? This engagement is important because you want people in your community to provide feedback. Are you using social media like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to highlight new items? Does your catalog have any social media typed functions you can use to highlight new items, either by writing reviews, tagging, or putting the books in a list? You want people in your community to tell you what you’ve done right and what they don’t think should be in the section. While you can’t do absolutely everything your patrons suggest, it will give you more guidance and help than practically anything else. However, if you don’t let people know what’s in your section, how can people give you feedback?

Good luck with your sections. Obviously you’re going to do a great job because you’re an information professional, but know that sometimes everyone needs a little help, and we hope we gave you that.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Love or Respect – the Collection Development Dilemma first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Abraham Lincoln said, “My best friend is a person who would give me a book I have not read,” and his idea still rings true today. As librarians we want to foster the love of reading with everyone we meet, especially those who need to have books in their life but do not for one reason or another. As librarians, we have access to books and materials every single day, and many of us have extensive collections of books at home. However, what about the people who do not have book collections at home or the people who cannot for one reason or another come to the library?

The basic idea of a little free library is a person takes a book and leaves another one for someone else. However, some social service agencies for years have been using libraries’ discarded books to create their own collections for their clients. The difference is many times clients are encouraged to keep the books to add to their meager home collections. There is no expectation that the materials will be returned or exchanged. Some people do that though. They borrow the materials, read them, and bring them back when they can. Sometimes the agencies get books directly from the library either by receiving the discarded materials as donations or purchasing them through the libraries’ book sales. Other times, individual members of the agencies, usually volunteers, make it their mission to find books from the library that they think their clients might like. It is a little free library.

Places like food banks, senior centers, women’s shelters, and homeless shelters are popular places for old library books to find a new life. Frequently any place where someone might have to wait for a long time and need something to do, there is probably a person from the institution who has collected books for people to take. They are also collecting things for people of all ages to read. And with no expectation of the materials returning, there could be some more unusual items available. For example, a senior center may have a handful of children’s books on hand. There aren’t going to be children living at the senior center, but the books are there for the seniors to take home and have for grandchildren or other people that age.

As a library, looking for places in the community that need books for their clients is a great way to open doors. Partnering to provide materials may invite other types of partnerships as well. It could be speaking engagements, sharing grant monies, or co-sponsoring programming, but the more connections libraries have to other community institutions the better it is for everyone.

While we know that when we discard a book it means it no longer has a place in the public library, it may be the perfect book for someone else in a different place. That could be in a little free library. It could be on the shelf in a community food bank waiting room for a child to select, read, and keep. That book that is now all his maybe helped make a trying situation a little better. Or there could be a novel that now a woman at a homeless shelter finds and keeps with her few possessions because it reminds her of a different time and place in her life.

As librarians we want people to find the joy of reading, whether it’s in the library or somewhere else.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post There Was Life Before Little Free Libraries first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Some Words Stay the Same
There are certain genres of books that cross multiple reading levels and ages. Action books are in picture books, tween, and teen books. Humorous books are in learn-to-read, first chapter, chapter, tween, teen, and adult. SciFi and Fantasy start in chapter books then continue through tween, teen, and adult. Even more important than the words being the same is that the notations on the books remains the same. We have certain colors and images that denote particular genres. A young girl reading a SciFi book will know that the image that denotes a tween SciFi book will also be used to denote an adult SciFi book. A young boy can read a humorous Elephant and Piggie book from learn-to-read and a Captain Underpants book from the chapter book section. Then in a few years, he can read a book by Christopher Moore in the adult humorous section.

Some Words Change with Age
For younger children, we use the term “chiller” for scary books, but in teen and adult we use the word “horror.” For young children, “Seen on TV” is the genre where all the books that match television shows and movies reside. For adult books, the genre is “Movies & TV.”

Genres are Different Sizes at Different Reading Levels
We have discovered that not all genres appear to have the same level of popularity across all age groups. In fact, we’re not sure any genre maintains the same level of popularity! Some of that discrepancy has to do with what is popular in the community. For example, the tween section has a very sizable fantasy genre. It takes up a much larger proportion of the overall collection than the adult fantasy genre does when compared to the entire adult collection. In the adult section, mysteries represent a huge portion of the overall collection but in teen materials, it is a much smaller percentage. It doesn’t mean that the same genres shouldn’t be there, but it does mean that we can’t assume that the popularity is the same across the board.

For us, the idea for maintaining as many similar genres as possible was to help patrons of all ages easily browse for books they wanted. It also meant that as their reading abilities improved they could know that the same types of books they had enjoyed would always be there. While it doesn’t work perfectly every time, we have been surprised at how many people, particularly children, have appreciated the thought and effort we put into this.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Putting Your ENTIRE Fiction Collection into Genres first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

How do you decide what’s in a series? There are two really great websites that we have found quite helpful. One is Kent District (MI) Library’s What’s Next Database.  It’s really good for figuring out what books belong in a series, especially since the book itself may not always tell you. The other site another library suggested to us was Fantastic Fiction, which allows searches by ISBN.  Between the two sites they really cover practically any book we have owned.

How are you keeping track of your series? Just so everyone working on your series project knows what’s going on, you need to keep a list of what series you have. This is especially important if you have separated your fiction into genres. You don’t want part of a series in mystery and part of series in historical fiction if the series is a historical mystery. In our library we started with a spreadsheet and quickly realized that we needed more. So we designed a relational database that holds series information. It has a web interface so staff can input information and search for information. It also holds details about subseries as well.

What are you doing with subseries and series finished by other people? Subseries turned out to be an interesting challenge because things like Star Wars books or Dragonlance books were all related, but they were written by many different authors. For books that were in a series but had a subseries, the series was used for alphabetizing on the shelf and the subseries appeared on the label in the “series spot.” Then there were the series begun by one author (eg., Robert Ludlum, Robert B. Parker, and others) but the remainder of the series was finished by a different author. To keep the series together, the spine label reads the original author’s name, not necessarily the actual author.

