1. Western New York Library Resources Council
Friday April 24, 2015
Stephen Abram, MLS
Provocations: Big Trends in Library Land:
Member, Researcher & Learner Engagement
TRADIGITAL!

2. WHAT WEDGIES DO WE NEED TO
SUCCEED?
Libraries are multifaceted and complex . . . And not trivial

3. There is a lot to do to craft a strategy
and argument for libraries

4. What should help…
Measurements (not stats)
Public Opinion
Stories and Testimonials
Digital and Social Presence
Political Presence
Influence Training for the Team

5. What Technologies work and
have impact?
Are libraries social institutions?
Why do we ask questions? Where
does learning become research?
Why do we read? How do we
read?
What really supports community
engagement?
What really looks like learning?
What are the right questions?

6. From good questions . . .
Come great answers and strategies

7. Who do you serve?
Think Deeper, Know More.

8. So, from an international perspective…
just next door in America’s Hat
• Ontario Public Library Statistics (open data, 1997-2013,
ranked by cohort)
• Specialized research into reading readiness, school libraries,
e-books, etc.)
• Surveyed city clerks and politicians about strengths and
weaknesses of public libraries
• FOPL Index of Community Engagement
• 2015 Ontario-wide Public Opinion Poll
• Census of Digital Presence (websites, positioning, social
media, social networks)
• 10 Part Advocacy webinar series plus a MOOC
• VIP Value Impact and Positioning of Libraries
• Leading to an Open Media Desk
• For the scholars . . . OCUL

9. So now we know stuff
• For example:
• We have no real need to reinforce the book issues
• Cardholder growth is lagging population growth
• We have cardholder holes and underperform in certain
segments
• Our funders think we don’t play well with others or
work hard enough on economic and development
impact issues
• Digital libraries continue to suck
• etc.

10. Why?
Because libraries are entering the
perfect storm.

11. You decide!
You decide!
You decide!
You decide!
You decide!
You decide!
And, sadly, there is no single, right
answer.

13. THE TPL ECONOMIC
IMPACT STUDY
Insights from Qualitative and Quantitative
Impact Measurements
Kimberly Silk, MLS - Data Librarian, Martin Prosperity Institute,
Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Co-Author, “So Much More: The Economic Impact of Toronto Public Library on the City of Toronto”

14. Katherine Palmer
Dr. Kevin Stolarick
Kimberly Silk, MLS
So Much More:
The Economic Impact
of the Toronto Public
Library on the City
of Toronto
January 15, 2014

15. Message 1: The Economic Impact of TPL

16. Message 3: The Value of an Open Hour

17. 17
Total direct benefits reach $502 per member

18. 18
Toronto Public Library delivers $5.63 of
economic impact for every $1 spent

19. 19
Return on Investment
ROI is 463%
The return from the City of Toronto’s
investment in the Toronto Public Library is
463%, which is the midpoint of a range very
conservatively estimated to be 244% and is
comfortably shown to reach 681%.

20. Neighbourhood Branches Provide
Communities Intangible Benefits
20
“Cities that promote diversity and tolerance also
tend to become places that are open to new ideas
and different perspectives, promoting creativity.
This in turn builds cities that are attractive to
individuals and businesses involved in the creation
of new ideas, products and services.”
The Importance of Diversity to the Economic and
Social Prosperity of Toronto, MPI, 2010

21. Intangible
benefits deliver
value
Opportunities for residents to
improve their literacy skills,
enhance their educational and
employment opportunities,
and improve quality of life for
themselves and their families
through library collections,
services and programs deliver
a lifetime of value to residents
and increase the economic
competitiveness and prosperity
of Toronto.

23. Why These Findings Matter
• At the City Council meeting, January 15-17, 2013, Council passed a motion to request that the
Chief Librarian prepare a cost-benefit analysis of the Open Hours Policy and the economic
impact of Library services and provide a report to the City Manager for review and report prior
to the 2014 budget process.
• The 3 key findings addressed the information request from Toronto City Council.
• These findings provided the information councillors needed to make an informed vote re: TPL
proposed budget.
• Result: TPL’s 2014 budget request for a 1.4% increase over the 2013 budget approved, including
funding for for the first year operating costs of two new branches, Fort York and Scarborough
Civic Centre. It also includes funding for increased open hours at seven district libraries and the
Toronto Reference Library, standardizing hours for all research and reference libraries and
district branches to 69 hours per week, including Sundays. (Source: TPL news release)

24. What We Learned
• Collecting lots of data doesn’t mean you’re collecting the useful
data.
• Data collection must be directly linked to the message / proof
you need to deliver to stakeholders.
• A data snapshot isn’t enough – data collection strategy & analysis
must be an ongoing process, to provide ongoing evidence of
economic value.
• We can replicate the expensive MPI study quickly and simply at
lower cost.

