Phil Bradley's weblog

Why the new Facebook Graph Search is important for librarians

Well, the news is well and truly out now, and as many people have been predicting, Facebook has launched their own search engine. The video at the end of my post gives you a quick overview of a few of the things that it's goingo to cover, but I'm obviously interested in looking at it in terms of the information professional.

It's being rolled out slowly, with limited testing in the United States, so the rest of us will have to wait awhile before we can start to play with it, but you can request early access as well. It's still very basic at the moment, but the thrust of where Facebook is taking search is very clear. To start with, it's NOT a web search engine. You can't use it to find all the pages on the web where there are references to a particular football team for example - it's designed to leverage the huge amount of content that's contained within Facebook. That's a really big reason on its own as to why librarians and other information professionals will need to have access to Graph Search (as well as the rest of Facebook of course), because it's a huge information resource. To deny access to Facebook is to deny access to an extremely large portion of the internet experience - I'm not going to replay all the figures associated with Facebook here; you can check out my Pinterest collection of social media statistics or run on over to Visual.ly and do a search for Facebook Statistics and either of these resources should give you the information you need.

Graph search is starting out around the Ps - People, Places, Photographs. The idea is that you'll be able to do a search to find out what your friends like, so you could find out which boardgames your friends like, or which boardgames your married friends with children enjoy playing. You could locate a dentist based on recommendations from friends, or the restaurants in a particular area that you'll probably enjoy eating at based on trusted (ie friends) recommendations. You'll be able to explore particular areas and see the photographs that friends or colleagues have taken, so you might decide to grab photographs of London that friends took on holiday, which the pictures that work colleagues took may be of conferences or convention centres because they were in London working.

Don't worry - privacy will still be a big thing, and the information that you can get will be based on whatever settings people have chosen, but you'll also be able to get data on information that people have shared publically, and that's still a large number of people - about 25% of the Facebook community. However, Facebook does have a very patchy record when it comes to privacy issues, so this is something that you'll need to look at when it comes to using the service yourself - or when your friends do!

So, up until now, Facebook has been about you and your friends. There's certainly an element of leverage here in that the Graph Search will collate a lot of that information together in new and interesting ways. Does this make it a Stalkers toolbox? I think that's going to be down to the settings that you choose for yourself, but it's going to make us think really hard about why we want to use Facebook and importantly how we use it. Is it just for 'friends' or are those friends actually 'colleagues'. In the video, one of the engineers makes a really interesting point that in future we're going to be able to use Facebook - not just to find our friends and colleagues, but to find people that we perhaps should know, or who can help us do something that we currently can't.

This is where the value and importance of Facebook Graph Search starts to come into play, and hopefully you're already seeing how a library could utilise this. I would suggest that every library (public, private, corporate, academic etc) needs to be on Facebook. Your library needs to be found. Now of course, it can be found when people are doing generic searches on Google and the rest of the search engines, but the important point here is that if people are already logged into Facebook, they're more likely to use the search option in the future - particularly if they've found that it works well for them. So if you're not there, you probably won't exist or be thought of by the searcher. In exactly the same way that a few years ago I would argue that a library or business needs to be on the internet, because who uses the printed Yellow Pages any more? If you're not on the net, you don't exist. If you're not on Facebook, pretty soon you won't exist either - it really is that simple.

So - the library needs to have a Facebook presence; it's becoming vital. However, that's only stage number one. Stage two is that library and other professional staff also need to be on Facebook, so that they can be found. For example - I have an interest in American History (the Civil War to be precise) and if I'm going to the States to speak at a conference, I'm going to be keen to see if I can pop in some visits to places that will interest me about the Civil War. Yes, of course I can do a general search and get some stuff, but that's still very clinical. However - if I can see who is going to the conference, and they're friends of mine, I can use Graph Search to find out if any of their friends are into the same interests, or work at a useful library and maybe I can get an introduction to hook up to an expert quickly. Because of the friendship element, I suspect that I'll have a much richer experience than if I just wander into the local museum or library.

However for this to work, that person with the Civil War interest needs to be actively talking about it on Facebook - they have to be engaging, writing about it, mentioning the really great restuarant at the edge of a battlefield that's worth going to, or particular sites, and sharing their photographs. So we're going to have to have an entirely new level of engagement with Facebook for that to work well, and we're also going to have to change - to an extent - our concept of privacy, yet again. If that friend of a friend keeps their interest private, I'm not going to have a chance to make that connection. However, if their information is public, it's a great contact for me. This doesn't mean that everything you do on Facebook all of a sudden has to be public - not at all. However it does mean that we're going to have to think very carefully about what we keep private and what we make available to all and sundry, or indeed if we should have different Facebook accounts for different purposes (which Facebook doesn't like of course, but hey, why should they have all the fun?)