How are you handling not having every book in a series? It’s perfectly fine if the answer is you aren’t doing anything. You may have book one of a series but not any subsequent materials. You may have book three and not any other books. We pose this question because inevitably there will be a patron who comes to you and says, “I found book three on the shelf. Do you have books one and two?” If you’re part of a consortium, it’s most likely that you can get the first two books from another library. However, from a collection development perspective you will want to decide to either only have first books and see if people want more, or you may decide to see if anyone cares that you have book three but not the other two, before buying the first two books you don’t currently have. We say this a lot, but every library in every community is different. What works in one place may not be appropriate for another.

How are you telling patrons a book is in a series? Some consortia have online catalogs that allow notes to be put in for individual books. This means a series name and number could be put there. We have seen this more with juvenile books series than adult materials. Sometimes the book’s call number is the series and number only. We are fortunate that our book labels allow us to print the series name and number of the spine of the book. In addition, we are using a field that will display the series as a note in our public catalog display.

Many readers like to find a series and stick with it until the end. Helping them find that series is one of the services that we provide as librarians.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post To Series or Not to Series…Does it Matter? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Do you have commonalities between large numbers of books in your collection? There are some major groupings libraries tend to use to divide books into genres. Common ones include mystery, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, inspiration, and romance. Do these groupings represent what you would consider a sizable portion of your collection?

Are there special niche books that are particularly important in your community that should be kept together? Some libraries like to keep local authors together on shelves. Other libraries choose potentially more narrow genres to group together like suspense, horror, historical fiction, or urban fiction. There can also be chick lit, humorous, book and TV, Amish, teen books for adults, sagas, supernatural, and war stories. Some libraries have a large collection of books that are recommended by the staff, and these books are all grouped together. What is really special in your library?

Do you have a defensible reason for changing either to separated genres OR putting together books that were separated before? Some communities, for whatever reason, tend to have more adults who read within a particular genre as opposed to reading a particular author. Would breaking the collection into smaller groupings, like genres, encourage more browsing or help patrons find what they are looking for more quickly? If you have books separated into genres, combining all fiction books together saves shelf space if you need more room. People are going to resist change whatever it is. When they want to talk about the change, you need to have answers for them.

How are you letting the staff and the public know changes are coming? Whether you have a newsletter, Facebook, newspaper articles, or some other way to tell the public, you’ll have to do it more than once. You may even want to get the staff and public’s opinions before you make a final decision about what to do with your fiction collection. Whatever decision you choose, make sure your staff is able to answer questions about why books were moved from “where they’d always been.” Preparing staff makes the change easier for both staff members and patrons.

Whatever you decide to do, someone isn’t going to like it. That’s just the way it goes. However, providing clear signage to help people find what they’re looking for will help quite a bit. However, making sure your decision is the right thing for your community is ultimately the most important thing.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Separate or Keep Together? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Choosing your genres…This may seem obvious, but choose all your genres before you get started and stick with it until the end. Look at what books seem to circulate well. Look at review magazines or other publications to see how they group fiction materials. Take a survey of your patrons to get ideas. However, we also strongly suggest you pull some books from a section of your shelves. Look at what genres they represent. Does your collection gravitate towards a specific direction? However, keep in mind that if you choose to create niche genres, these will be more fluid. When the books go out of style, you may want to dissolve the genre and return the books to other areas. Or someday there may be a new niche where a large number of books are published, and you may want to keep all these books together. For example, with the craze for vampires and other supernatural entities, our library decided to create a supernatural genre to keep these books together. And, in the future when vikings or something else become extremely popular, we may need to create a new collection.

Where do you go to determine genres…Many book vendors have genres listed within their online catalogs.  OCLC’s WorldCat has genres specifically listed in their catalog entries as well. But keep in mind that both OCLC and also the commercial vendors are judging each book individually. Also, if you are part of a consortium, see where other libraries have placed books or series of books. This may give you ideas about what genres you would like to include in your library.

When to take a broader look at your collection…When you are putting books into different genres, you will find that some authors write in multiple genres. Some libraries classify strictly based on genres, while others try to keep author’s works together. This is particularly important if the library is in a community where reading an author’s entire body of work is important. However, our advice to you is do one author at a time, and pay attention to books in the authors’ series. You may find that throughout a series, each book has a different genre assigned to it. At the very least, you need to keep all the books in an author’s series together.

How are you keeping track of what you have done…Is there a master list somewhere that says this author goes in this genre, or this chunk of an author’s work goes here and this chunk goes there? It’s more than likely that you will have multiple people work on this project. How does everyone make sure they know what is going on and don’t either duplicate already completed work or do something that doesn’t match previous patterns?

When a patron disagrees with you…There will be patrons that don’t agree with what genre you have assigned to a book or a series of books. They may want to suggest additional or different genres to use. Not all their suggestions will be great, but listen to them because some will be very helpful. Take notes, and tell them you will consider what they say. It may not change what you ultimately do, but your patrons will feel they have been heard.

Good luck with your genre-fying project. It will be great.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Genre-fying Your Library’s Fiction Collection first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

You know the books we’re talking about. Thomas the Tank Engine, Scooby Doo, Spongebob, Spiderman, Martha, and all things Disney related. Originally the idea of grouping together all the books that were related to current television shows, movies, and direct to DVD releases was aimed at children. Bringing this genre to the forefront of some of our collections has been an interesting experience where we learned about circulation and reading development.

In the past few years, our library’s youngest readers have gravitated towards “TV tie-in books.” We’ve struggled with how to best keep this disparate collection together. Each book would be by a different author or have no author at all. On one hand, it would have been easier to not buy these books at all because they were flimsy and out of fashion as soon as the TV show or movie was no longer popular. But we found it was impossible to tell a small boy or girl that we didn’t have a book about their most favorite thing in the whole world: a popular television show on Sprout, PBS, Disney, or Nick Jr. We aren’t even going to mention the near small girl riot that occurred this summer when we had only one Frozen book in the building and three little girls all wanted it at the same time! Thankfully they took other Disney princess books in the short run!

