. . . and boy are my feet tired!

I've spent a lot of time this week working the exhibit floor (as in shopping - who needs the Mall of America?), but I did manage to calm down enough for 2 valuable things today.

One was lunch. Although i'd started out to go to lunch with our old friends, Kristen Shelley and Kim Gales (and others), I opted instead to get a cheap lunch right at the convention center. I ended up sitting with some librarians from very small libraries in Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Oklahoma. Boy, we had some great conversations about how to deal with kids who have no other social outlets than the library, etc. I plugged CPI (again - sorry about the broken record thing) and told them (preach it, sister!) about the importance of a strong code of conduct and all-staff training in recognizing signs of aggitation and knowing how to respond in a manner that is most likely to de-escalate things.

If you ever doubt it, know this: we are so lucky to have the funding and the visionary administration that we have (and that we've had over the last 20 years). We really are a cutting edge system in so many ways. (nuff said)

The session I went to this morning was on Library 2.0. Oh, I know what you're thinking, "we have Helene with us now, we don't need to hear other folks talk about this." Not true! It's not going to be a reality for CML unless we all hop on that same train, my friends!

Points I gleaned:

• Design for uncertainty - you never know what is going to happen, and you should be ready to shift if needed to better serve the customers
  
• Keep experimenting! There is no right or wrong, there is just experimentation - if it works do it more, if it doesn't work, try the next idea.
  
• In Boston they have Youtube vids of teens booktalking - on their website!
  
• Learning 2.0 is amazing (GO HELENE!)
  
• Web-based activity (i.e. on a teen website the library runs) is higher when it's associated with a program.
  
• "Reminder me later" feature on their events calendar. They can program themselves to get a reminder 3 days before the event is going to take place.
  
• Michael Stephens is really as much fun in person as his blog would indicate.
  
• Speak in a human voice - remember that your customers will respond to this better than to another lecture.
  
• Circ staff is blogging about books for customers - and they're sending circ staff to Book
• Expo to help them! They're our front line - if they don't know about the books, and they're the ones who are known, we're losing and opportunity.
  
• The library should be transparent, meaning we should allow comment in the catalog, etc.
  
• Throw out the culture of being perfect.
  
• Aim to satisfy the hearts of your customers.
  
• Learn to learn.
  
• Adapt to change.
  
• Scan the horizon.

Ideas I had while listening:

• Start a FlickR site where kids and adults and staff can post pictures of library events.
• Start a "1000 readers" project where we get a series of photos of people - maybe all reading the same book? Maybe each reading their fave. Why not even maybe use those things for our promotions? Our customers using the library!
• Stop worrying about controling the content of library blogs, and just let it go.
• If you haven't read it yet, go read Tame the Web's post on the library that disallows MySpace and Facebook. Pay particular attention to the comments - there is a good discussion going.