The Liminal Librarian

Catching up further, I saw this on in AL Direct — this guy stretches his library’s tiny collection development budget with sites like Paperbackswap and BookMooch. Smart!

On the same day, Clark had packaged seven books to ship out — paying all the postage personally — though he said both the incoming and outgoing stacks were smaller than average. Web sites make it possible. Clark has 800 books listed on www.bookmooch.com, 1,500 on www.swaptree.com and 2,500 on www.paperbackswap.com. He keeps a wish list of items he’s looking for, as do librarians and individuals all over the world. Computers do the matching.

In an era when any publicly funded institution has to spend wisely, Clark manages to make a lot out of a little. His annual buying budget of $4,400 comes from donations, grants, and proceeds from the library’s endowment. His salary and other operating expenses are covered by contributions from the towns of Hartland, St. Albans and Palmyra.

While he said the library has enjoyed steady public funding in recent years, it still operates on a bare-bones budget. Clark is the only employee, paid for 34 hours a week. There are situations like that all over Maine, said Stephanie Zurinski, the Maine State Library’s central Maine liaison.

Why the heck not? Especially for a smaller library that needs to maintain a tight and very current collection — what a great way to make use of weeded items and donations. And check this out:

Since Clark took over at Hartland Public Library four years ago, the collection has grown from 16,000 to 24,000 items and the formerly meager DVD, audio book and music collections now fill numerous shelves, according to Clark. Circulation has tripled to about 75 books a day and the patron list has grown from 700 to about 1,250

I’m darn impressed that he pays for the postage himself out of that 34-hour-a-week salary, too. I don’t know what he’d call it, but I’d call this Library 2.0 in action.

So I am catching up on the email that piled up while I was at Internet Librarian, and saw this in one of the LJ newsletters:

In an unusual partnership called “Borrow Anywhere, Return Anywhere,” all public, college, and university libraries in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, will lend all their materials to any library card-holder in the province, with no additional fees.

Now, that’s cool. Are there any programs like this in the U.S.?

… Oak Brook man hates libraries, children, puppies. Here’s more about him in the Daily Herald.

Telling her mother that she wanted to come to the aid of a library under attack, 11-year-old Sydney Sabbagha stood at the podium before the Oak Brook village board.

“I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me,” Sydney said solemnly. “It will never be the same without the people you fired.”

Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn’t stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine “Connie” Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.

“Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is,” Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children’s librarian) and two part-timers to stop “whining” and raise the money themselves.

“I don’t care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books,” Xinos told them.

“Don’t cry crocodile tears about people who are making $100,000 a year wiping tables and putting the books back on the shelves,” Xinos smirked, apparently referencing the fired head librarian, who has advanced degrees and made $98,676 a year. He said Oak Brook had to “stop indulging people in their hobbies” and “their little, personal, private wants.”

Sydney was upset and “her little friend was in tears” after Xinos spoke at the meeting last week, says mom Hope Sabbagha.

I applied at this library once. Kind of glad I don’t work there now! Oy. What a classy guy — he’s like a Disney villain.

I started a “deals” blog at mashupmom.com earlier this year, and have been fascinated by the search statistics. The top searches are generally all some variation on mashupmom.com, mashupmom, mashup mom, mashupmoms.com, mash up mom, and so on. So I’d idly been wondering why, in 2009, people were still putting entire URLs into search boxes.

And then I started playing with Swag Bucks, and found out one reason. Swag Bucks will probably not make your librarian hearts happy. It’s a “search to win” search engine that proclaims that its results are “from Google & Ask” — but then when you delve deeper, you find that it shows only about 30 results for any given search, of which about 1/3 to 1/2 are sponsored. And no one really cares. I posted about it over at Mashup Mom, too, but here for instance are the top results from a search for “swine flu” in Swag Bucks:

And, here’s what the same search looks like in Google:

Hmm. That’s not the same. So why do people use it? Because it’s “good enough” — and, more importantly, because every time they search they get the chance to win “Swag Bucks,” which they can then redeem for PayPal cash, gift cards, or other prizes. Out of sheer curiosity, I’ve been playing with it for 3 days off and on for nonserious searches, posted the referral link they gave me on my other blog, and am pretty close to cashing out for a gift card already. So you start to see the appeal — and if you hang out in the deal blogosphere, you’ll see people hawking it all over. (MAKE MONEY FROM SEARCHING! FREE MONEY! SIGN UP NOW OR MISS OUT!)

Here are a couple of comments I got over on the other blog:

I’ve noticed that SB searches aren’t *quite* as good as regular searches, but it typically doesn’t make much of a difference. The best way that I earn SB’s is by “searching” for a website instead of just typing it into the address box. For example, when I wanted to come here just now I did a search for Mashup Mom instead of actually typing in http://www.mashupmom.com. It does always make me laugh though when the correct link is something like the 3rd one on the list. It is the EXACT address minus the W’s! How is that not 1st!? Overall, I like SwagBucks. I’ve only earned 142 SB’s so far, but hey, I’ll take it. I’m saving to get a Kindle from Amazon!

I also use my swagbucks when I’m searching for blogs… I type in mashupmom to get here or hip2save to get to her blog, etc. I still get swagbucks pretty quickly even though I do my “meaty” searches on Google. Very interesting post though. I wondered how the site makes its money! Good food for thought. Thanks!

So maybe the question isn’t about Google vs. librarians, but satisficing vs. librarians. It takes 45 “Swag Bucks” to get a $5.00 PayPal payment at the moment. I have done some light searching and am hitting just a couple of Swag Bucks a day — so there’s not a huge payout here. (I think people make more from referrals if they have a lot of “friends,” plus they play hidden extra code games sometimes.) But it’s like gambling: There’s always the chance that the next search will pay off big. Just one more! Maybe vendors should think about building something like this into their databases — there’s a way to increase usage!