In the end, the practicality of having what our youngest patrons wanted won out. We cataloged the books by their character, so all the John Deere books based on the direct to DVD releases were shelved under John Deere. And no one remembered the Rev. Awdry wrote the original Thomas stories, so the originals and the new television character-based stories all are shelved under Thomas. While some people remember that H.A. Rey wrote Curious George, all the books are shelved under Curious George.

However, a most interesting thing happened about a year ago when we went to genre grouping in all of our fiction collections. Several reading levels got a “Seen on TV” section, which ended up as one of the largest categories in the collection. The picture books have a huge “Seen on TV” section which includes Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, Barbie, Angelina Ballerina, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Curious George, Iron Man, and all things Disney. But it was the Learn to Read collection where we put about 30% of the total collection into the “Seen on TV” section. Even more interesting, people are taking out huge handfuls of these books at a time.

Our circulation of “Seen on TV” books has gone up over the past year, and our emerging readers are happily taking piles of books that match their favorite movies and shows. It has been especially successful for parents who come in searching for their child “who doesn’t like to read.” Even though we must weed this section more aggressively for condition and popularity, it has definitely been worth the time and money we’ve put into it.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Seen on TV – A Popular Genre first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Everyone has their own style of doing reader’s advisory for children. In our library, one of the first questions we ask children is:”What do you like to do for fun?” The second question is “What do you like to watch on television?” For young children, that usually leads us to the genre that is based on the television or movie characters. However, once you reach “chapter book level” there aren’t as many of those types of books. Now what do we do?

For middle and upper elementary school children, we now ask straight out, “Do you like funny books?” Sometimes a child will mention having read one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books or that a friend of theirs has read one. That connection is frequently the hook we use to direct them to the Humorous section of books.

If we’re lucky the child will leave the library with a pile of books by some combination of authors including but not limited to Jeff Kinney, Lincoln Peirce, Jon Scieszka, Dav Pilkey, and Tom Angleberger. We encourage our reluctant readers to take at least three books, but we prefer four or five. If at all possible the books are all by different authors.

This push for variety is for different reasons. For the children, we want them to know that it’s okay to not like a book and to try another one. For the parents, we want them to feel comfortable with the idea that something will work. They shouldn’t have to make a “five minutes before the library closes because we need a book for school tomorrow” run because the one book they chose at the library the last time didn’t work. Fortunately for both parents and children, many authors write series of humorous stories. Therefore, if there turns out to be a book that a child likes, there may be several more that are similarly enjoyable. That ray of hope always brightens both groups.

We have an extensive collection of books for a variety of different age levels in the Humorous genres. We have books for the youngest readers through middle school — all of whom enjoy a good laugh. For children just learning to read, Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie books are the mainstay of the section. In our chapter book area we have perennial favorites like Captain Underpants and the Time Warp Trio, along with a wide variety of authors all creating hilarious, enjoyable reads for our young patrons. Then we finish up with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and the many similar titles published since then for the middle and upper elementary school readers.

Share your humorous books for kids recommendations in the comments.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Humorous Books Can Appeal to Reluctant Readers first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Generally the opinion of some library people is that they don’t have to be especially secure because they are libraries. The idea is security through obscurity. However, all that does is cause libraries to play a waiting game. It is not a question of IF there will be a problem, but when.

Libraries have a plethora of computers with good bandwidth and servers with lots of space. By the very nature of libraries wanting to provide open access, they are a target for potential hackers. Open access is both a tenant of who we are as libraries and extremely important. It is not our intent, at all, to say there should not be open access! However, we must provide this service with our eyes open — knowing it could come back to bite us later. This mode of thinking isn’t meant to scare you, but to cause you to stop and think.

In order to continue to provide the best access possible, we pose the following questions:

When was your last security audit? Have you checked to see that all your recent computer updates installed properly? Did it fix security holes or make the existing ones bigger? Getting someone to do a security audit is similar to getting someone to do a home inspection. There are plenty of people you can call, but you want someone who really knows what he or she is doing so it saves you time and money later on. To find a good security auditor you want to check with current and previous customers of your potential contractor. Are they pleased with the service they received? Did they feel it was worth the money?

Have you kept up-to-date with your updates? Sometimes something as innocuous as not updating a browser plug-in like Flash or Acrobat can be a problem. Are all your Windows updates done? Is your anti-virus up-to-date?

How good are your back-ups? This is one of those questions that can strike fear into your heart. The idea is that back-ups are there if you have a problem, but do you know if they would even help you? Have you ever tried to restore anything from one? This is just about checking to see that the files you are backing up are ones you can actually use. How often are you rotating your back-ups? What length of time do you back up your files? A day? Two days? Do you set one of your back-ups aside every so often to make sure you are not preserving compromised data that has been backing up onto what you would use to restore all your files if necessary?

Have you checked your technological band-aids? Sometimes changes to systems are made in the heat of the moment to accommodate immediate needs. Have you gone back and made sure they were done in the best possible way? Someone placed those band-aids in the best possible way at the time, but that may not be the best long-term fix for the problem.

How are you managing all your updates? There are programs like Ninite (https://ninite.com) and Wpkg (http://wpkg.org/) that can help you manage your non-Microsoft applications updates.  Are you paying attention and checking regularly for your Windows programs updates as well?

Are you ignoring security concerns because you have Apple devices? There is the belief that if you run devices from Apple that you will not be a target for hacking. That is not wholly true. It is true that there are not as many Apple computers to target as Windows computers, but that again is security through obscurity or quantity. Recently Apple has had some security issues so staying updated on your iOS updates and Apple applications updates are important. There are programs like “Get Mac Apps” (http://www.getmacapps.com/) that function similarly to Ninite and Wpkg for Windows devices that manage updates.