25. For Scholars
• How we communicate consortial buys
• E.g. $300 Mil + $180 mil
• Or
• 2 cents an article and a thousand times more resources
• Or
• $56 per student or half the cost of just one textbook for one
course
• Value and impact studies in academic libraries are
underdeveloped.

26. Next Week . . .
• Libraries 2025
• (based on the success of Libraries 2020 that
generated $15 + 3 Million)
• Invested in:
– Province wide database licensing
– Province wide e-book collections
– LearnHQ – sector wide e-learning, mentoring and
performance management
– Marketing campaign in works

27. Stop the Insanity
New Hashtag
#specialkindofstupid
27

28. Libraries core skill is not
delivering information
Libraries improve the quality
of the question and the
success of user experiences
Libraries are about
improving learning
and building communities

29. Retail Sales Down?
Teen Reading Down?
Titles Down?
Circulation Down?
Reading Down?
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO
Focus on the REAL Issues
Not BOOKS! The experience

30. 30
Stop Having and Engaging in Trivial Discussions
• Libraries are more relevant than ever
• We have no good reason to be on the defence – change to offensive
positioning
• Reading is UP
• E-Books aren’t replacing p-Books - the dynamic is a new hybrid
marketplace
• E-Books have benefits that p-Books don’t and vice versa
• Librarians are being hired and doing well
• Our market is growing and diversity and teams are a norm
• Change is our tradition
• We have (nearly) all evolved and become TRADIGITAL
• That said . . . Our image in public opinion lags this evolution

31. 31
Comprehensive Digital Strategies: More than just Content!

32. 32
Biggest Issue: Getting Lost in the Reeds

33. Digital is more complicated than Print.

34. What are the BIG Questions?
What are your top 20 buckets of questions?
When you know that, what are your staffing,
programs, and collection alignment
strategies?
34

35. 35
Re-Framing
• Libraries are essential economic, social, innovation, and educational
infrastructure.
• It’s not just going beyond books – we always did!
• Community engagement is a platform. Books are a foundation. The
magic happens in the programs.
• Every collection justifies and aligns with a program.
• Every statistic serves to create a measurement and every measurement
supports a story and a matrix of proof for positive impact.

36. 36
Branding: How are Ontario PL’s describing themselves?

37. Some (not all) ‘Trends’
Diffusion is the issue
Not ideas and pilots and experiments
It’s not the money – but leadership, risk-
taking, culture, energy and breaking inertia

38. 38
Let’s talk top tech trends . . . There are too many! Arrghhh!
• Cloud & TCO
• Mobile – mobile first and apps
• Discovery
• Engagement
• Geo
• Data through Insight – Data Info Knowledge Behaviour
• SurveyMonkey and ForeSee
• Research: Pew, Market Probe, OPLDS, OMBI, etc.
• Personas
• Steaming media
• BiblioCommons
• Experience Portals
• MOOCs, e-Learning, & more
• Measurements and Stories
• Branding
• CRM, Customer Service and cross functional teams
• Beacons

40. RECREATIONAL READING
40
BISAC
Schools

41. STREAMING MEDIA
What pilots are you engaging in?:
• to replace the DVD portfolio
• for audiobooks, talking books
• for podcast discovery
• for the visually impaired community
• to deal with subscription and community gaming
• to support discovery and reviews
• to support multilingual discovery
• non-fiction vs. fiction video discovery
• Trailers
41

42. REPOSITORIES
Get real
• Go beyond text
• Linked Data in a bigger way
• Avoid archipelagos
• Do the SEO
• Make them visible and not dark web
• Stop hiding them
42

43. POP-UP EVENTS
• Word on the Street
• Sidewalk Sales
• Campus quads
• Mall Walkers
• Survey and cardholder campaigns
• Reach (vs. Outreach)
• Mobile Makerspaces
• Partnerships (Chambers of Commerce, Clubs, etc.)
• Search G-Images for Pop-Up Library or Little Free Libraries for inspiration…
43

44. REINVENTED BOOKMOBILES
Fraser Valley’s LiLi
Ottawa Public Library’s (Pop-Up) Bookmobiles
LibraryBox, iBeacons
44

45. STORY HOURS
45
Record your Story Hours
YouTube Your Story Hours
Tie in to collection
• Parenting
• Children’s Health
• Continuing Education
Moms and Caregivers Social Glue
Teddy Bears, PJ’s, Pets, Toys
How do you find kids’ books?