If you - as a professional - have expertise in a particular area, you probably want to share it. You want to help people, or to promote your organisation or your library. You want to be able to reach out into a wider community, and Facebook is offering you a chance to do exactly that. If I'm going to a particular part of the country and I have an interest in local history, wouldn't it be great to be able to see a collection of old photographs or prints of that area which have been shared on Facebook by the librarian in the local public library? If I have a few moments I may then decide to pop into that library to look and see what other stuff is available for me to use. Simply by doing what it is that we do - preserving and presenting information, and working with communities to get more stuff available, we're getting out to that wider audience, and increasing our profile.

This also has an advantage for Facebook as well of course. The one thing that Facebook can't cope with is inertia. This isn't so much a problem for Google, because there are always new things happening that it can index and make available to us, but if we're stuck at 6 Facebook friends that's not really adding that much to the Facebook universe, because you're not sharing content widely or making new connections. However, if you're active on Facebook, and doing more, sharing more and contributing more content Facebook is growing. So, if we move away from the concept of 'friends' and more towards the concept of 'colleagues' there's an entirely different option for Facebook to grow, as we make more friends and share more stuff.

Make no bones about it though, there's a huge impact in other areas as well. If we're moving away from an organisational presence to a personal presence (and I've argued that point well enough in the past, as it's the way that we need to go), how does an organisation respond? Sure, someone can still be responsible for putting up the local history photographs but someone needs to decide to do that, at some level. If we're going to encourage professionals to share their expertise for the benefit of both the organisation and the community, we have to let them do it themselves. This is not going to go down very well with the web development team or the people who produce the Council guidelines on internet use. I would argue that it's our role as information professionals to point out that Facebook is not what it once was, and that it needs to be regarded in a completely new way.

I've already seen people complaining that the new Graph Search isn't going to help brands promote themselves; Larry Kim (CTO of Wordstream) says "It remains unclear on how advertisers will be able to use this Graph Search product to better market and sell their products to Facebook users." I beg to differ. It's perfectly obvious to see how this is going to work, because it's going to be much more down to individual users of products to market and sell products themselves, based on their own recommendations. If I like a product, I'm more likely to recommend it to my friends, and if I dislike it, I'm going to be fairly vocal about that. Companies may well have to spend more time interacting with people than they've done in the past, and use their budgets to keep people interested and onside inside of using it to spend huge amounts on advertising to people who are not interested. So advertising is going to have to continue to become more personalised. Once again there's a role here for the information professional. We are generally very well trusted by people, so we can help by talking about the resources that we use - the software tools that we like, the websites that we go to and so on. That will further help our members as well as the members that we don't have yet.I can also see that companies such as LinkedIn are going to have very considerable concerns about this move, since we'll be able to use Facebook to find out what jobs are available, do we already know anyone who works there, or is a friend of ours, we can see what that company does, the attitudes of people who work there and so on. Graph Search is going to very quickly become a cross between Yelp, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Amazon and so on.

Graph Search is a really big deal, and there is no doubt that it's going to really hit Google. Don't also forget the tie in that Facebook has with both Bing and Blekko, both of which integrate Facebook into their search offerings. This move is going to do them no harm whatever, and in fact will be a really big boost for them, but it will further leave Google out in the cold - because who is going to want some list of websites to look at when they can instead get personalised, tailored content?

Does this require us all to sit glued to Facebook at the expense of other methods of communicating? No, I don't believe that it does. It's perfectly easy to share content across social media with a quick click of a button - you can do it at the bottom of this post if you want to try it out! As we are looking for information, then finding it, we can do the next thing which is to recommend it. However, it does also mean that yes, I believe that we need to spend more time using social media, and that has to move further up the list of priorities. I think we'll be seeing Social media (or Real Time media) roles within information centres, and it should be part of the role that everyone has, not just a few people. We cannot escape it, nor should we - in fact we should be actively embracing it. If we don't, we shall find as Jessops, Comet, BlockBuster and HMV have already found - that we won't be around much longer. For a library and it's staff to flourish we cannot expect people to come to us in the building. We have to go to them, and they are on Facebook, Twitter and the rest.

So, in summary, Graph Search is important for the profession because:

It gives us access to more information to be able to do our jobs better and more effectively.

It will quickly put us in contact with people who we can contact for information, and who we may have a link with.

It's a way that we have of promoting our library to both existing and new members.

We can use it to provide more information than we've been able to do in the past.

It's a very positive way to demonstrate our own skills and abilities.

It gives us more control over the information that we have and how we demonstrate it.

There's another way that's now available to us which means that we can virtually leave the buildings behind us, and connect directly with our members.

 

3D printing - is it for libraries?

3D printing is something that I've been noticing for a while kicking around the edge of the profession, and a discussion on Twitter yesterday based on a blog posting 'Mission Creep - a 3D printer will not save your library' by Hugh Rundle that I had with Shirley Burnham and Alan Wylie led me to explore it in more detail.

