2. Who decides what technology is going to be implemented or adopted by the library and how are these decisions made?
We have two committees, the technology and the e-branch committees who make decisions about new technology. If it something smaller we are working on, for instance making a facebook page, the e-branch committee will make all of the decisions rather than involving the technology committee. These decisions don’t have to involve everyone because they don’t affect things like needing to install new computers or having a new server. The e-branch committee is made up of about eight people. We have thorough discussions about the merits of new technology and if we believe that it would useful or an added benefit to our patrons then we take the idea to the director and assistant director of the library. They have the final say in what is implemented. It’s a group effort.
3. What factors are involved in the decision making criteria regarding the technology like costs, resource allocations in terms of people, etc.?
We use a lot of open source, free software but every once in a while we have to buy some software. Compared to other systems in the library, I feel that the library 2.0 technologies tend to be less expensive in terms of money spent although they do require more manpower in the beginning. One thing that we recently had to spend a good deal of money on was when we began podcasting the writer’s forum for Georgia Center for the Book. The costs in terms of the technology needed to put these performances online is virtually nonexistent but we did have an initial outlay for the recording equipment. It has been a great success though, and well worth the resources spent.
4. Are library staff willing participants in Library/Web 2.0? Have staff members been intimidated by new technology? In general, how has the library’s staff response been towards 2.0 technologies?
As with any most things, some people are really onboard from the beginning. Some are skeptical of new technologies. From their point of view, the library has been doing something a certain way for a long time and it has worked. Why would we want to change it? Almost always, after they have become used to the new application, they come to appreciate that sometimes the new way is a better working way than the old one. For instance, we had some opposition when we changed the way that children’s activities would be posted to the website. The e-branch went in and designed a way for librarians to go into the back end of the website and enter information into the system that would automatically update the events calendar. It was hard to get everyone to try but we’ve gotten the system streamlined and everyone knows how to use it now. Aside from a few people errors that happened again and again, the system was good when it was set up and is working well now after some tweaking. We think that even the skeptics are happier with the new technology now that they are used to it.
5. Is feedback from all staff or only certain staff members solicited prior to implementing specific technologies?
We are a very careful library. We do a test page for a month or two before we roll out most new technologies. For instance, we had the blog up for two months with our committee of bloggers writing and receiving feedback from library staff before we opened it up to the public.
6. What kind of Web 2.0/Library 2.0 technologies are being used in your library? What functional and service areas are these technologies being utilized for?
Well, I’ve already mentioned that we have a blog and we podcast. We also used a content management system on the redesign of our website. We are about to roll out a facebook page and we started a flickr page, although, I don’t think we are using that technology to its full extent yet. We are also using several wikis internally throughout our 22 branches. These wikis are really crude just now but I’m working on creating a large wiki, using Plone, to replace the intranet that we currently use to connect all of the branches. The current intranet is very static and I think the new wiki will be a great addition for our library staff. Wikis are incredibly useful as a way to store and share knowledge within the organization. To build up that information base into a system where all the library staff can reference it will be a great tool. One of the problems that we foresee is getting everyone to contribute to the wiki. There are always one or two people who are gung ho about new technology but some that are frightened by or shy of these new methods. We hope to get all of our staff onboard with the new wiki because wikis are better when everyone contributes.
As with all adoptions of new technology, we realize that we can’t just jump into every new thing that comes along. We have to look at the technology and determine whether it will help us reach our goals for serving our patrons. Also it is important to consider what technologies, your patrons are using although if we find a new technology that will be really helpful that isn’t being used much yet we will still consider adopting it. For instance, with the facebook page we are creating, we had to ask ourselves if facebook could help the library in reaching its patrons and potential patrons enough to justify the manpower to create and maintain the page. We think that it will. Our goal with facebook is to update the page every few days with events that will be occurring at the library. We are hopeful that people who become fans who would not ordinarily check the library website everyday will login to facebook and see these updates on their login screen. We also hope that facebook will be helpful in making people aware of services that the library provides that they would not ordinarily be aware off from just looking at the library home page like how the library shows movies, has outreach programs, and computer classes, etc. Our biggest reservation was how much time it would take us to update the page but we’ve decided the time is worth it.