46. YOUR WEBSITE
Websites webbed…
How many doors?
46

47. MAKER
47
3D is 4D
STEM & STEAM
Creative
Entrepreneurs
Changing Life Arcs
And so much more…

48. BAKERSPACES
48

49. AUTHORSHIP & WRITING
49
Douglas County and Colorado Models
Lulu, Amazon Singles, Self-publishing
Fifty Shades of Grey
This is an economic activity

50. EVENTS AND PROGRAMS
50
Hand-knitting Sweaters or an Industrial Revolution for libraries
Consider scalability and replicability
Cooperation on a massive scale
Mobility of programming
Thinking big – over 1000 attendees or 30?
Mobile Makerspaces
Mobile staff talent

51. HOBBIES
51

52. PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEO
52
Green Walls
Video editing
Repositories
Contests
Genealogy
Tourism

53. LEARNING OR EDUCATION OR
HOMEWORK
53
Top Questions Pattern
Common Core Curriculum

54. UNDERSTAND YOUR KIDS
Education Changes (Common Core)
What do you know about curriculum? (e.g. Shakespeare)
IQ Changes
Human Genome and Learning Styles
Behavioural Changes
Developmental Understanding
Teens and development
In academia recognize that you’re dealing with teens to a large degree and
these are post-millennials now
54

55. PASSION SERVICES
Community service indexing – 211, Blue Book, making sense of so many
governments, social services, and charities. . .
Finding and choosing schools and continuing education
Services to veterans and in-the-field military
Seniors – social glue, isolation, home bound, connections to teens &
community
What are your passions?
55

56. PROMOTION AND SOCIAL MEDIA
56
Websites and e-mail
Blogs
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
Tumblr
Vimeo / YouTube / Vine
Instagram
Etc.
Integrate!
Write once,
broadcast widely
and wildly

57. BUILDINGS VS. SPACE
What does a community centred space feel like?
57

58. ENGAGEMENT
58

59. TECHNOLOGY AND SOLUTIONS
Responsive Design
Responsive Design
Get ‘em
Do it with your team
Consortia and partnerships
59
Mobile – too many devices
Mobile – screen differences
Apps
ILS in the field
Cloud
The justifications are efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity
aligned with user demand and behaviours

60. Understand the difference between
Search and Find
• Roy Tennant and I have been saying for years: “Users want to find not
search”.
• Librarians enjoy the challenge of search and try to create mini-librarians.
• Information literacy is different than contextual information fluency.
•The user experience is mostly “elsewhere”.
• Learning, research and decision-making processes trump search.

61. Understand the difference between the
roles of discovery services and native
search
• Search is the identification of potential objects to read or view in either
a known item retrieval scenario or – more importantly – an immersion
environment where choices are made.
• Until recently, we handled immersion environments in the context of
defined subsets of content (a single database or small group).
• Discovery services are one step before search – the identification and
discovery of the resources (databases) that are worth searching.

62. Get the naming and labeling right
• Vendors must develop unique names and brands for their services to meet
positioning, marketing and sales needs to you.
• There is no need for you to fall in line and pass through these names – or
worse try to train end users to know hundreds of them!
• Can anyone defend using these titles to be the single most important label for
end users? MLA, Scopus, Compendex, ABI/Inform . . .OPAC!?
• Honestly! The needs of trademark law don’t match the needs of users to
identify resources.
1000%+
Growth

63. Are you using numbers strategically?
• Statistics versus measurements
• Satisfaction and Impact
• Visual versus data
• Stories build on data springboards
• Are your numbers showing customer satisfaction or just
activity?
• Do you trust your numbers (It’s easy to mess with an interface
and increase hits or whatever statistics you’re using.)
• How can the vendor help your numbers issues and insights?