If you haven't come across 3D printing yet I would point you at Star Trek. When someone goes up to the replicator and asks for something, only for it to magically appear, well that's 3D printing about 200 years in the future. With a 3D printer, you can actually create physical objects, such as gears which can be assembled into a working model. They work with plastic (although there are food 3D printers as well, believe it or not!) and obviously require a special printer, which cost several thousand dollars, so they're not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. If you're still struggling with the concept, try this video:

 

Hopefully that makes it all a bit clearer. What I found particularly interesting were the possibilities of creating prosthetics for example, rather than bits and pieces for games. However, I'm less interested in the future of 3D printing, and more interested in the role that libraries have, or shouldn't have in the area. Hugh Rundle is very clear; "The harsh truth is that there is no business case for public libraries to provide 3D printing. What this is really about is technolust and the fear of being left behind. How many of the librarians clamouring for 3D printers currently provide their patrons with laundry facilities? Sawmills? Smelting furnaces? Loans of cars or whisky stills? I’m guessing none."

However some libraries such as the Fayetteville Free Library already are at work in this area, and there are plenty of predictions that 3D printers will be entirely common within the next 5 - 10 years. Remember when computers were strange things, and virtually pointless for the vast majority of people - well, that's the situation that some see with these creatures. So is 3D printing about creating stuff? Well yes of course it is - stuff does end up being created at the end of the process, quite obviously. But does that mean libraries need to be involved with it? I think the answer to this question depends very much on the role that you see a library having in a specific community. With the rise of real time media people are starting to produce things for themselves - firstly content, but music, video and so on; people can create their own culture, rather than just sit and passively consume it. Mr Rundle makes the point that libraries don't offer washing facilities, which is perfectly true. However, libraries are increasingly offering facilities, advice and information to their communities in a whole range of areas. Children are able to use library facilities to learn about heraldry, how to paint model figures, military strategy and history, and then play wargames. Teenagers can use library facilities to create and play music, learn from libraries how best to save, mix, share and promote what they are doing. People want to use computers, so libraries provide computers, teach people how to use them, and help them create their own materials, either for themselves or for clubs or societies. We're used to the idea, and in fact we (hopefully) encourage youngsters who use the library to expand their horizons, not just by reading, but by exploring and trying out new things. Why is this - intrinsically - such a different thing?

Libraries are about bettering communities. Does having a 3D printer help with this? After all, Mr Rundle makes the good point than an extra laundry in a community library would probably better the community, but we don't go around putting in washing machines next to the bookstock. He goes on to say "librarians need to ensure that they understand why they are providing them and what the ramifications are." I agree entirely. If a library service simply looks at a technology - any technology and says 'ooh, shiney! Lets get one' this can only end in disaster. Obsessing over technology is exactly the same as obsessing over a collection - you ignore the community at your peril, so any justification for the use of a 3D printer would need to be really clearly articulated.

However - libraries are, or at least should be - involved on the cutting edge. They're not just about mass entertainment; the people who are keen to close libraries certainly want us to believe that however, as they're keen to point out that we can get our books from charity shops, that a 'library' can be run by volunteers and they're happy to hide the destruction of the library service behind community bookswops. Libraries need to embrace technology (and after all, a book IS a technology) to better their communities. That's why computers and ready access to the internet are so important, and why that access should remain free. It's why libraries need to offer eBooks and eLending as part of their key provision. They're not just simple add ons; they are an intrinsic part of the modern day offering that a library has to make. I'm sure that 10 or 15 years ago people were quite distainful about the idea of a library offering computer access, and would have regarded it as 'mission creep'.

Libraries need to be able to empower, but before we can empower, we need to learn. That learning cannot be theoretical - we need to try stuff out, to teach and empower our professionals to be able to do their job even better. That means that we must invest time and yes, money as well in being THE place that people can go in order to learn, to explore, to create and make - as well as being entertained. A library should be a place where people are intellectually stimulated, both by reading fiction of all types, but by experiencing the new. So, should libraries invest in 3D printing? I can't in all honesty see your local public library rushing out and buying a printer, nor do I think that they should. However, that doesn't mean that every library should ignore them; there are plenty of academic libraries that should invest in the concept of 3D printing however. It's certainly something that all information people should be aware of though, because there may well be - and I suspect increasing will be - times when a community could really use technology like this. Librarians need to be able to point that out, to involve and assist their community. We can't do that from a position of ignorance; we need to learn, in order to teach. I'm sure that people also said 'why should a library have a fax machine/scanner/copier/telephone' because they couldn't see the value in technology, or the benefits that it would bring. I suspect that 3D printing is going to be another example. So I'm certainly not calling on every library to raid the bookfund to buy 3D printers, but I am suggesting that we need to keep abreast of developments so that we can in the future buy them, if they benefit our communities.

Yes, most people probably are happy on bicycles rather than space rockets. But if we restrict libraries to simply providing materials that a section of the society wants, what about the rest? What about those people who don't use the library? Don't we have a duty of care towards them as well? Is it not our role to provide facilities to help them better themselves and their communities? I think that it absolutely IS one of our roles. Not only should we do it because morally and ethically I think we should, it makes sense in the longer term - libraries are closing because local councils, organisations and corporates think they can do without them. We need to continually demonstrate that we - both the information professionals AND the libraries themselves, are an integral part of the community and benefit everyone in it - not just the current members, but everybody. We cannot do that that by simply looking at technology and saying 'no, it's not really for us' because if we do that we're denying our communities the opportunity to learn and experience. We're in effect saying 'YOU don't need to know or learn about this'. So no, we don't need washing machines in libraries, because we all know about them already. We need to invest time, effort and energy in the central mission - which is to improve, assist and develop our communities and help the people within them. That's not mission creep - that's the embodiment of what we should do.

