B106 – Public Library Issues & Reflections
Enjoy this roundtable session from Monday, October 20, 2008. The session was described as “Join the day’s speakers for an interactive, round-robin, expert response session with plenty of audience Q&A! Reflect on the day’s insights and ideas and share your thoughts with colleagues.” Listen in to this Q&A session that may be even more relevant now than it was in 2008.
Tag Archives | public libraries
Digital Library Landscape
What is the role of libraries in today’s world? Vital or irrelevant? These were the questions OCLC’s Roy Tennant attempted to answer. His major theme was that to survive in the digital library landscape, libraries must solve the problems their users have (and, I would presume, those who provide funding even if they’re not library users, although Roy didn’t specifically say so). He identified the main objectives of academic libraries in the digital world as preserving the parts of the web not in the Wayback machine and of public libraries as building community and providing access to materials that are a bit out of the ordinary. And what about special libraries? I thought Roy kind of blew off that group when he said they concentrate on ROI (return on investment). Instead of saying how special libraries could determine their ROI, he said “that’s your homework.” I’m guessing he doesn’t have an answer and I’m not completely surprised, since each special library would have to find an ROI metric compatible with its parent organization’s mission and goals.
He warned against having libraries too associated with books. We must look forward and become “a central parat of the new ecology.” Are libraries in imminent danger? It’s possible, but Roy warned us not to panic. Still, his conclusion that those who dislike change will dislike irrelevance even more indicated that librarians need to alter some of what they do so that they stay relevant might indeed lead to panic in some libraries.
Marydee Ojala, Editor, ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals
Online Marketing in Public Libraries
I moved downstairs to the online marketing session. Lauren Stokes, Las Vegas-Clark County public library, starts off with blogs. There are staff blogs and patron blogs. She finds she gets better feedback from the staff with the blog format. Read me Vegas is book discussion blog, with Tuesday Trivia and Random Thursday. Tie databases into discussion. Librarian’s Brain is for patrons. It has tutors, games, tips, lesson plans.