My IT person says you guys are wrong! We’re okay with that. Everyone will have local concerns and parameters that make different levels or types of security better or worse for them. Security can’t impede workflow or be so lax that it’s nonexistent. In the end, if you are staying up to date with your virus protection and different program updates, you should be fine. But sticking your head in the sand and pretending security isn’t an issue won’t protect you from anything either. As long as you and your local security person have talked and made a plan that works for your library, then our work has been done.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Protecting Your Library Against a Data Breach first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Define “Young Adult Graphic Novel.” – We started by looking at the young adult graphic novel collection, and we decided we were going to pull some of the series that were showing up on “Best Adult Graphic Novels” lists. That should bring a built-in audience to our new adult graphic novel area. Out of the young adult collection came Sandman, Spawn, and Watchman. The young adult collection thus became the bastion of the superheroes of DC and Marvel with a strong Star Wars presence. It’s not that adults didn’t read these books voraciously, but it brought the content of the graphic novels more in line with the content of the young adult novels we had.

Where are the compilations of newspaper comics going? – Libraries put these books in all different places, including non-fiction and young adult sections. Not that it doesn’t happen, but when did you see a high schooler reading Doonesbury? And many people like Dilbert, but searching in the 700s is a daunting task. We rescued the newspaper comics compilation books from 741.5 and put them in the adult graphic novel collection. As soon as we did, they started circulating quite a bit more than they had before.

Where do the graphic novels go that students may be assigned for class? – Maus and Persepolis are good examples of books that teachers frequently incorporate into their curriculum. These books had been living in the young adult section, but unfortunately no one was reading them. However, we had an eighth grade English teacher ask us about other books similar to these, including some of Gene Luen Yang’s books and A Game for Swallows. Would we be getting additional similar titles, he wondered, because he’d like to assign his class to read some of these types of books? To give these titles more cache and also to entice adults who would also be interested in these books but never find them in youth materials, these books were moved. All “literary graphic novels” now live in the adult graphic novel collection.

How is this section not a repository for unloved books? – Given the more conservative view our community has about books for youth, there were a number of graphic novels we didn’t have in the library’s collection. We now have the graphic novel versions of titles by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Janet Evanovich sharing shelf space with the Walking Dead. We have Sin City and Hellraiser. Without this section of adult graphic novels, we couldn’t adequately accommodate many popular titles that appeal to a quiet minority of our community who never requested we purchase these books but seems to be checking them out regularly.

How do you evaluate success? – Obviously, circulation is one way, and the graphic novels have only been their own section for six months or so. It seems like people are reading the books, even if it’s only the staff who are grudgingly admitting that “there might be something to these graphic novels.” Every time we talk to an adult about Maus, Persepolis, or American Born Chinese and he or she decides to check out the book, we have success. However, overhearing that a 24 year-old male patron said to his friends via social media, “You have to come to the Madison Public Library. They have really great comics [referring to our adult graphic novel section].” That is the best sign of success ever.

You know your patrons best. What do they want in their adult graphic novels? You may decide what makes up our adult graphic novels section does not work for you. Use this as a guide, and no matter what you decide, we hope your section is popular with the patrons of your community.

Cover Photo Credit: carmichaellibrary (CC BY 2.0)

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post What is an Adult Graphic Novel? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Who is coming? For Thanksgiving dinner, you make a guest list and send out invitations. Then you wait to find out how many people are planning to come. Not to generalize, but there is always a guest who responds to one of the hosts, when it was the other host who was keeping track of who was coming. Of course, the one person forgets to tell the other. With our open house, we asked for an RSVP. Invitees ended up RSVP’ing to two different people, but each person didn’t realize that the other had a rather extensive list going. Both contact people thought the event would have about 20 guests. Together, the combined RSVP lists were close to 40 people. Fortunately in our case, we knew about the miscommunication the week before the event, not like Thanksgiving where the extra person shows up and there isn’t a place for them at the table!

Will you have enough food? It’s Thanksgiving. You must cook for an army whether or not you are actually feeding one! For library open houses, if you want people to come, you have to have food and assume librarians will be starving. In our case, they weren’t starving. There were a lot of left-overs! So the staff was thrilled!

Is the house clean? Before the Thanksgiving company arrives, the house must be cleaned top to bottom, until it’s spotless. For a library open house, it’s exactly the same. Are all the shelves straight?  Are our displays neat and organized? Just like you know that you should always keep your house picked up, you do your most thorough cleaning job right before there’s company. In a library, signage should always be clear and current. Unfortunately, we used our open house as an opportunity to finally update our signage to reflect some recent relocating of materials. Yes, we should have done it much earlier, but having “special visitors” coming made us finally take the time.

Who is stuck at the kids’ table? Sitting at the kids’ table you still get to eat all the Thanksgiving dinner, but the conversation topics and opportunities to talk are vastly different than at the adult table. It’s the same with a library open house, particularly if the event is while the building is open for business. Some staff members are directly involved in the open house, while other staff members have to keep the functions of the library going. They are all at the library at the same time, but that day their experiences are quite different. This happened with us. The administrative staff was split. Half were involved with the open house and half were involved with the current operations. A staff person who attended the open house said to a coworker who was working out on the library floor, “Oh, it was so good to finally meet Sally (names changed to protect the innocent) at the open house.” The other staff person replied, “I didn’t even know Sally was here. I would have loved to have met her.” Oops! It’s not that one activity was more important that the other. Both were, but one person was left feeling like he missed something. We will definitely be more careful about making all staff members feel included next time.

Who did you forget to invite? It always happens that you find out after Thanksgiving that some relative you were sure had plans spent the holiday alone eating a TV dinner. In our case, it wasn’t that we forgot to invite someone, it was that we forgot to tell some people on staff that there was a special event happening while they were working. That might possibly be worse than forgetting to invite a particular guest! Our library pages didn’t know we were having a big group of people here while they were working. They didn’t know why there were more people milling around the building than normal, and more importantly, the visitors were asking them a lot more questions than they would ordinarily expect. It looked like we didn’t value them enough to include them in the information sharing, but that’s not it at all! Another big oops. We won’t make that mistake again.