People, not HTML

The people over at Nielsen recently released their 'State of the Media. The Social Media Report 2012' which makes very interesting reading indeed. It makes the point that the web is becoming much more about people than it is about websites, HTML and a bunch of formatted documents. We used to have what could easily be described as a destination web, in which we went to a search engine, got a series of links, visited as many as it took to get the information that we needed, and then we went away again. The web with all of the social media (or as I'm preferring to call it these days, real time media) has evolved into a people based web, in which the main value is not the websites that you know or that you find, but the people that you connect with. Also very importantly, it's not really desk based any longer, it's becoming more mobile than ever, and this is only going to increase in the future. I'd like to look at some of the statistics that they make available in order to see where it is that we're going, and almost as importantly, how we're going to get there. If you're not bothered by statistics (and there are a lot of them) just jump to the end, where I talk about the effect I think this has, or should have, on the world of information.

The statistics

The Internet is becoming more and more popular as people spend longer online. The time spent on PCs and smartphones was up by more than 20% from July '11 to July '12. Access via the mobile web was up by 82%, and use of mobile apps up by 85%, while access via PC fell by 4%. However, PC access is still by far and away the preferred choice for access, with 204,721,000 Americans accessing via that method. (The figures are all US based I'm afraid, so take that into account.)

People are spending longer amounts of time on social networks than anywhere else - with 17% of consumers PC time spent on Facebook, which is the most popular US brand. Most of this social media time is experienced by mobile apps  or the mobile web, with users becoming far more deeply engaged with their social media sites, friends and contacts. The top networks are Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+ among others. The biggest growth has been experienced by Pinterest, experiencing an astonishing 1,047% increase in visits, followed by Google+ with what would seem to be a rather paltry 80% growth. Facebook visits on the other hand have dropped by a tiny 4%. Pinterest has certainly been the single biggest success story of 2012, with the largest increase across PC, mobile web and apps. The US breakdown shows that the average user is female (70%), early middle age (31% of users are between 35-49) and white (86%). These figures are comparable across all platforms.

The use of tablet devices to connect to the internet is on the rise, from 3% in 2011 to 16% last year, with internet enabled television doubling (although that's only from 2% to 4%).

We tend to connect with people for (obviously) various reasons, but the main reasons seem to be because we know the person in real life, share mutual friends or are interested in keeping up with what is happening around us.

The report devotes some considerable time to talking about dual screening - that is to say, watching television at the same time as using social media, with Twitter being a key influencer here, with 33% of active Twitter users tweeting about television programmes in June of 2012, up from 26% in January. However, generally people are interacting with the internet while television watching - shopping, visitings social networking sites, looking up information related to TV programmes being watched, or checking product information from advertising.

Almost half of users (47%) are engaging with companies via social media, asking questions, raising issues and making complaints, with 33% of social media users preferring to get access that way, rather than picking up a telephone. Most of those users will try accessing the company Facebook page first, (29%), followed by a users personal page (28%), an official company blog (15%), Twitter (14%) and YouTube (12%). Other social experiences, or as Nielsen puts it 'The consumer decision journey' include hearing of others experiences (70%), learning about brands, products and services,(65%) complimenting brands (53%), and complaining about brands (50%).

The effect on the information world

It seems fairly clear, at least based on this evidence that information professionals ignore social media at their peril, but then - you knew I was going to say that anyway. The next iteration of the web is undoubtedly social, not site based. Consequently, we need to embrace real time media both as consumers of data, but also as creators of data. Real time media is increasingly going to be how our library members will expect to talk to us. They will expect to find a Facebook page, just as a few years ago they expected to find a website. They want to talk to us using apps and tablets. I was particularly interested in the figures regarding what people do on social media - listening to others experiences for example. Can you find a library 'champion' among your members, who is prepared to write about the information service and to engage across social media, dragging other people along with them?