7. How do you and/or your library staff follow trends in library technologies?
There are a lot of tech journals like Computers in Libraries and Information Today that I read but mostly I browse the web. I follow web design blogs.
8. Does the library follow any best practices model?
Yes
9. If you are using new technologies such as blogs, wikis, etc. how are your usage statistics being monitored? What is the average monthly number of users? Are patrons allowed to make comments on your blogs? What methods has the library used to advertise these new technologies and have you found them to be effective?
The server that our blog is on is the library’s server so we can monitor how many hits we have on the blog a day. We have 80 or 90 hits on any average day. We haven’t been able to monitor how many people are reading the blog using rss feeds or rss readers until recently. We’ve begun using feedburner to track how many people are reading the blog and what reader they are using. We can also see what they are clicking on. We can’t see who these patrons are in particular, nor would we want to.
We advertise new technology on the library website itself by placing the story on the front page or by placing making it into a slide for the slide presentation on the front page. We also will write blog posts about new applications. Occasionally, if it is a really big rollout we’ll advertise in the branches. When we rolled out the new website design and when we launched the blog we had signs in the library and printed bookmarks with the new Urls on them. When we rolled out the new website design we wrote the web address with sidewalk chalk in front of all the branches on the sidewalks.
10. How do you handle incidents of misuse, such as profanity or inappropriate content/comments?
All comments have to be okayed before they are posted to the blog. The e-branch committee receives an email when we have a new comment and one of us goes in and okays it. We really don’t have a problem with inappropriate comments though. We’ve probably only had two in the entire time we’ve been blogging. We do get a lot of spam but the software filters that out for us.
11. Have you had in incidents that have affected public relations as a result of blogs?
No, not really. Complaints are not inappropriate and they are posted along with a reply from the library. If you are inviting people to comment then you shouldn’t censor them if there is constructive criticism of your services. These comments can be really helpful. The library puts out surveys occasionally to see how we are doing and to solicit suggestions. For instance, when we redesigned the website we got consistent feedback from users that the catalog, my account, and search boxes were not easy to find and so we redesigned that whole portion of the website to make it more visible to our patrons. We take these suggestions seriously and consider paying attention to them to be a part of fulfilling our mission.
12. The term radical trust is used often when discussing Library 2.0 technologies. How do you and the library staff feel about trusting your users with direct access to the library content, such as blogs, wikis, etc.?
Here, I think there is sometimes a bit of a generational divide. Younger people in the library tend to trust that issues that arise from trusting the patrons will work themselves out while older library staff tend to want to keep a pretty tight rein on what patrons can contribute content to. Facebook was a big concern for some of the staff. They wanted to know what would happen if someone writes something bad on our wall. I think we’ve seen from how few inappropriate comments we’ve gotten on the blog that this scenario isn’t that likely but regardless, these things can be removed and we can decide to only allow approved comments on our wall in the first place.
One of the more interesting applications that I’ve come across that represented radical trust was from librarything. It allows patrons to logon and inform the website of what languages they speak. The patron is then directed to a screen where they are allowed to translate phrases from the library’s website from English into other languages. If enough patrons participated then we could have our website in several different languages and the translations would probably be of much better quality than if we used something like google’s translator service. I couldn’t get much support for this from most of the library staff though. Too much trust was the problem I think.
Another cool application that we are going to use from librarything is an api for library patrons that will overlay our catalog. Users will be able to generate and see word clouds, they can read and write book reviews, and see similar titles. It won’t change the search functionality of the catalog though which we know is a problem but we haven’t come up with a cost effective way to resolve that issue as of yet.
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