writering

So, I ended up printing out and reading over 50 articles, two books and buying more than a few magazines that all had articles related to my topic.  While I didn’t use everything that I read, I did learn something from every source.

I really couldn’t have picked a more timely topic if I tried because it seems like everywhere I turned there was a headline relating to newspapers and their demise.

I ended up calling the paper “What Can Libraries Learn From Newspapers?”

I really love the way it turned out and I learned so much.  Really.  I did.  At no point did I ever feel like it was something that I just had to get done.

Some things I learned about that I was only slightly aware of before were the Google Book Search project, the existing business model that newspapers were built on and how directly excellence affects profits in the world of journalism.

I think the suggestions that I put forward as to what libraries really can learn from the difficulties newspapers are encountering now are practical and have real applications in the world.

I plan on continuing to monitor the situation with newspapers and have high hopes that they will find a way to survive.

This project seemed like a breeze compared to other group projects that I’ve worked on.  I think this is mostly because Christina, Claire and Mary are all super easy to work with and we were all on the same page with what we were trying to achieve.

The more I started reading about citizen journalism the more I started to feel that it might be more successful if it wasn’t accidental or “gotcha!” type journalism, but sprung out of a more structured place, like oh, I don’t know…a library?  Right now a lot of the examples of citizen journalism that I am seeing on the web are things like we discussed in class…rats in restaurants, or fights in the cafeteria caught on film.  But if teens were able to discuss story ideas and get actual assignments, I think the quality and diversity would improve.

I really think the idea our group came up with is one that should actually be considered by public libraries as a part of a teen summer program.  I think it’s something that kids would be really interested in.  With all the technology that is available, reporting news is really easier than ever.  But even if kids didn’t have access to a digital camera, tape recorder or computer, there is always the old-school pen and pencil way of capturing a story.  Teens could then type, edit and post their stories on the computers at the library. 

Our group project made me realize how much web 2.o tools make coming up with innovative programs for the library that much easier.

I think I need to begin discussing this assignment by telling you about all my failures.  I was hoping to find some juicy scandal, raging controversy or some such conversation to follow on either twitter, flickr, facebook, a blog or in a forum.  I started following a few different libraries on twitter and flickr.  Then that article hit the wires about the gaming taking place at the Nebraska Library Commission and I thought jackpot!  So I started following them on twitter, but all they do on their twitter page is repost the reference questions they receive.  I guess that’s a good idea.  I assume the logic behind that process is posting research questions lets people outside the library know that the library can answer questions about all kinds of topics…but I found the feed to be rather annoying, so I stopped following.  I also thought some of the questions were probably of a very personal nature to the person asking, and while they of course do not post people’s names, I still found myself wondering if the couple that asked about how they might go about finding the child they gave up for adoption would really appreciate that question appearing on twitter.  But that’s actually a different topic and something that I am not interested in addressing for this assignment.  I also tried to follow the gaming story on various blogs, but that conversation peetered out almost as soon as it began.

ANYWAY.

One of the other libraries that I started following on Twitter was the NYPL.  Their feed was more or less about events taking place at the library or interesting mentions of the library in the press.  If I lived in NY I would probably continue to follow them on twitter because that’s an easy way to keep track of events.  But, I find twitter to be a difficult place to follow conversations that you aren’t directly involved in so I decided that I might have better luck reading a blog.

Through NYPL’s twittering I found this site: http://labs.nypl.org/about/ and I have to say, it’s a pretty amazing thing.

The blog is called  the New York Public Library Labs and its purpose is SO WEB 2.0 and LIBRARY 2.0 that I almost cried when I found it.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s a description of their purpose from their website: 

Purpose/Goal of this Blog
NYPL Labs provides a window into the overall digital experience of The New York Public Library. Our goal is to not just invent the digital future of the NYPL, but to blog it along the way. This site will document, comment on, and reveal our practices and processes as we start experimenting with new applications and interfaces.

A few weeks ago they posted a “Usability Survey”  that you can look at right here: http://usability.nypl.org/ and since then I have been watching the comments and conversation about it.  The survey itself is really easy to follow and take and generated a lot of comments itself.  It was interesting to see that people were so involved. 

A follow-up post about the survey was posted a few weeks later.   There were fewer comments left by users, but the post discussed the number of respondents and talked about the information that was culled.

I have to say, I am not really a technospeak person, but I think the blog is completely fascinating and I will definitely keep reading it.  It’s like watching a digital library evolve in real time. 

I googled the blog name to see if other librarians were talking about it on their blogs and guess what?  They are!    Here are some of the posts/comments I found:

The Centered Librarian mentioned the blog and says that it’s worth a look.