What the report didn't show, which I thought was a shame, was social and search. For me, figures that shrieked out 'information professionals' were the ones that related to why people connect - because the know someone, are friends with the friends of someone, or want to keep up to date with the news. Shouldn't that be us? Shouldn't we be the ones with the Twitter handles, Facebook pages, Pinterest accounts and blogs? Of course, if you're reading this, you're probably one of the people who is doing just that, so I know that I'm very much in the echo chamber at this point, but if you're reading this at home, because you can't get access at work, keep up the pressure! Visit the article directly, and drag out a few more statistics about how people are engaging with organisations, using them to sort out buying decisions and so on. Should we also start to consider rather more how we can get involved with members by looking at what is on television? I was going to say 'with the exception of things like Eastenders' but why not? Soaps do have very important social stories about a wide variety of issues, and if the BBC puts in links saying things like 'if you have been affected by ...' then shouldn't we? With the recent awful news items about gun crime in the United States, is there no mileage in a library somewhere getting some facts and figures together, and tweeting them, or adding them to a Facebook page? This cannot hurt, and can surely only help to increase our visability, both in our own social circles, but also across the net generally. Wouldn't it have been great if, when people search for information about an event that's happening in the world, the first result that comes up is a reference to work that a British library has done to collate facts and figures together? And when people are searching for information in Google, they can see links and connections with their information staff, who are active on Google+? Or when they search on Facebook, up pops a library page? Or that they feel confident enough, empowered and expectant enough that they will consider going to a Facebook page of a library or a librarian, and asking a question there - AND getting a response?

Let's use 2013 to really hammer home to 'the powers that be' the importance of real time media, and the people in the organisation who should be using it and exploiting it to it's fullest potential are not the technical staff, not the Press department, but the people who understand exactly what information is all about - us!

 

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Libraries and bookshops/stores

Two interesting news items have recently caught my eye. One from the New York Times "Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close" and one from the Daily Telegraph "Bookshop numbers halve in just seven years" I don't think there should be any surprise that bookshops are continuing their decline - over 1 per day in the UK would seem to be the average, and there are a variety of reasons that are being given for it. Amazon is blamed of course, as are supermarkets, and eBooks come in for a fair amount of stick as well. The Telegraph quotes the figures that British consumers spent £261 million on e-books this year, almost double the £138 million spent in 2011. At the same time physical book sales fell from £3.3 billion last year to £3.1 billion this year.

The Telegraph article doesn't mention libraries, while the NYT is almost exclusively focussed on them, taking the view that libraries are replacing bookstores. The point is however being almost entirely being missed. The only thing that bookshops and libraries have really got in common is that both of them use the printed word as a coin of activity. For bookshops, that's their only coin - they just exist to sell books, and there's nothing wrong with that - it's what they've always done, and it's what they'll always do, until the final one closes its door. Or they diversify within their niche. A good example of this is Forbidden Planet - which I've been visiting for years. I just visited the website and it's branding itself as a cult entertainment megastore, and that's a pretty good description, since it sells books, comics, games, models, clothing, posters, toys and so on around the area of science fiction. I visit it every time I'm in London, and I'll usually find something to buy. However, thinking about it, I don't tend to visit it *as a bookshop* I visit because I want to see what's going on. I'm very unlikely to buy a Dr Who model, but I like to see what's there, but in getting me there, I'm going to see what's available in the way of Dr Who books. comics and other merchandise. FP as it is fondly known caters to a very specific community - of science fiction and fantasy fans, as well as general book readers and comic consumers. It also has a very nice website to back up the stores, and it has very knowledgable staff. In actual fact, it sounds to me as though it's more like a library than a bookshop really - because what it's really doing is providing a service to a community.

Libraries do not provide books. I'll say it again. Libraries do not provide books. They provide access to entertainment, they provide formatting options that members can use to read what interests them. They provide access to computers and so on. But that's just the trappings, and it's all too easy to confuse that with the real purpose of the library, which is to serve and hopefully improve the community that it it is in, and the people of that community which make up its members. I go into a bookshop and I buy a book, then I leave. Sure, I might wander around a bit, but it's a pretty cold and calculating transaction. If I come out without a book, the bookshop has essentially failed in its primary purpose, which is to make money out of my purchase of a book. However, I can walk out of a library empty handed, but I could have used a computer, been taught something, had an opportunity to work with a librarian to research something, have filled out an online form, have discovered how to take an ex employer to a tribunal, have got a lead for a new job and so on.

I really rather hope that libraries DON'T replace bookshops, because I wouldn't want them to dilute their offerings to me. It's much more important to a community that we protect the library than the bookshop, because sad to say, we can manage more easily without bookshops than we can without libraries. A bookshop is for the few, a library is for everyone. Of course, I hate the idea of bookshops closing - I can't resist peeking into them whenever I can, but if a bookshop is to survive it needs to change - the bookshop needs to become more like a library, a library doesn't need to become more like a bookshop.

 

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UK: Bookshop Numbers Halve in Just Seven Years While eBook Spending Nearly Doubles During 2012

Bookshop numbers halve in just seven years

UK library stats: depressing

The UK had 201 fewer libraries in 2011/12 than the previous year, a drop of 4.5% on the total of 4,466 in the financial year 2010/11 as reported by the  www.guardian.co.uk based on results from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Other reported figures are no less depressing - book issues down by 4.2%, though more children's fiction was taken out than in the previous year. For the first time there are more volunteers working in libraries than paid staff. Net expenditure is down down 5.1%, and forecast to drop a further 4.8%. There's also a depressing drop in visits to the web, down from 114,142 in 2010-11 to 97,721 2011-12 (figures are in 000s).

