May I Please Blow Up This Reference

Desk? The Ten Social Trends that Can and SHOULD

Change the Way that Libraries Do Business

Tracie D. HallDominican Universitytdhall68@hotmail.com

Umm, the 20th Century called and it wants

its information delivery

modes back

I ACTUALLY FEEL SORTA BAD…I BET THEY PAID A TON FOR THIS DESK…

Libraries Worldwide are Being Compelled to Reevaluate their Services

Remind me to talk about

embeddedness…later..

Doesn’t even say “Library”

…And Modes of Delivery

Let’s face it,

our avera

ge user

stopped

coming in just for

books, a long time ago.

There’s no

divide…no

omniscient Me and

uniformed You…

The Ten Trends that Should Change the Way Contemporary Libraries Do Business

1. Do not attempt to adjust this channel: Diversity, Multiculturalism, Multilingualism, Globalism—more than just a phase.

2. Rising high school drop-out rates; delayed or prolonged college entrance and graduation; and the librarian-as-teacher-and-the-teacher-as-coach

3. Cohort or Group Learning (Big Reads/Oprah and Eckhart)

4. The infallibility the informal peer review (hey, 27 users can’t be wrong)

5. “Small is the new Big”

6. “Here is the new There”

7. “Customer representative please…representative please…please….?” (The end of print/reading and the return of orality)

8. The “Platform Nine and Three-Quarters” effect and the return of the mighty gatekeeper

9. The New Sensualists

10. The rise of the Empathy Economy

Ultimately…people connect to people and through people…

not to organizations

TODAY’S LIBRARY USERS INHABITS MULTIPLEDIMENSIONS OF HUMAN DIVERSITY

Accent Language Background

Political Affiliation

Age Learning Style Race

Appearance Lifestyle Regional Background

Communication Style

Mannerisms Religion

Economic Status Marital Status Religious Denomination

Education Mental Ability/Mental Health

Sexual Orientation

Ethnicity Nationality Size

Family Size/Makeup

Occupation Skin Color

Gender Parental Status Values System

Income Level Personality Type Work Experience

Job Classification Physical Ability Work Style

Diversity is here

to stay

Static, Inflexible, Fixed Models of LIS Service Models No Longer Fit Our Needs, Wants, and

Expectations of Value-Added Service

To Remain Relevant Libraries Must Play an Expanding Role

Reese and Hawkins say the library is:• An educational support center for students of all ages.• A learning center for independent learners.• A discovery center for early childhood learners.• A Center for community information.• Information center for community business.• Center for reading, thinking, working.

OCLC and others have has suggested that libraries are:• Valued-added destinations• Third Spaces• Centers for access to consumer health information.• Economic leveraging agents• Centers for Adult Literacy, ESL Instruction, and Citizenship

Information.• People’s Universities and self-help centers.

Changing Service Modes Also Demands New Competencies

•What are new competencies are being demanded in the attempt to provide relevant and timely service to your users?

•What are you doing differently? What are you doing that you’ve never done before?

•What do you need to be doing?

•What do you need to learn to keep up?

Librarian shifts to teaching and via teaching to coaching

According to Rasmussen and Skinner (1999) a learning community, very broadly defined, is “curriculum design which coordinates two or more courses into a single program of instruction.” They continue to say the strength of learning communities is in the integrated approach to education. Integrated educational experiences more closely parallel the way people learn and are more relevant to real world events. Students have the opportunity to see topics from multiple, sometimes even conflicting, perspectives, encouraging higher level thinking.

Cohort or Group Learning (Learning Commons/Learning Communities/Oprah and Eckhart)

Focus on the Sympathetic Learning Environment:Relating to or being vibrations, especially musical tones, produced in one body by energy from a nearby vibrating body and having the same frequency as the vibration of the nearby body.

The Right Return of the People’s UniversityThe infallibility of the informal peer review

(hey, 27 users can’t be wrong)

Small is the New Big

I just

wanted

grape

jelly…I’ve

been here

for like 30

minutes

“Here is the new There”

“Customer representative please…representative please…please….?” (The end of print/reading and the return of orality)

The “Platform Nine and Three-Quarters” effect and the return of the mighty gatekeeper

• Proximity to Power Matters

• Insiders vs. Outsiders

• Jobs and Other Opportunities for Economic Mobility

• Social Invitations

• Critical Information is Time-sensitive and can “disappear”

• Information is audience-particular and sometimes audience-exclusive

What’s the secret pass

word?

Okay….let’s give ourselves a break, sort ofI am not even asking you to think about today’s adult user…I want you to imagine how the library is going to

effectively serve these guys:

• Cognition• Impulse• Ideation• Sensation• Reading• Comprehension

New SensualistsCompel libraries

To reach deeper into theirBag of tricks

The Rise of the Empathy Economy

• From .03 commodity to $3.60 experience

• The nearness of you

• I want it, but I want to stay in my pajamas

• Mass-customization

• Experience to Empathy Then Panera Came along

  Issues that May Impede Effective Library Service to Today's Users:

• Monolingual/monocultural library staff and services

• Unfamiliarity with and Misperceptions of Library Services

• Feelings of Inadequacy (knowledge, language, culture, class or income level, pride)

• Past Experience of Exclusion or Poor Treatment

• Physical Barriers {signage, visual, ADA, etc}

• Lack of sufficient or alternative access points

• Caters to limited Cognitive or Communication Preferences (Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic….)

• Low on Experience/Lacking in Empathy

New Models, New Roles:Specialists, Not Experts

Gateways, Not GatekeepersCollaborators, Not Competitors

Embeddedness, Not Maintenance

• In a 1982 study, Geza Kosa found the third most common reason for students’ hesitation to ask librarians for help was a fear of appearing ignorant.

• Claude Steele (1992) points out yet another barrier that could impact interactions between diverse groups and librarians, "the specter of stigma and racial vulnerability." Steele portends that for some students of color asking for help implies "being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group".

New Modes, New Tools

411 911

Outmoded Spaces and Barriers

Outmoded Services

Outmoded Attitudes

What to Ditch?

?

??