DigitalKoans mentioned the usability survey on their blog

UsersLib mentions how great the new NYPL mobile app is, which the NYPL Labs blog introduced

Librarian.net also recommends the blog

It’s also mentioned positively here:

Dan Cohen’s blog 

techMETRO

GlenGage

So, if you have a chance, please, please, please check them out.  A behind the scenes look at the next library frontier!

Earlier this morning after I did a twitter search for something unrelated to anything for class, I saw that someone had posted a link to a news story that relates to a library.  I clicked on the link and EUREKA!  A blog post topic unfolded.

The original link leads to a news story posted on AccessNorthGA.com and I’ve added it here: http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=218820

The story is really a press release about Gwinnett Public Library.  The library is asking its patrons to fill out this online survey: http://www.gwinnettpl.org/AboutYourLibrary/Surveys/index.html with the intention that the results of the survey will help steer the library in a direction that is more user-generated (Library 2.0 concept, anyone?). 

The newspaper story links right to the survey so it’s easy to find that way, but if you try to find the survey from the libary’s home page, I found it semi-difficult to find.

Since I am not a resident of the county I did not want to fill out the survey and so I didn’t get to see all of the questions, but I was excited to see that there was a survey and that the survery was announced as a press release.  

Part of that press release reads:  Library officials say public input “will help us create and expand upon programs and services that best satisfy our community needs.” 

This is a great example of a library saying to its users, hey, we know what we want to see in the library but what do YOU want to see in the library? 

(Sidenote: I googled this library to read more about it and stumbled into a whole rat’s nest of comments about the director’s firing 3 years ago on sites like librarian.net and it made me really wish that I was taking LIS768 in 2006 because that would have been one heck of a conversation to follow.)

Below is a list of some of the sources that I am using for my paper topic:

What Can Libraries Learn From Newspapers?

Since both libraries and newspapers are facing some challenges due to the introduction of new technologies, I decided to examine the (overwhelming amount of) literature that is being written about the newspaper industry and see if there are any lessons that libraries might be able to take away that might help them with their own digital age challenges.

Below are some of the sources I have looked at so far:

The Vanishing Newspaper : Saving Journalism in the Information Age  – Philip Meyer   Meyer proposes a plan that he thinks can help save the struggling newspaper industry.   The newspaper industry has been losing readers at a steady rate for the past 30 years, but due to  technology the rate is accelerating.  Meyer knows that technology is the current cause for the financial problems facing newspapers, but his plan speaks to more than just how to make money with the technology, the plan he lays out speaks more to stabilizing the industry in a way that will protect it from changes in technology and make it viable in the face of other changes as well.

I looked at the ALA’s annual State of America’s Libraries from April 2008 to get a sense of what the current challenges were and where the lessons from the newspaper literature might be best applied.  The link is below:

http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/mediapresscenter/presskits/2008statereport/2008statehome.cfm

I looked at the following article from the Economist that discusses in detail exactly who and what technologies are the biggest threat to newspapers.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7830218

Another article that I looked at is called “The Death of Libraries? Digitization of Print Could Reduce Today’s Libraries to Musty Archives.”   This article makes the argument that libraries and librarians may not be as necessary in the digital age and really helps solidify how newspapers and libraries have some similar problems.

 http://www.technologyreview.com/web/14436/?a=f

I looked at an article from Business Week called “Net to Newspapers: Drop Dead” that addresses some of the same issues about how print journalism is losing the war to digital mediums.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_27/b3941024.htm

My favorite article that I’ve found so far was in the New Yorker and it’s called “OUT OF PRINT: The Death and Life of American Newspaper.”  It’s an extensive article that bases some of it’s ideas for how to save newspapers on the Philip Meyer book that I mentioned above. 

 American Libraries January/February 2009 featured an article called “Testing the Web 2.0 Waters”.  The article is about how libraries are using some Web 2.0 tools very effectively in the library.  This article is the bridge between newspapers and libraries and what Web 2.0 tools have to do with everything. 

I’m also planning on incorporating our text to see what, if anything, that Library 2.0 proposes mirrors what my research has been suggesting that newspapers do in order to save themselves.

I hope this is all okay????

So, I just got a friend request on facebook this week from someone who is 80!   That is when I realized that facebook has officially become a part of the culture at large.