None of this should really come as any surprise at all, and in some real senses is utterly meaningless. Some people (mainly politicians I suspect) will simply start bleating on about how it means that we don't need libraries any more, and how out moded they have become, and they willl use the decrease in use as further justification for further cuts. This is of course totally nonsensical. The figures drop because people can't get to their nearest library any longer because it's been closed. They take out fewer books because the range of books is reduced. It doesn't mean that people value libraries less, or want to make less use of them. Furthermore, the figures don't show the true value of a library service. Where are the figures that show how many people were helped back into work? How about the number of people who were able to get valuable health information? The number of children who have a better quality to life by being able to read more effectively? The people who have been given hope by being helped out of abusive situations? The extent to which people are able to regain a level of respect through the use of the library? Those figures are just as important - if not more so, and those are the ones that are sadly missing from this accountants list.

In other senses the figures are very important indeed. The destruction of the library service in the UK continues almost wholescale, despite the best interests of 'Friends of' and other campaign groups working incredibly hard. The glib promises from politicians that it's not as bad as everyone has been making out look more fragile and hollow than a 50p Easter egg. In the current climate, where everything is measured by money - and only money that is immediately visible people's lives don't amount to much. Their ideas, their hopes and their aspirations are seen as nothing, because they can't be matched against pennies. The future that well educated children, capable of reading and enjoying reading can provide us with is not included in a spreadsheet.

Libraries are more than the stock. Libraries are more than the figures walking in and out of the library. A library - properly and efficiently run by a professional librarian can enthuse and empower a community and can make a real difference to everyone that it touches, both physically and virtually. The more libraries are cut, the more communities are destroyed. So yes, the statistics are depressing, but what's really depressing is the fact that the people who should care; local and national government all too often don't, since they can't take their eyes off the calculators.

Christmas gifts for librarians!

I will admit right upfront, this is blatent self promotion. However, it's Christmas, so what can you do? If you're looking for gifts for the librarian(s) in your life, take a look at my Zazzle store, which has posters, mugs, clothing, buttons and all sorts of different book/library related things which would sit nicely into a stocking or under the tree.

Of course, if you're the librarian in question, delve into the store (I generally get 10% per sale by the way) and get something for yourself, or point your partner to it.

 

Browse other gifts from Zazzle.

If you prefer to go directly to my store, rather than via the little shopping panel above, it's: Phil Bradley's Zazzle Store.

Personal reputation in a social media world

As anyone who knows me knows - I'm a bit of a social media buff. Between that and Internet search that's pretty much what I do all day. I spend a lot of time looking at how search, social and social search are converging at a huge speed, and I like talking about the implications of that. One of the things that people often ask me about - in connection with this - is privacy. For me, privacy is now mixed up with levels of authority, and for most of us, we're going to have to run an interesting tightrope between protecting our privacy and being seen as authoritative.

Websites are decreasing in importance. You have only to look at adverts for new Bond film Skyfall to see that while it has a website, the emphasis is really rather more on the Facebook page. That has 1,335,188 likes with 151,420 talking about it. If I want to interact with a company, I'm not going to go to the website, I'll go to the Facebook page to ask my question, comment, complain or praise. I'll do this for lots of reasons, not only to ask, comment etc but to share that with other people. If a company does something wrong, I'm less interested in a one-to-one email, and more keen on shining a social media light on them. Look at any Google page of results, and you'll often find that most of the results are now coming from social media resources - Flickr, Twitter, Slideshare, Wikipedia and the rest of them. What does Facebook boast about? The 1 billion users of the system. Can Google boast about the type of thing? Well, we don't really do the whole 'we index more webpages than you do) thing any longer. True, they can talk about the number of searches run, but we're not really users of Google in the same way that we are with Facebook. I can expand on this (and often do), but Facebook is powerful because it keeps people on its site, and Google is weak because it pushes them away (as they find a good answer to their question and leave), which is why they're trying so hard with the G+ system.

What we're now seeing is a clear move - and it's for search engines to embrace social media. Google is doing it by linking to G+ accounts, by personalising search, by identifying authors, talking about how many circles they are in and so on. Bing and Blekko encourage you to link your Facebook accounts to them so that they can pull in the data from your contacts. News curation sites and apps also want to know who you follow on Facebook, Twitter and the rest, and they also want to know how many people follow you. Showyou wants to give you content from social media sites, Zite pulls content from people who share material, as do many others. Let's be quite certain here; this is not going to go away. It will increase as we become submerged in more and more social resources. I tweeted recently to say that social media is dead, because it's ALL social media now.

How does this work on the authority level? In 'the old days' it was pretty easy to look at a website and tell if it was a fake or spoof. A quick checklist, tick tick cross and you were well away. However, how are we going to do that now? With the rise of the individual within search it's not quite as easy. I found the idea that Stephen Fry was essentially validated British Celebrity Twitter accounts himself until Twitter got around to doing validation very interesting. If we trust Stephen Fry (no need to like, just trust) that if he says a certain account is linked to the person it is supposed to be linked to, then it is.

