TeenTrax

Yesterday, we hosted our first teen services institute, TeenTrax.  It was a blast!  Patrick Jones, *the* teen services guru in my book, started the day with a great reality check.

What do you call young adults in the library?  By their names!  It’s all about relationships, and you can’t have a relationship with someone if you don’t know their name.

How true!

Michele Gorman,  the truly awesome Teen Services Manager at Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s ImaginOn, gave us some of the basics on doing Reference for teens, and followed up with practical approaches to creating programs that meet the developmental needs of teens.  The thing that really blew me away is that she’s had her Teen Advisory Council assist in the hiring of three recent employees.  The teens create questions and interview the candidates.  That’s what I call radical trust.  Best part….the results have been terrific!

Teen services is one of the hot topics right now, but I don’t believe it’s a fad or a ignorable trend.  I think it’s a central part of the library landscape for years to come.  I admit, I’ve never really had an interest in doing teen services in my relatively brief career, but being around people so passionate, it’s hard not to get catch the fever.  I hope TeenTrax helped create the fever in a lot of people yesterday.

 

Customers or Patrons

It’s been far too long since we blogged here at LibraryTrax, I know.  We’ll try not to be away so long from now on.  Here’s one I hope will stir conversation.

I’ve had discussions over the years on whether to call the people who use our services “customers” or “patrons.”  I’ve grown fond of “customer” myself, and I’ve finally found something that may explain why it appeals to me so much.

John Jantsch, over on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, writes about the choice between “customer” and “client”:

The idea for this post actually goes to Ridgely Evers, founder of NetBooks. In a brief discussion he mentioned the origin of the word customer is the Latin - consuetudinem, coming from one’s habit or custom - or, someone’s customary practice do something repeatedly. The root of client is the Latin cliens, more closely related to the idea of a follower.

He goes on to say:

I don’t know about you, but I know I want my customers to know, like, trust, call and refer me repeatedly. I want them to grow accustomed to my blog. I want it to be their custom to think of me whenever they need a practical marketing tip. So, customer it is for me.

Me too!

 

Audio from the Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium

I mentioned in a previous post that I was lucky enough to attend the TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium this year in Chicago.  You can now find audio from most, if not all, the sessions over at TechSource.

It’s hard for me to highlight just one of the many terrific sessions I attended, but if you only have time to listen to one or two of the sessions, here are my picks:

• James Paul Gee’s keynote address on Libraries, Gaming, and the New Equity Crisis.  James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, and he is providing some of the best research out there on video games and learning.  His keynote was an excellent look at key learning principles and how games address them.  My favorite!
• Eli Neiburger’s featured presentation on  The Payoff, Up Close and Personal.  Eli is the manager of Information Access and Systems at the Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan.  He runs the game program at AADL, and has lots of anecdotes about the positive role games have played in not only bringing young people into the library, but also how it has changed their view on who we are and what we do.

There is audio for more than 30 sessions available, so take a look!

 

LibraryThing for Libraries-the Local edition

A few months back, Julie posted about LibraryThing’s new service, LibraryThing for Libraries: www.librarything.com/forlibraries/. With this service (not free, but not exorbinant either) a library will be able to provide tag browsing, user reviews and ratings, and book recommendations via their online catalog.

Now Richland County Public Library is doing a test of LibraryThing for Libraries in their catalog. I would love to know if any other library in the state is also trying out this service.

Not all materials have added content (notably CDs and movies) and this is still a test, but the results look great so far!

Here are some screenshots from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Notice the similar books feature right on the front page of the catalog record. Now you as a librarian don’t have to know -anything- about a book to come up with at least a few Reader’s Advisory suggestions. The tag cloud is also a great way to find out something about the book. Now we know it is about friendship in the Middle East, likely in Afghanistan, focusing on the Taliban War.

But the best part may be when you click on a tag. Here is what happens when you click on friendship. Now you get books that are in the RCPL catalog that are tagged friendship as well. You also get a list of tags again from The Kite Runner and a list of tags that are similar to friendship (such as coming of age, family, and young adult).

Notice also the search box where you can search for tags right in this screen. Now when someone comes looking for “something semi-biographical set in Paris in World War I about loyalty and orphans”, I’ll know where to search.

 

South Carolina…”a state filled with library goodness.”

It’s no secret how much we like Michael Stephens here at SCSL.  He wowed us (and many of you) last year at the TechExpress Technology Institute.  It turns out that he hasn’t forgotten us either.  He recently published a post titled Nothing Could Be Finer over on ALA TechSource about South Carolina.  He writes:

“And I’m also keeping a close eye on the state of South Carolina. If here ever was a state filled with library goodness, it would be there.”

He highlights the results of our Emerging Technologies survey, as well as SCSL’s web site, and the “Day in the Life of SC Libraries” photo project.  Read the whole article here, and check out Michael’s blog, Tame the Web.  He’s always publishing great things there.

So here’s a big THANKS to Michael for getting the word out about us, but more importantly, THANKS to the SC library community for helping us be something to talk about!