Looking at CLA 2009 (posted by Lia)

This year's conference seemed to have an increased emphasis on marketing, publicity and outreach. Maybe with scaled back budgets the library community is more focused on defending their existence and getting noticed for the services we provide. Here's a quick rundown of some of the top workshops I attended:

Marketing on a Shoestring: This session was hosted by San Francisco Public Library representatives, one of whom was a very savvy FOTL member with a marketing background. SFPL acknowledged they while they have a great marketing budget, they were going to focus on low-cost solutions for those of us poor folks. They revisited a lot of familiar material, such as writing press releases and media alerts and marketing through social networking tools, but they had several fresh new ideas.

• When planning publicity for library events, do some careful planning to isolate the specific audience for your program and TARGET ONLY THAT AUDIENCE. The mistake we often make is trying to reach everyone. For instance, when planning a highly successful international poetry festival, SFPL decided that this event would reach the 25-40 year old "cultural consumer" who shops organic products, read reviews on YELP, and has ties to the international community. So they targeted advertising with YELP, organic food stores, and some foreign language news stations.
• It is important to reach out to potential funders by sending information about programs and events, even without the anticipation that they will fund your program. This will at least increase awareness and funders may remember you for future endeavors
• A lot of word of mouth marketing can be done by our staff. We are all marketers for our libraries, as we talk to our neighbors, friends, churches etc. Increasing staff awareness of library events and services helps everyone spread the word in our communities.
• Blogs - SFPL is trying to move away from too many blogs, focusing instead on enriching their web site, encouraging staff to update content in other ways. They found that too much information was being repeated from blog to blog, giving customers too many places to visit.
• SFPL talked about the recent success of the One City, One Book program. The book selection was key in this program - they picked an unusual mystery title "Alive in Necropolis" that incorporated ghost stories and local settings. The readership was younger and included more men than previous selections. Fun events included One City, One Book, One Bar - The bar created a signature library cocktail, and brought in about 90 people.

Positive Change: Motivating Staff to Give Great Customer Service. This workshop was hosted by Barbara Flynn from the San Diego Library. It focused on a motivational approach known as Appreciative Inquiry, which acknowledges what the organization is doing well, by catching people doing something right.

• The Appreciative Inquiry method was developed by a student researcher who studied organizational development in the highly rated Cleveland Clinic. He was asked to figure out what the Clinic could do even better. He wondered what would happen if they focused on what the organization was doing right. He personally interviewed staff members, asking them to tell him about a time when they were the most productive, most satisfied, and had provided outstanding customer service, hoping to get them to realize that THEY ALREADY HAD THE EXPERTISE TO SUCCEED. The result was that greater productivity, better customer service ratings, and higher employee satisfaction.
• Flynn provided the audience with a cautionary tale from her own experience of an unsuccessful leader who lead by fear, the leader's own fear of what would happen if the staff made poor decisions. The unempowered staff was scared to make decisions, unable to provide outstanding customer service for fear of reciprocity. By focusing on the negative, the staff was unable to move forward.
• San Diego, along with several other libraries, are experimenting with the idea that staff will focus exclusively on the customer when working at any of the public services desks, not working on side projects or book ordering. This, combined with the roving model, encourages staff to be more customer-focused, as their sole purpose is to be their for the customers, greeting and assisting with finding materials.
• A good way to motivate staff is by using an employee recognition model, interviewing staff and identifying those individuals in your organization who are providing excellent customer service, and use these responses to build a Best Practices policy.

CLA Conference 2009 California Library Association - Pasadena

This year there was a noticeable scaling back on exhibits. There were also fewer technology track workshops so I attended a lot of management classes instead.

The most inspiring workshop I attended was Secrets of the Stars - Top-rated Libraries from the Library Journal's Index share their success stories. The common theme among all the star library speakers was that they put the customer (patron) first.