What is the take away from this entry besides convincing you to make a reservation at a restaurant for Thanksgiving instead of inviting people over? Be mindful throughout the planning and execution of your library open house event. Make sure that both guests and employees know that they are valued and important to you and that you are glad to see them in your library.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post How Is a Library Open House Like a Thanksgiving Dinner? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Education – The first way to keep the technology from being unfairly blamed for problems is properly teaching people how to use the device in question. In our observation, if people are given the tools to understand something, technology or otherwise, things turn out better. If people are just following a specific set of steps in a specific order with no understanding of why, there is more room for problems. One departure from the prescribed directions and the person does not know how to get the technology to behave. A person who understands why the steps work the way they do is more likely to be able to adapt and keep the technology working if some external force acts on the situation making things malfunction.

Patience – This is the first way to begin to figure out what the problem is. Take the time to talk with the person having the problem and understand the situation from their perspective. Watch what the person is doing. Is the problem replicable? If a behavior can be observed and then changed to get the technology to work right, then it’s the person. If the problem is replicable but all behaviors are correct and right, it’s something within the technology.

Respect – If you do not have respect for the person having the technological problem, there will be more technology problems. Whether or not, the technology is ultimately to blame, the person thinks it is. If he or she believes technology is a problem, the person will develop his or her own (sometimes elaborate) ways to avoid technology. Or even worse, they will ignore or not report other problems with the technology because they believe there is nothing that can be done to correct the problem. Additionally you may also have the user who cries wolf. Even if you know without a shadow of a doubt that there isn’t a problem, you must treat the person like their concern is legitimate and help them through it.

History and Home – Each person has a past, and each person has a home. Technology is so pervasive at this point that most people have a history with technology as well as technology in their homes. The biases and experiences from those involvements follow the person. If they can’t figure out how to program a DVR, they may not have a positive attitude about other technologies. If they have encountered  unreliable technology in the past, they may expect a similar experience from all technological interactions.

Due Diligence – Technology has to be maintained, and problems have to be communicated. All people involved, both those that maintain the technology and the people who use it, have to communicate with the other. There is no way to figure out what the problem is if no one talks to each other. In many instances technology issues have a pattern; finding ways to uncover that pattern via documentation can often make the difference in how quickly issues are resolved.

We wish we could tell you there was a specific set of steps to follow to use to tell whether it’s the human or the technology. But perhaps the ideas listed above will help figure out what the problem is.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Whose Fault Is It? The Technology Or The Human Using It? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Color coding was becoming “a thing” already at the library. We used Demco Alpha Labels on our paperbacks, DVDs, and Blu-Rays. Anything that was red was a young adult material, yellow for adult, green for tween, and blue for children. Our PR person used these same colors as borders around signs for library programming. A subtle blue border meant a children’s program, while yellow was an adult program.

The idea about two years ago was to expand the concept of color coding areas to the entire library. Looking into several different possibilities, it was decided to go with the Colormarq product because it appeared the most adaptable. Not only were we going to use color, but we were going to reorganize the entire collection. Stripes of color were going to help us do just that!

We had been researching libraries that had used a BISAC classification system for parts of their collection and had decided that was what we wanted to do. Colormarq could give us up to five stripes of color so we could have several different levels of color classification. The changeover process has moved much more slowly than we would have liked. Every time we think we have gotten everything included, we discover something we forgot. Trying to decide how to organize both fiction and non-fiction for all reading levels so there are no duplicate color patterns is quite a challenge.

As you would expect, younger patrons are embracing the colors and groupings much more quickly than the adults. Our youngest patrons know that blue-red-lime green is where all the beginning reader books that have cartoon characters are. It doesn’t matter to them that the blue stripe indicates it’s a children’s book, the red stripe underneath means “learn to read,” and the lime green stripe is “seen on tv.” It’s simply where THEIR books are.

Our volunteer shelvers and paid pages were skeptical at first, yet are coming to see the benefits of the color groupings. It’s easier to find things that “helpful” patrons have put back on the shelf in the wrong place. It’s even easier to get some materials back on the shelf because you can look quickly at color strips instead of words in small print on spine labels.

Only a third of our collection is color coded and labeled so far. This coming year is the “year of the label” as our entire staff devotes all their free time and energy at work to completing the color labeling process. And of course we couldn’t say enough good things about Bill Gunn at Colormarq, and how understanding he has been as we keep changing our minds about things! This coming year will be quite an adventure, and we can’t wait to see how everything turns out in the end.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Color In the Library – Organizing Materials By Color first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

As we had suspected, almost every “ring” we have gotten has been from materials returning to the building that had been checked out prior to the staff “going live” with RFID. For six weeks prior to the gates being turned on, we trained our patrons using the self-checks, as well as our staff doing check-outs at the circulation desk, to check out materials with the RFID software.  Unfortunately, some materials slipped through, but many fewer than we had anticipated!

It was about four months between attaching the final RFID tags and starting checking materials out with the RFID software.  In the interim, we did checking in (materials discharge) with the RFID software.  That taught us that our quality control in placing and programming the tags was not as good as we had thought.  Fortunately, we had planned to take things slow and had plenty of time to continue testing things.  We tested hardware, software, equipment, and human procedures.  D-Tech was able to help us “tune” our gates during this testing process.  They were very patient with us, and we cannot say enough good things about Chris, our installer, and James, technical support from D-Tech, who continue to answer all our questions whenever we have them.  We understood from D-Tech that “settling in” is a common step many institutions miss . This fine-tuning of settings and controls within the gates and software happens before the gates are turned on for continual use.  As a result of this testing, we felt very confident when we turned the gates on in July.

Now are patrons are greeted by a Plexiglas RFIDGate, http://www.d-techdirect.com/products/rfid-products/d-tech-plexi-gate/.  Practically every patron, regardless of age or gender, is enthralled with how attractive they are. We’ll admit that the comments about how the changing spectrum of colors on the gates should match our library’s logo colors are starting to get a little old, but we know for sure that people have noticed the gates. There are some people who stop and watch the whole cycle of colors before they leave the building.