64. 64
Talking Money
• Price
• Cost
• Billing
• Value
• Deals
• TCO
• Value of Your Time
• Value of Their Time

66. Core Statistics (CLA Draft)
1. Service points and visits
2. Reference questions
3. Circulation (of particular item types)
4. Population served
5. E-resource holdings
6. Children’s membership and services
7. Staffing
8. Internet/PAC/WiFi
9. Programming
10. Total operating expenditures
66

67. Core Measurements (FOPL Draft)
1. Overall value of a library membership (usage not cardholders)
2. Value of an 'open hour' (new metric unique to MPI TPL study that aggregates cost
+ value)
3. Economic impact (vs. ROI) (Households and Population)
4. Per Capita 'Usage" comparison across systems, groups (like small, medium. large,
urban, suburban, rural, remote, FN, etc.), and jurisdictions (province/state)
5. A 'new' usage algorithm to modernize the old circulation stat and combine digital
and print usage into a standard, comparable metric
6. A metric for technology access tied to the digital/economic divide(s)
7. A standard operational effectiveness metric (Value for Tax Dollars)
8. Average cost per household (taxes are based on household rather than population
and better reflects funding models)
9. A metric for Use of Space (meetings, study, rooms) which was new for the MPI
study and hadn't been done before
67

68. 68
The Public Library Value Proposition
1. Excellent Return on Investment
2. Strong Economic Development
3. Great Employment Support
4. Welcoming Newcomers
5. Provable Early Literacy Development & school readiness
6. Ongoing Support for Formal Education and Homework Help
7. Serve the whole community equitably
8. Affordable access to community resources
9. Access to Government Services and e-government
10. Questions Deserve Quality Answers
11. Support Cultural Vitality
12. Recognized and Valued Leisure Activities for majority of residents
13. Infrastructure Support (ADA and Buildings)
Do circulation numbers even begin to capture this value?

69. Until lions learn to write their own story,
the story will always be from the perspective
of the hunter not the hunted.

70. 70
• Library Advocacy: The Lion's Story
• Are you framing your library's story well?
• Are you sharing measurements about your impact, or still beating the
drum of raw statistics that show funders where to cut?
• Are your measurement strategies too driven by easy to assemble
computer tracked stats or are you sampling and researching qualitative
insights and stories?
• Are you using great gift of social media to engage and get your message
out.
• Has your library's marketing and communication plan stepped up to the
21st Century?
• Are we ready for advanced data mining of our websites, circulation and
membership records?
• Are you ready for the reach beyond outreach?
• What are the skills and competencies that library teams need?

71. First . . .
Let’s stop using the word
technology
Let’s discuss experience and
user satisfaction . . .

72. Second . . .
Let’s start using verbs to describe our
service portfolio in the context(s) of our
members, audiences and communities.
72

73. 73

74. 74

75. NOUNS
Books, eBooks
Magazines
Websites
Buildings, Branches
Rooms
Desks
Programs
Nouns can be warehoused and
‘cut’
Serve
Answer
Engage
Link
Entertain
Tell a story
Do
Action verbs imply dynamism
and impact

76. Smelly
Yellow
Liquid?
Or
Sex
Appeal?

77. Third . . .
Let’s build on our legacy of trust and
respect and our foundation of
collections and places to shine

78. 78
Foundations

79. 79
House

80. 80
Home

81. Fourth . . .
Let’s emphasize the humans that
make the magic happen . . . Library
Staff

82. 82
Librarian and Staff Magic Should Not be Invisible

83. Grocery Stores

84. Grocery Stores

85. Grocery Stores

86. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

87. Chefs

88. Meals

89. Fifth . . .
Let’s focus on VALUE, IMPACT, and POSITIONING (VIP)
What’s the music and magic you hear? Play? Do?

90. Are you locked into library
financial mindsets?

91. What about value and impact?

92. Or shall we stick with this?

93. It’s the stories that happen inside your
library that matter . . . Not just the ones
you have on the shelves.
Tell those stories
Encourage the heart . . .
Better yet . . . Collect the stories in your users’ voices
BUT HOW?
YouTube Channel?

94. Invest in persona development
• Segment by behaviour and goals . . .
• Does anyone really prioritize content and answers by
format?
• Are we viewing the workflow or learning flow or life
stages through a camera hole?

96. Sixth . . .
Reorganize and Invest in Staff
• Align with modern structures (Municipal official research…)
• Cross-functional teams
• Customer Service Models (Disney, Starbucks, Ritz Carlton, Marriott)
• Reduce backroom and increase front-room
• Increase outside the walls time
• MOOCs, e-learning, Conferences, PD, etc.

99. The signs . . . There’s always another
view…
99

100. Are we a culture of poverty?

101. Do You Feel Poor?

104. 104

105. Personal and Institutional Impact:
Strategies and Tactics
EDIT them down . . . But how?

108. 108

109. 109

110. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Lighthouse Consulting
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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