1. First speaker was Commerce City Library Director. According to Director, the City of Commerce originally established themselves as a separate city because they were unhappy with the library services. So her community historically values the library. They do a lot of outreach programs: an annual college fair (over 800 attendees) with 30-40 colleges, give workshops on applying for student loans & colleges, and get keynote speakers for the event. They partnered with Starbucks where they did a storytime at the store which provided free refreshments. They have good relationships with other City departments: utilize the City's Graphics Dept for professional brochures, Police read books to kids, Fire dept brings out their fire truck for library events. They got a local church to donate school supplies for their Back to School Program. They administer the City's scholarship program which is funded by local businesses (over $80,000). Other libraries can contact the Director if they want to know more.
2. Next speaker was Newport Beach Public Library Director. She admitted that Newport is a wealthy community but the library was highly valued in a public survey of all City Depts. They have an excellent pool of job applicants wanting to work at the library. They even get PH.D holders applying for page positions. She attributes that to their close relationship with San Jose Library School. They have an excellent training program for employees. Every staff member gets 2 weeks of training before they are put out to do their job. They are moved through every branch and assigned a mentor. They do a lot of computer training for the public based on demand. Most popular class is how to sell and buy on Ebay. They limit their class sizes to ensure quality time and offer one-on-one training if desired. Staff fight with each other to teach the classes because it's so fun to teach. They collaborate with the OC Arts council to provide performance arts for children. They collaborate with UC Irvine Performing arts majors and give them a stipend to put on shows. They have an active foundation that brings popular speakers like author Nicholas Sparks. The Foundation also puts on an It's Your Money class. They believe in quality rather than quantity when it comes to their collection. After they weeded, their circ jumped 10%. They have a strong Foreign Film collection. Director believes that they are successful because they carefully plan everything before doing it. She also believes in openess. Every staff meeting that is held in library has its minutes published for all staff to read within 2 hours, nothing is done in secret.
3. Next speaker was Pasadena Public Library Director. Director believes library's success is to due to continually listening to staff and public. She encourages Dangerous Ideas - which is opening themselves to new ways of thinking. For example, one of her staff suggested spending less time planning and more time doing. They always ask of new processes - will this make it easier for our customers? She fosters the culture of change readiness. Change is not an event. It is an on-going life process. They don't stop changing after a certain date because it is not in the customer's best interest. She encourages continuous questions and improvement. She has a passion statement instead of mission statement for the library. She has a Best At statement instead of a values statement. She has an annual full staff day where she had goals written on butcher paper and then had staff go and write their names under which goal they felt was important. Then she made that staff person responsible for initiating that goal. One of the most important things was to determine what they would stop doing. They stopped doing school visits and trainings because 80% of staff time was being used for just a minority of the library's users.
4. Final speaker was San Jose Public Library Director. She subscribes to the Charlie Robinson philosophy of give them what they want. Make it easy for the patrons. First thing that patrons see when they come into her library is not a big desk of staff, but a big display of new books. 96% of their circ is done via self checkout. They buy materials that patrons want. Their guiding principles are to take the customer first, teach customers to be more self-sufficient, make it convenient so they can find things quickly, make it comfortable - they want a home-like setting not an institutional feel. They found that the number of reference questions decreased significantly and 80% were directional or simple questions so they did a massive retraining of clerks and have one service point instead of separate desks. That freed up the librarians to do programming instead. They have roving staff to help people. Staff are assigned a zone to walk around and help people during their shift. They also have budget cutbacks so they may be opening fewer days or lesser hours. She offers consulting to other libraries if they want help making similar changes.

A similar workshop that I went to was Why We Borrow - 2010. Lisa Rosenblum of Hayward Public Library had gotten a grant to have Envirosell, a marketing firm, to study the library. A report showed that they needed to make retail style renovations. They put all the computers together in one location to make it easier for the public. They cleared out the front lobby because the public needs a decompression zone and consolidated flyers with digital photo frames. They also dumped some brochures. They put in slat wall to display book covers. They moved the circulation desk and 90% of survey recipients thought it was a better. They improved signage and made more judicious use of signs and posters. They have one desk for reference and circulation so they empower clerks to answer reference questions. Most of the questions do not require an MLS degree. They gave the example of when you go to the Doctor's office, 90% of the time is not handled by the Doctor. It appears that the trend is towards reducing service desks and not always having professional librarians staff the desks.

Another workshop I went to was Hold Your Ground! How to Maintain Funding in Tough Times hosted by San Francisco Public Library and Friends of the SFPL, and the Pasadena Public Library Director. They said the key was to develop strategic relationships with the mayor and city council members well before you need them. Lay the groundwork in having the support by having them come to library events and take the credit so that when you do need their support later, they'll remember you. You also need to define your value and impact. SFPL benefits from a strong and active Friends of the Library group that does all the strategic relationship building with the council members for them. The Friends group paid for a professional benefit study by Berks & Associates that showed the value of the library to the community. Pasadena Public Library Director was proud of a value calculator on their site. An audience member said that libraries could visit http://www.engagedpatrons.org/ to get the code for their own website. Also need to Tell the Story of the library not only with circ numbers but personal stories that show how important the library is to people. San Francisco Library Director has built a relationship with the newspapers editors to get their story out. One of the libraries has a newspaper editor on the board of Select One Book One City to ensure media coverage. They also cautioned to assess the value of partnerships, don't sell off the library's brand too cheaply if it doesn't forward the library's mission.

An interesting tech workshop I attended was OCLC Web-Scale Library Management Services. Basically, OCLC is re-entering the ILS business. No one remembers that long ago that they used to provide ILS systems for libraries. Their new system takes advantage of cloud computing. The system is still in the alpha and beta developmental stages, but they have some free components like WorldCat Local for OCLC subscribers - of which we are. I'll experiment with setting that up in the coming months. Since the system is new, they don't have any pricing for it yet.

Another tech workshop I went to was Is it an iPhone or an iLibrary? which really was a discussion of useful iPhone apps. The talk was given by academic librarians who found it useful in their environment of serving students. I didn't find much that was applicable to our public library.

Another not very interesting workshop was Small Business Resources @ Your Library which was a talk by a Library Director of how she made presentations to her local community and told them about her library's business resources. She had a bibliography of business books and a list of useful websites: http://www.calbusiness.ca.gov/, http://www.census.gov/, http://www.greenbiz.com/, http://www.sba.gov/, and http://www.score.org/

Finally, I attended Using Statistics to Make the Case for your Library hosted by OCLC. This was a dry workshop without many groundbreaking revelations. The OCLC rep said to create a culture of assessment and have outcome measures to ensure accountability for resources. Identify changing patterns or trends. No single golden method exists, it's best to combine several methods. Leadership needs to support assessment activities. There are 3 types of evaluation, goals-based, process-based, and outcomes-based. Have qualitative and quantitative data. Ira Bray from California State Library was there and he said that they have a site free to access library statistics.