Now, a lot of the people that I follow on Twitter are followed because I like what they post, what they are interested in, the links they provide and so on. I am much less interested in where they work. Sure, it's nice to know if it's a University or a corporate, a school or if they're a home worker, but that's not the most important thing for me. I'm moving to a position where the authority that someone has is not really associated with their place of employment, and it's much more associated with their presence in social media. If a person with thousands of followers leaves one company and moves to another, do they gain authority because of their new employer? Or could it be argued that the new employer gains authority because they have employed someone with thousands of followers? I'm more interested in knowing that a person is followed by a million others than I am by knowing that they work for a company that I don't know anything about. If I follow someone on Twitter, I'm more likely to notice them on LinkedIn, Slideshare or Facebook AND when I meet them at a conference. In fact, I'm much more likely to try and ferret them out at a conference because I know them via social media.

You can argue this isn't fair, and I'll agree with you. However, that doesn't change the fact that if I can't see someone via social media, I'm less likely to see them at all - or that they are going to have to work a lot harder to be seen. I work at home, not in an office, and I mainly see people via my screen, or on a course or at a conference, so that's how it works for me - your situation may well be very different, and what I've said doesn't apply, particularly if you're in an organisation that you don't have to stretch beyond. Equally though, your employer doesn't owe you a living, and the jobs for life thing doesn't work any more. You have to be responsible for your career, and part of that now means that you've got to be where other people are. That used to be in citation indexes, or at conferences or on the title page of books. Still is, to some extent, but now - social media is where it's at.

Does this mean you have to been on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest (do you want me to carry on, cos I can!) and spend your time updating locations and status? Up to you really - it's your life, your job, your reputation. However, I firmly belive that in the next few years we're going to carry on moving to the importance of the person, and it's best to get in early. Utilise the tools that interest you, and let other people know that you're out there. A potential new employer, if they have any brains at all are going to be looking at your social media footprint as much as anything in your CV. If you were going to employ someone, and two people had equally good CVs, which would you go for - the one with hundreds or thousands of Twitter followers or the one who didn't have a Twitter account? The one with lots of contacts on LinkedIn, or the one with none?

One of my favourite quotes at the moment is from Erik Qualman, who is the author of Socialnomics: "We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it."

Users, members, clients, patrons, owners?

I was fortunate enough to attend Internet Librarian International today and listened to R D Lankes recorded talk on 'Stop Lending, Start Sharing'. One of the points that he made in this talk, and which he has made in others, is that the people who use the library are 'members' rather than 'patrons', 'clients', 'customers' or 'users'. He didn't mention 'owners' but I added that in myself for good measure. This provoked a lot of interesting discussion, with tweets flying around the room during the talk. Here's a selection:

@AlisonMcNab: #ili2012 Don't call our patrons: "customers, users or consumers" - they have more to contribute!

@xmacex here in #Finland we don't like "members", that sounds exclusive. "Users" instead. Maybe were more consumeristic here? #ili2012

chibbie Following feed from #ili2012. Can't believe still having discussions over users, members, customers etc in #libraries.

lukask @xmacex @Philbradley Surely, more people than 'members' are 'users' of the library? And academic libraries don't have 'members' #ili2012

RogerFarbey #ili2012 don't let them be users, let them be members. Participation is key. Library as community of knowledge facilitation.

Personally, I like the term 'member'. It implies that the library (of whatever brand or style) is something that can be joined, and that a commitment to it can be made. It says to me that someone views a library as something that they can be involved with, and can affect what it does, and how it does it. That they are able to have a conversation with the library staff in a collaborative mode. I don't view it as being exclusive or elitist, though I can see where people are coming from when they say that. However, some libraries are exclusive - you have to be a certain type of person (student, employee etc) before you can use it, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just the way it is.

How about 'user' then? Should we as librarians just be putting stuff out there for people to use? Isn't that what we do? Well yes, but equally, shouldn't the people we work with have some say in what that stuff is? Shouldn't they be working in conjunction with information staff to work out how the librarians/library can help them achieve stuff, and to promote and better the community? So yes, they do use materials, but that's only part of a much larger interaction. I don't find 'user' as inclusive as 'member'.

Patron then? It's an American term. I'm British. Enough said on that. :)

Client? I have clients - they're the people that I work for, and I pretty much do what they want, because they're paying me. So, if you take the view that you pay your taxes ultimately the library staff answer to you. However, the necessary element of shared interaction doesn't quite work in the same way that a 'member' does. It implies a very strong hierarchical approach, with the library staff running around doing exactly as they are told, pat on the head now go away again idea. 

Customer. I take my custom to a shop, purchase a product and leave. Moreover, with the new self service tills, I can do that without any real interaction with the shop. If I don't like the range of goods that are available, not much that I can do about it. Of course, the transaction doesn't have to be financial, but there is still that element of 'trade' which doesn't work for me. There shouldn't be a trade off, there should be collaboration.