The gates “going live,” has meant they are colorful and occasionally make noise. Thus, we have received other patron questions. Some thought the gates were to detect guns or other weapons. Many were concerned the gates were going to interfere with their pacemakers or other health-related devices. Apparently getting RFID gates is a fabulous way to find out even more about our patrons’ medical conditions! It is a credit to our circulation staff that they field questions and empathize with the medical conditions of our patrons with humor and grace. The activation of the gates has also caused patrons to question whether the tags have GPS qualities. There has been some good-natured debate among the staff as to why people think we would want GPS on our materials. We’ve concluded that people might be concerned we’re going to literally hunt their materials down when they’re overdue, or we’re going to pass judgment on where they use our materials.

By far the funniest thing with the gates turning on happened during our recent high school lock-in. Apparently when you’re a sleep deprived teenager, 6:30 AM is a great time to see if you can “sneak up” on the gates and try to make them go off. Who knew RFID gates could bring such joy to teenagers who giggled like little kids with every ring? However, the similarly sleepy library staff couldn’t stop laughing at the kids “experimenting.” A good time was had by all. We suppose now we can add “patron entertainment” to the list of benefits of RFID gates, but that’s probably still a lesser benefit than materials tracking and security.

The post More on RFID in the Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Quality Control – If we knew then what we know now, a whole lot of people—staff and volunteers—would never have been involved in attaching RFID tags to materials. As time went on, we developed procedures and protocols; but in the beginning, no such luck. From our perspective, we have had to redo previous work. It can make for some potentially icy relations between co-workers when one person is very precise about tag placement and another is not!

Information Distribution – Everyone needs to know what is going on with the project and where it stands. It’s vital to keep the staff and volunteers informed. While it may seem obvious to say, it’s especially important that the volunteers know what is going on. They are more likely to be asked by the general public, “What’s going on at the library with RFID?” than your staff. We are lucky to have an awesome volunteer coordinator who made sure to keep our volunteers informed of what was happening, and as a result, they had correct information to share with others about the project.

Practice Compassion – There were some folks on staff who, unless it was an absolute mandate from the director, were not going to use the RFID system because “they’d seen how it worked!” What they had actually seen was some of the early testing and necessary adjustments. As you would expect, it wasn’t pretty. After the bugs were worked out, things were fine. It takes compassion among colleagues to understand where both the apprehensive-of-change and early adopters can find common ground. It was also very important for the administrative team to listen and pay attention to the individual staff members who were resisting using RFID for what they felt were very good reasons.

Exploit Your Assets – On the days where new elements of RFID first meet the public, it’s good to schedule your most positive, supportive RFID cheerleaders. They can help patrons learn new routines and answer questions. They can empathize with patrons over their concerns or challenges, but they won’t join in the belly-aching of “why did you have to change something that wasn’t broken?” We are fortunate that many on our front line staff were RFID supporters so implementation has worked fairly well for us.

Focus On the Positive – Our administrative team was torn for a while about what they wanted to say to people when the RFID gates sounded. The implication was that people were stealing items and that RFID was solely for security. In our case, while this was an issue, it wasn’t the main reason we moved to RFID. We needed to have better statistics on our circulation because a portion of our funding is tied to circulation of materials. As a result, when the gates go off as people are exiting the building, we have our staff trained to say a version of, “It looks like some of your materials didn’t get checked out completely. May I help you get everything checked out?” We have also talked with staff about emphasizing to patrons who ask why we have moved to an RFID system that we are doing it to keep better track of our circulation. So far, patrons have seemed interested and pleased with this answer. They don’t want to think about stealing library materials being a problem in our small town!

Bringing RFID into your library is a wonderful way to help your staff and patrons learn new techniques to manage any change in their life. And the added bonus is you get a materials management system as well!

The post RFID – The People Side of Implementing a New Technology first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The Dangers of Success
You would think that if your innovative program is a success, you are problem free. However, our advice is watch your co-workers and supervisors. They may not be happy. We are not saying end your successful program. Just be mindful of your colleagues who either are not as “out of the box” as you are or are just treading water until retirement. Listen to their concerns. For your supervisors, make sure you are not causing your co-workers to run to your supervisor about the new thing you just did that has “ruined” their work environment. Our bottom line advice is do your awesome new program, but be sensitive to what is going on around you.

When New is Nothing Special
You are carrying through on your innovative idea. Some patrons are participating. Your program or service is not a failure, but it is not a run-away success either. What do you do? Can you advertise it better to get more patron buy-in? Do you need to convince your co-workers to talk it up? What is your threshold number of participants to consider the program a success? How do you get to that number?

The Positives of Failure
Your amazing idea bombed. No one came to your program, or no one used your new service. It was not a complete failure. You learned things. Did you learn that a particular time of day or day of the week isn’t a good choice in your community? Did you gain a new friend or collaborative partner because of your experiment? In addition, here is the secret some people will not tell you…sometimes it is good for your colleagues to see you fail. It may make them feel better to know that you are not the perfect person they think you are.

Everything Has a Lifespan
Your program is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The world is beating a path to your door. Even awesome programs need to have an end. Maybe your program goes on hiatus. Maybe it just needs to stop. Our experience has been that by giving programs lifespans, it gives other programs a chance to grow as well as giving us time and space to try something new.

Regardless of what happens with your innovative idea, we hope you learn things. Right now, we try to give each new idea (program or service) at least a school year (8 months) to a year and a half. We also try to get our innovative programs and services funded as often as possible through grants so we are not spending tax dollars on experiments. However, most importantly, we are not hung up on ideas that fail. Every failed idea has had some interesting kernels of success that we take forward to the next experiment. In the words of the wise television cartoon hero, Ms. Frizzle in The Magic School Bus, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.”

