I’ve spent the majority of the afternoon at the local Borders. I’ve come here to study, drink coffee and feel like I’m doing something community oriented while hovering alone over my books and laptop.
Why Borders? Why did I come here? You’d think a library advocate such as myself would be basking in the free wifi of my public library and taking advantage of the resources it has to offer.
There is something about cafes and bookstores that many libraries lack. Honestly, even though my library is within walking distance, I still drive to Borders because I’m comfortable here. I like having a table with a window view and a cup of coffee next to my laptop. Something about the rigid chairs is more inviting to me than the 70s-esque decorating that overwhelms the library.
So, despite the free wifi and no-obligation-to-purchase-a-beverage seating at the library, I still opt to pick Borders. As I look around the café, a number of tables are occupied by individuals who haven’t left their seats all afternoon either—they too have found this as a comfortable “third place.”
My point here isn’t to tell you how much I dislike my local library. It is to emphasize that the Borders and Starbucks and Paneras and Argos and Barnes & Nobles and Caribou Coffees have gotten something right. They make me feel safe and welcome with their bright lighting and scents of espresso. Although we, the library, aren’t in it for the dollars profit margins—I cannot help but believe we have much to learn about the model that has been created by cafes and bookstores.
The short of it: bigger isn’t better.
Seth Godin, a highly acclaimed marketing writer and speaker has complied eight years of his blog posts and columns into this handy to-go guide, Small is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. Organized alphabetically, the entries are short, reading like a blog, and discuss topics for every-day marketers seeking a way to better relate to their clients. Although the book could certainly be used by Fortune 500 companies, its point is to emphasize the value in small business, personal relationships, and the ability to try something new.
The library, especially the 2.0 library, also follows these same ideals. Our business is making a place for people to access information, communicate with each other and discover something new. Godin’s articles provide a way of taking something old out of context and reconfiguring it—making it new and excited for prospective clients as well as those personally involved in the change. We see this in the 2.0 model, which challenges us to confront change head-on and include our users in the process. Godin’s humor and thoughts inspire readers with bite-size ideas that could reinvent the way an organization accomplishes their goals: or better yet, reinvent the goals of an organization. Its about starting small—and making something big happen.
I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s Small is the New Big, which is a collection of articles first published on his blog. Although most of the book is intended for business, its entries can also apply directly to libraries. Being that Social Networking is all the rage at the moment, I was particularly interested in “Then Came the Net” which describes the use of Del.icio.us, blogging, Flickr, Chowhound, and Squidoo for small business. It was first written more than 2 years ago, but I think it is important to recognize that these social networks continue to remain a strong resource–and in the digital world 2 years is a long time! This wins favor for the “social networking: more than just a fad” argument. People do not just use, but immerse themselves in the technologies, and there is so much potential for a network in which the users are active.
Aspect of Godin’s article that caught my attention was his discussion of Del.icio.us (now delicious.com):
I did a search on “Sarbanes” because I wanted to find some detailed information on an accounting issue. The bookmarks that had been tagged led me to a site filled with white papers–all written by software and accounting firms that wanted to start discussions about their services with clients.
No, it’s not an earth-shattering discovery. But the chance of that site’s surfacing in Google is slim–yet because eight people (not a computer) had tagged this page, it rose in popularity and got noticed.
Small is the New Big, p. 90
It got me thinking. How can we better connect with users? With other librarians? Are we using our patrons as resources, and are they using us? Some 2 years after this was first written, we’re taking advantage of the technologies, but are we really using them to their full potential?
I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel a bit overwhelmed by the influx of gadgets that 2.0 has brought forth. My head is buzzing with passwords and screen names and ideas that link the technologies together or make better use of the platforms.
But again, I emphasize the word overwhelmed. I feel I’m better able to communicate with others, but between switching between my Twitteriffic, matt, Adium, and GTalk, I get buried in windows and can easily overlook people attempting to reach me.
I had a bit of a breakthrough this week when I realized that Adium would support GTalk and import my entire contact list onto its platform. Which means (eee!) I can have all my instant messages running from one place.
I had gotten really good at forgetting about an open chat I was having with someone via my Gmail window, which was the 3rd of 7 tabs open in one window that, in order to simplify, I’d minimized and let sit for a good half hour before remembering that my poor friend living abroad was trying to ask my advice on something that I’d failed to respond to. Whew.
Crisis averted. All too late… but averted none-the-less.
I picked up the New York Times today and found an article reporting on Gmail users that, for no apparent reason, get locked out of their accounts–sometimes for a number of weeks. Worse, Google has no customer service line that users can call to help walk them through the issue.
I picked up on two issues here:
1) we’re placing a huge amount of trust in this “free” service, so
2) is it to be expected that the company provides little transparency and no personal service because it is “free”?
As a person that willingly admits to an overabundance of trust in Google’s seemingly robust interfaces, I was a bit distraught by this article and side with the author, Randall Stross:
As customers, we bring the same expectations to Google’s personalized information services, like Gmail or Google Docs, its word-processing service, as we do to our bank’s Web site. These are places that hold information very dear to us. My bank recognizes that losing access for days at a time is unacceptable. It provides me with round-the-clock phone support for account problems. So, too, should Google, even if I pay the company not in the form of a monthly account fee, but with my attention, which Google commercializes by selling slices to its advertisers.
In response to my initial questions, the jury is still out. But when put into the context of the library world, this type of service would not fly.
There was something about talking to my friends via AIM (AmericaOnline Instant Messenger) that made conversing so much cooler. Thinking back, it was through that little pop-up window that I learned to type–or at least picked up speed in my keystrokes because it was important to have a quick reply when chatting on the web. Why were we so enamored with this technology? My friends and I had been discussing the same mindless things as we had sat in the junior high classroom only hours earlier. We could also have been talking over the phone. But instead we were busy taking up the phoneline and chatting via the sparkly new Internet. Little did I know that my “Buddy List” was the dawning of a new era–a time when text-based interactions would increase while vowels and full-sentence usage would decrease. I was privy to something my parents didn’t quite understand, but I couldn’t get enough of.
Despite the technological changes made since then, I still use AIM (well, now Adium thanks to Mac) as a major form of communication. One could argue that my distinct list of friends isn’t a structured community in the same vein as message boards, but from the IM came a more global community: emoticons, away messages, buddy profiles, user icons. And if you didn’t have a screen name, then really, where were were you in the world?
I’ll admit that it wasn’t until about 10 months ago that I changed my screen name. That seventh-grade identifier had grown beyond stale–but despite this, it was a difficult change. Even though “evilkeight” was no longer a representation of myself, it was what my friends identified me as. I continue to have to explain who “msmaven” is when I send a new message.
Also of note (and not that I’m bragging…maybe I am…) I was on facebook as one of the orginal users. Back when only 3 schools had permission on the interface and all my friends brushed it off as “stalkerbook” I was one of the few and proud to have a profile. I wanted to be a part of the buzz. Still do.