Owner. This is an interesting one - if you have students at a university who are paying large sums of money, there is an entirely different dynamic going on there. Should it be acceptable that - for whatever reason - there's 30 in a class and only 4 text books available? Should they have specific rights based on the transaction of money? Are the students in some way owners of the library and indeed in part, of the university itself? However, as an owner, they should be also in a position to exert specific pressure, which in a library setting probably is entirely unrealistic. Also, we come back again to the interaction between the people who come into the library and the people who work in the library. Should this interaction be based on a power dynamic? I don't think it should - it should be based on a  dynamic of collaboration, each side helping the other. That isn't ownership in the way that I view it.

So - 'member' works for me. I accept that it doesn't for other people, and that's absolutely fine, if you're happy with it. So let me turn the tables a bit - what doesn't work for YOU about the term 'member' (presuming it doesn't - it may well do!) What works better, and what transaction is implied for you between the member/user/etc and the library staff that's dependent or defined by the term you prefer? 

Upcoming library support events

Just in case you're not aware, there are some important campaign events peaking up over the horizon at the moment. There is a mass lobby of Parliament on October 29th in which a group of school librarians are planning to lobby parliament for school libraries to be made statutory. This isn't a protest, but a lobby, whereby people will ask to speak to their MP in order to discuss the issue. A template letter is available and there is a Twitter account to follow: @schliblobby Finally, there's a Facebook group, organised by Barbara Band (CILIP VP Elect); The Mass Lobby for School Libraries.

Scotland has their own lobby, with a Facebook group; Lobby for School Libraries Scotland, and this is taking place a couple of days earlier on October 27th.

There is also the Speak Up for Libraries conference, taking place on Saturday November 10th. I quote from the website: "The day-long event will pull together library campaigners and supporters from across the UK and give them the opportunity to build on their existing campaigning skills and tactics, share ideas and strategies, and focus on a way forward to make their local campaign as effective as possible, with the goal of ensuring library services are supported and protected, now and in the future."

There are speakers and workshops, including authors Philip Ardagh and Bali Rai as well as Alan Gibbons. The event is widely supported by groups such as CILIP (at which the event is being held), The WI, Voices for the Library, Campaign for the Book, The Library Campaign and UNISON.

If you are able to attend any of these events, please consider doing so - or if you can't, please offer support by blogging or Tweeting as you feel appropriate.

Edited: I was asked to add the following: For the Speak Up for Libraries conference people need to book in advance. There's only 100 places, as they need the money upfront, and people need to choose their 2 workshops. They are also imposing a bookings cut-off date of Nov 2, after which they can neither guarantee places or the price.

The library as a dangerous place

We always portray the library as a nice safe, warm and welcoming space don't we. Of course it is, but I sometimes wonder if we could look at it in a slightly different way. A library doesn't deal in books or artefacts, it deals in thoughts and ideas. It provides people with the opportunity to think through things, to challenge the status quo, to better themselves, to learn new skills and to improve old ones. A library provides people with a chance to think 'what if?' and to provide them with rebuttals to the statement 'you should'. A library gives people access to facts; pure, simple and unbiased. It also lets people look at bias, to examine hate, prejudice, racism, homophobia and anything else they wish, from any angle. A library can change people.

So a library can be a dangerous place. I've seen a lot of the ALA 'Read' posters, and they're great fun, with celebrities holding up books. They're fun and fluffy. But what do they actually tell us? That we can use a library to read books. I think we kinda know that already. I want to see posters that ask 'Why?' or 'How?' or 'Why not?' that show people the library is a place to think. I want to see posters like this one:

(If you want to see a copy on my Flickr page, it's here. If you want to buy one, it's on my Zazzle store.) It's also CC on Flickr, so feel free to copy and use to promote libraries.

I was really pleased to see a poem over at The library as incubator which linked to the following poem, 'If librarians were honest' by Joseph Mills.

If Librarians Were Honest
“… a book indeed sometimes debauched me from my work….”
– Benjamin Franklin

If librarians were honest,
they wouldn’t smile, or act
welcoming. They would say,
You need to be careful. Here
be monsters. They would say,
These rooms house heathens
and heretics, murderers and
maniacs, the deluded, desperate,
and dissolute. They would say,
These books contain knowledge
of death, desire, and decay,
betrayal, blood, and more blood;
each is a Pandora’s box, so why
would you want to open one.
They would post danger
signs warning that contact
might result in mood swings,
severe changes in vision,
and mind-altering effects.

If librarians were honest
they would admit the stacks
can be more seductive and
shocking than porn. After all,
once you’ve seen a few
breasts, vaginas, and penises,
more is simply more,
a comforting banality,
but the shelves of a library
contain sensational novelties,
a scandalous, permissive mingling
of Malcolm X, Marx, Melville,
Merwin, Millay, Milton, Morrison,

and anyone can check them out,
taking them home or to some corner
where they can be debauched
and impregnated with ideas.
If librarians were honest,
they would say, No one
spends time here without being
changed. Maybe you should
go home. While you still can.

After all, if libraries were nice and simple, easy places to go and keep people quiet, would politicians want to close them down?