The post Take Chances, Make Mistakes first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Shiny Books – Who would have thought that the eye-catching covers that glisten in the light would be a problem? The metallic bits of color interfere with the radio signals. However, with some experimentation, there are ways to position the tags on the books or even on the tag pads themselves to still be able to use the RFID tags. However, toddler and children’s books where there can be quite a bit of “shine” still cause us to question whether we want the books in the collection at all. There have been many good-natured arguments on staff about whose fault it is that there are shiny books in our current collection. We’ve even “threatened”to tell the collection development folks, “Please see if you can figure out if the books you’re ordering will have shiny bits. If they do, are you really sure you want to buy it?”

Oversized Books – When we had our staff trying to tag as many books as quickly as we could, we had them put anything that didn’t tag properly the first time in a pile of items to be dealt with later. We started to notice that a large number of oversized items were ending up in the pile. The reason? Staff were putting the books on the RFID tag pads. This meant the tag in the book was not on the pad itself, but hanging off the side somewhere. Now we are much more careful when tagging larger items. We sure had a good laugh when we finally figured out what the problem was!

Toddler Books – We assume we’re not the first library to debate the merits of putting RFID tags on toddler books…as it is these books that get munched on by our youngest patrons. Nothing like having a conversation with your vendor about whether the tags are slobber-proof! Apparently they are fairly saliva-resistant, but we have tried to put the tags on those books close to the center of the book so small mouths can’t reach them as easily!

Helpful Patrons – Would you believe that within a week of starting to affix RFID labels to materials, patrons were returning the materials with the tags peeled off, and they put a lot of effort into doing so! For discs, they claimed the sticker kept things from working properly, which is not true of course. For books, the stickers just got in the way of the back page of the book…even when it was just blank! Now we have a fine for items returned with their tags removed. Good grief! There was quite a bit of eye rolling on the part of the staff as we realized we were going to have to make a formal statement about not removing the tags.

We’ll finish this story by saying that we’re almost a year into our conversion process, and we couldn’t be prouder of our staff at Madison Public Library in Madison, OH. There’s something amazing about watching your colleagues working together to solve challenges.

The post RFID – The Sometimes Silly Things No One Tells You first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Piles of Discs – It could be a box set of CDs, books on CDs, or a complete television season on DVD, but the problem is the same: too many discs each with a sting ray RFID label, which can overwhelm the RFID reading device. We’re lucky that D-Tech is still trying to work with us to figure out a solution. Right now we’re determining how many discs we can put together before the RFID readers lose count. Perhaps we should hope for everyone to download audiobooks on an MP3 player instead of checking them out from the library? It was already vetoed by the staff that we stop buying complete TV seasons because they think the patrons would complain too much! So our creative staff members are still experimenting to figure out how to get everything to work correctly!

Double-Sided Discs – We never appreciated how many DVDs that we owned were double sided. What a pain! Even worse, we didn’t even realize that there were different media tags other than the full-sized sting rays. Fortunately our vendor, D-Tech, was able to get us hub tags, which are much less commonly used but work perfectly. Wouldn’t you know that some of our most popular DVDs were double-sided? And of course, while we had them pulled for processing, it seemed like those were the only DVDs people wanted to check out!

Dead Tags – We don’t know if all tag providers do this, but at least our tags from D-Tech that come “dead” from the factory have a black square printed on them. It’s approximately 1% of the tags that are dead, and we’re finding that percentage to be high. However, we’ve turned it into a game here, to try to make sure everyone is paying attention and not using bad tags. We stick the bad tags on each other (some proudly, some surreptitiously) and tell people we’re invisible. It’s true. “Dead” tags are invisible to the RFID readers. Some folks on staff have been known to go through most of a roll just to find the dead tags to cover themselves in!

Weird Items – We aren’t sure how many libraries circulate oddly shaped items. In our case, it’s Nintendo DS cartridges. Currently there are no tags that fit on the cartridges, but D-Tech is looking into how to create tags that would work for us. We can’t be the only library with things like this. There’s something that makes us feel good about our vendor trying to help us find a solution to our challenges.

Customer service is a huge part of trying to decide what vendor to go with for RFID. It’s tough to decide who is going to be able to help your library through the joys and challenges of implementing this system. When we did our RFP for RFID vendors, we asked that the vendor include libraries they had worked with previously. We wanted to be able to ask the libraries about how they felt they were treated by the company, and we did. Our vendor got great reviews, and that has been our experience as well.

Good luck on your RFID vendor search and your conversion process!

The post RFID: Challenges for Potential Vendors first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Anti-Theft: Would using RFID be a successful theft deterrent for your library? Do you have a current anti-theft system? With radio tags on every piece of material, RFID is an effective way to catch items that innocently or not so innocently try to leave your building.

Inventory Abilities: The radio tags make it easy to know where an item is whether or not it’s in the correct place in the library. It will take a whole lot less time to find things that have been creatively shelved by helpful patrons. Or it’s easier to find what you want on the shelves, whether it’s to send out to other libraries or for your own purposes.

Labor Intensive: The initial outlay of staff costs in having to affix an RFID tag to every item in the library is a bit daunting. Do you want to touch every item? Can you use your library’s core of volunteers to do some or all of the work? Do you know of any MLIS students needing some hands-on experience?

Materials and Equipment Costs: It’s not cheap to convert your library to RFID. You need to decide what elements are most important to you and find a vendor that presents the most reasonable costs. There are several big vendors to look at: D-Tech, 3M, and TechLogic just to name a few. Each vendor has strengths and each has its weaknesses.

Staff Buy-In: Do you have key staff that will support a project of this magnitude in your library? Will their jobs be materially improved by RFID? If you can convince some staff that an investment in time and labor now will have big returns later, then you’re all set.

Tech Knowledge: Will you have someone in your building that is tech savvy and can manage the RFID installation? Will that person be the point person either with your vendor or whoever will maintain the system? What vendor you choose may be determined by what kind of tech support you are provided with.