I’ve read many articles like the one Michael posted about Mark Zuckerberg and I always find that the interviewers seem to be slightly hostile toward him and I don’t know if he’s a difficult interview or if they’re just jealous.  But that’s neither here nor there.  I know that they are trying to figure out how to cash in on their success and so far the ads are the only real sign of that.  At first I read a lot of backlash in the press about the fact that the ads were going to be marketed at you based on information on your page and people initially did not like that idea, but it seems like that initial bristling has died away because those ads are so easy to ignore.   But if Zuckerberg is really going to make the billions that everyone expects him to, he’s going to need a whole new approach and I really hope that his new approach isn’t something that is in direct conflict with the spirit of web 2.0.  What if they did something like blocking all apps that are created by people outside of the facebook circle and start charging for them?  I think they have a tough road ahead trying to figure out how to keep things in the  web 2.0 vein by letting users generate content, keep things open and free, and also make money.  Has anyone aside from Amazon.com and ebay.com really figured how to make the internet profitable?  I’m not sure.  It will be interesting to watch for sure.

I am kind of in a tizzy about this and so I thought I would post about it.  It is related to my paper topic because I’m writing about newspapers.  So, earlier this week one of my superiors sends me an email with the headline:

“You Can’t Always Believe What You Read On the Internet”. 

So, I open it expecting to see the OPPOSITE of what I’m reading.  It’s basically a chain email sent around smearing a current member of the Obama administration.  Basically, the sender was trying to make the case that the media was trying to hide this very relevant information from you.  I think that the headline he used was not at all what he meant to say, I think he meant to say that you can’t believe what the “liberal news media” is telling you, because what he’s sending around for you to believe  as truth is FROM THE INTERNET!

I bet you’re wondering how this is relevant to anything we’re talking about in class.  Well, here’s how I see it.  I happened to have been reading the paper version of the Chicago Tribune a few days before  I read this email and in the paper one of their columnist addressed this email that’s been going around and pointed to five different resources that have all soundly proven that the said accusations were indeed false.  So, when I got this email, I immediately searched for the on-line link from the paper and sent it his way with a note that said, “you can trust what you read on the internet, as long as you know WHICH sites to trust.” 

The reason that I bring it up here is because so many people believe EVERYTHING they get in emails and don’t bother to check it.  They don’t have the skills that we’ve learned in library school (or elsewhere) on how to be a smart consumer.  And this does not just pertain to smear emails.  I see a lot of these same stories on blogs and some people just take everything they read as the gospel if it’s on a blog. 

Part of my paper deals with how newspapers can be saved and a big part of the argument is that newspapers still hold journalists accountable and they are trained to present unbiased, truthful accounts of the news.  I was thankful that I had a newspaper to link him back to and I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge for information providers in the future, to help people ferret out fact from fiction.

• UPS employees are largely autonomous and they seem to really enjoy that freedom and trust they are given
• Hiring the right people is the most important thing management can do
• Feeling a part of a team and that you are not alone is extremely key to employee retention
• There is a sense of purpose with the task.  Drivers feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day because they can see their truck is empty.  They interact with customers and often times the customer is truly appreciative of the delivery.  
• UPS is a company that has figured out how to marry technology with people.  Frankel notes that the company is aware that technology can and SHOULD only take the package so far and that the human element is also important. 

The most important lesson he learned can be summed up with the following expert from the book: “Part of what I learned by the end of the experiment was that there was a deeper subtext to UPS founder James Casey’s phrase, that anybody could deliver packages.  There was more to it than just good training; a company actually had to expend some effort in finding the right person.  The truth was that anybody could deliver the packages, but it was better if you found somebody who actually wanted to deliver the packages.” (p. 205)  It  may sound like a simple thing, but so many places forget that step. 

***

I could go on and on about what he learned from these various companies, but I think I hit the highlights.  I would add that his experience at Apple was also positive for some of the same reasons that they were positive at UPS, namely there was a respect for the company that wasn’t forced upon it’s employees, it grew organically from them and as a result, the company and the employee each took something positive away from their shared experience.

You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Punching-Unauthorized-Adventures-Front-Line-Employee/dp/0060849665

I was reading a book last week that I was actually reading for some research  I was doing for a novel I’ve been thinking about writing for a very long time when I realized that the book I was reading was very apropos to our class.  The book was called “The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age.” 

Basically the topic that I want to explore is: What Can Libraries Learn From Newspapers? 

With  new technologies and everyone proclaiming that the newspaper is dead it made sense to me to relate that headline to libraries because we often hear a similar thing about the book and about our profession.  Once I started to think that this would make a good topic it seemed like every magazine, newspaper and journal I picked up had an article about how to save newspapers so I started exploring it  and I really think it will make for a good paper.   I hope you do as well.