I was catching up on email this week and saw yet another mention of a focus on the “survival” of libraries. Although the actual document they’re talking about is proactive and positive in talking about ways to transform and move forward, it re-emphasized how often we use words like “survival” and “endangered” and “uncertain” when talking about libraries and the future of our profession. When we come at it from that angle, it really does sound like we’re scrambling from survival, and not working from a position of strength. Reframing our language and our approach might help us come at these challenges from a different angle.

It also made me think about just how much perception is key, in anything. For instance: I run a resume posting service over at LISjobs.com, for which I charge $10.00 for the first six months. (The only area of the site, btw, that incurs any fees.) Reactions to there being a fee at all generally run the gamut from:

• HOW DARE YOU GOUGE POOR JOB SEEKERS?

to

• Is it really only $10.00? That’s so reasonable. Thank you so much for this site.

to

• You didn’t tell me there was a fee?!

(This last, apparently, from the non-reading type of librarian.)

Same service, same fee, but incredibly different reactions. Now, I’m wondering if there’s a way to tweak the language on the page so that I get a lot more of reaction number 2 — and a lot less of reaction number one (which, I’ll admit, is more rare). I already tweaked it a while back to avoid number 3, but this oddly hasn’t worked so well.

Yet another one of Pew’s endless reports — this one from a survey done in April 2009 — talks about the increase in wireless Internet usage. The part that interests me is that about mobile devices:

The report also finds rising levels of Americans using the internet on a mobile handset. One-third of Americans (32%) have used a cell phone or Smartphone to access the internet for emailing, instant-messaging, or information-seeking. This level of mobile internet is up by one-third since December 2007, when 24% of Americans had ever used the internet on a mobile device. On the typical day, nearly one-fifth (19%) of Americans use the internet on a mobile device, up substantially from the 11% level recorded in December 2007. That’s a growth of 73% in the 16 month interval between surveys.

Hey, that’s me they’re talking about! Before I got my piPhone in March, I had an old brick of a phone that basically… I know, how silly… made phone calls. Now, I read email or look things up or otherwise go online on my iPhone just about every day — and after just four months, you’d have to pry the thing away from me.

And that’s some serious growth in less than 1.5 years. Some interesting stuff for libraries piloting mobile services.

I’ve been thinking lately about speaking and libraries and the effects of the economic crunch on library conferences. By this point in the summer, I’m usually confirmed for at least 3-4 presentations or workshops for the fall — and right now, I’m scheduled for a big, fat, zero. Now, it could be that I’m just not so interesting to hear anymore, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the craptacular economy than anything else. Invited speakers are a logical place to cut back.

Then, I just read in LJ that the Ohio Library Council has cut its entire convention this year — largely because people just can’t afford to go:

OLC made its decision in the wake of a survey of library directors that showed that very few could afford to send their staff to the event. “In light of the recent developments in the state’s public library funding and the drastic adjustments that all libraries have been making to their operations, the OLC made the most fiscally-responsible route for both members and the organization,” OLC said in a news release.

Ohio of course is an extreme case (and if you want to help, check out some of the links over at Pop Goes the Library). I presented there a few years ago and remember the conference organizers as committed and energetic people, so it’s disturbing to read this.

Then again, ALA attendance appeared to be great, although the number of vendors was down. Are smaller conferences going to be more heavily affected? Have those of you who do the conference circuit noticed huge drops in attendance, or a decline in speaking invitations?

When I travel, even if it’s back home to visit family, I like to check out different libraries. Yesterday, I visited the Post Falls, ID library for the first time — and what a nifty little library it is. They have their used book sale set up in a separate room as a permanent store, and I bet they sell a lot more that way due to the openness and nice arrangement.

What I liked even more, though, was the way they fit local and Native design into the building.

This greets you in the lobby, and looks into the children’s department. When you walk into the Post Falls Library, you know you’re not in just Any Old Library, Any State.

They’ve also nicely blended in technology here and in a separate computer lab, preserving the open feel of the building while incorporating the new.

I’d love to have study groups or small meetings in this little conference room off the lobby! I’d also really like to sit here and read during the winter.

We complain about what libraries do wrong a lot, so I also like to comment on what they do right. At least on the surface of things, this library seems to do a lot of things right — I felt welcomed as soon as I walked in, and the design and architecture were intriguing without being intrusive. If you’re ever out this way, pop by!

This blog cracks me up. I think I weeded some of these books once upon a time…

So I was flipping through the March issue of American Libraries (yes, I still like the paper version) and came across a letter that reads:

Your Inside Scoop blog posting, “Obama Invokes Libraries at Governor’s Conference” (Dec. 3, 2008) was a total tear-jerker. It made my day.

It made me not mind having to work another holiday weekend to get ready for another busy week of supporting my school’s awesome students and their talented teachers.

It made me not care that I had to share a banana with my husband at breakfast this morning because we had to dip into our meager monthly food budget to buy extra supplies for the library. [emphasis added]

It made me proud to be a librarian and it made me proud to be an American. Thank you.

Taking pride in your job, good! Going the extra mile for kids? Good! Not having enough money to buy a second banana? Double plus ungood.

Part of taking pride in our profession involves recognizing our own value. Yes, it’s important to have a well-stocked library. Yes, sometimes we do have to go above and beyond, work weekends, bring work home, do work outside our normal “jobs.” But when we’re going the extra mile and don’t have enough money to buy food? Something has to give.

No offense intended to the letter-writer, who’s clearly devoted to her job. However, libraries are more than their collections — if we’re going to argue that we add value above and beyond a room full of books (or a site full of databases), then we need to actually appreciate our own value.