When you’ve weighed these different factors, you can decide if RFID is right for you.

The post Does RFID Make Sense for Your Library? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

• Get good prizes. We have a staff member who shops clearances and sales and plans for prizes for adults all year. She amasses gift sets and “family movie night” packages. She finds amazing things. Our local businesses (particular restaurants and bars) have been very generous with providing us gift certificates as prizes as well.
• Tell children. In school visits, this year in particular, we told the children about a gift certificate we had gotten to a local tattoo parlor. Many parents of these children are inked, so there was definitely an excitement in the air when we talked about this prize.
• Talk to parents when they sign up their kids. Early on our successes with increasing our adult participation numbers came almost exclusively from telling parents when they were signing up their children for summer reading that there was an adult program as well. They could read and earn prizes. Many parents did not  even realize the adult program existed.
• Summer reading rewards in exchange for chores?  At our library, everyone, adults and youth, earn fake money for their reading. The more you read the more “money” you earn. We encourage parents to save their “money” and give it to their children in exchange for chores done at home. This was something one parent told us she did, and now we tell all parents when they are signing up. What can the “money” be used for? At the library?
• “Reward” parents for reading to their children. Some adults participate because they can get prizes for reading to their children each night. For a little investment in prizes we know that there are some children who are hearing stories at home.
• Visit places where adults gather. A library representative was asked to make a presentation on library resources at a local church dinner, and she mentioned the library’s adult summer reading program as one of the “upcoming events.” More than half of the questions at the conclusion of the presentation were about the adult summer reading program, not the actual presentation itself. We visited a senior center to promote library services and summer reading. We talked with a few people who were excited to learn they could listen to audiobooks and participate in the program. We have found that just hanging signs in the public meeting rooms doesn’t draw the attention to the program that direct conversations or presentations does.
• Enlist your colleagues at the circulation desk. Our circulation desk staff mention the Adult Summer Reading Program to avid readers and repeat customers.

It’s hard to find the time to promote adult summer reading the way children’s and teen librarians promote their programs, but it is well worth the effort. It is great to hear an adult saying, “I remember doing summer reading programs as a kid. You mean I can do that again?”

The post What? Summer Reading Programs Aren’t Just for Kids? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Businesses are both embracing and worrying about BYOD
Productivity and security are both concerns. But what about libraries? What are the benefits for adopting this model of staff owned devices used for library work? Historically libraries are not known to be places where “gadget is king” like other industries. Now frontline staff are helping patrons download ebooks to their mobile devices and services like Freegal and Zinio mean music and magazines are not far behind. Individual libraries and larger library cooperatives are discussing what technical competencies their staff must have and developing lists of skills.

Gadgets are becoming an integral part of the library’s business model, but many libraries are slow to integrate mobile technology into their library beyond a few ereaders for staff to “play” with or an iPad to use during storytime. BYOD may be a way for libraries to experiment with new technology in their building without committing vast amounts of money to staff training time on devices these people may or may not want to use. Libraries can experiment with and evaluate the various devices their staff own, use, and love to decide what devices may be right for the library to purchase and use. The staff is given the power to choose instead of receiving an administration mandate.

So now you have let your staff bring their personal gadgets to work, what do you do with them?

• Demonstrate how your patrons can use your library’s mobile app to find materials on the shelf. Staff can use their phone to model how a patron can use his or her phone or other mobile device.
• Use a note-taking program to generate meeting agendas or meeting minutes to share with department members.
• Have back-up internet access in case of emergency. Even though the Internet access or electricity in your library NEVER goes down, it is nice to have staff members with 3G or other mobile devices who can access the Internet and continue to help patrons until the building access problems are solved.

And, of course, you will need to help your IT staff and building administration relax. You have policies on what is acceptable for staff and patrons to do. Revisit that policy before you allow BYOD. Make sure everything is all set. If you don’t allow staff to play Minesweeper on their computers at the reference desk, you shouldn’t be allowing staff to play Words with Friends on their tablets at the reference desk either. It’s just that simple.

Try BYOD, and see how much happier and supportive your staff is of library technology.

The post Is Your Library Ready for BYOD? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Time management of the interview is the same whether it’s a traditional reference interview or a technology one. Sometimes a person is looking for an obscure fact or article and it takes a long time to locate exactly what that patron needs. Does the librarian have time to find it at that particular moment, or is he or she the only librarian on duty and there are three other people waiting with questions? A person needing technology help is no different. Sometimes the help they need is going to take a while to accomplish. Can this be done now or is the person going to need to schedule an appointment or simply wait until the librarian has finished with the other patrons in line? Being able to get a patron to a certain point with a technology question may be all the librarian has time for at that moment, and the person either needs to wait or to come back later if more help is needed. This is no different than the “I’ll take your information, continue to work on this, and give you a call when I have an answer,” that has been used for years with tricky or time-consuming reference questions.

One of the challenges with a technology interview is knowing when to walk away, and this is so hard for librarians because rarely do they ever walk away from a reference question. In Kenny Rogers’ song, “The Gambler” he got right when he sang, “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.” This adage works very well for technology interviews. When is the challenge one that needs a colleague’s help? Is it a situation where you need someone with more technical skills? Or is the question one that seems to indicate that this is a problem that cannot be solved at the library because the technology involved will never operate as it should.

Like a traditional reference interview, librarians must be wary of assuming they know what the patron is going to say. In addition, be aware of sweeping generalizations such as “All baby boomers and senior citizens don’t know how to use a computer much less operate an ereader.” That can be a very dangerous assumption. It’s almost as problematic as assuming a Gen Xer is going to know how to apply for a job online.

With some flexibility, adaptability, and “old fashioned” reference skills, your staff can teach technology to patrons. It may be a matter of days before an interface changes and everything looks different, but your staff can learn to roll with these changes. This is still the reference interview everyone knows. Don’t let concern over technology obfuscate the basic reference interview foundation.

The post The Technology Reference Interview first appeared on Public Libraries Online.