Outreach never ends...

This is the third post in a series celebrating National Library Week.

Today is National Bookmobile Day! While I have never had personal experience with bookmobiles - I grew up in a pretty compact town, with little need for one - I have always been in awe of them. I think they're amazing services, especially for rural libraries, with excellent outreach and marketing capabilities. And they don't even have to be motorized.

In the 21st century, there are two ways for users to interact with their libraries: physically and virtually. Bookmobiles are just one amazing example of physical outreach to our communities - but how do we outreach to our virtual communities? By utilizing the same technology that has made so many of our users deem libraries irrelevant: social media.

Murray Library (UT) has incorporated an amazing blog feature right on their homepage, creating virtual reader's advisory. Initiated by a senior librarian who wanted to really encourage all library workers to become involved with readers advisory, the feature is simple but well implemented. Each post includes a well written review, clicking on the image takes the user straight to the catalog record and if the user enjoys the staff member's review, they can click on the reviewer's name and see what else they recommend. And it's not just books that are reviewed - the blog offers music reviews with YouTube videos of the featured artist. Even if their users are never interacting with librarians in the library, this is a great way for them to interact with the organization when they log on to check out books.

And then there are the "traditional" social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, etc. While libraries are still figuring out the bast way to put them to use (with some having better results than others), individual librarians are certainly all over social media. I was having a conversation with a classmate this weekend (@overgeeked for those of you on twitter) about how twitter seemed pretty irrelevant before we were in library school. But now it seems necessary. We have these tools whose primary purpose is to share information - how can we, as information professionals, not be a part of that?

Bookmobiles have always seemed to be a part of libraries - reaching patrons outside of libraries certainly has. Now that librarianship and information services are becoming much more nebulous, its time to start adapting and start realizing that adaptations are going to be a regular part of the game.

photo credit: New York Public Library, 1938, via The Commons

Public Librarians, take a bow!

The past few days have been pretty exciting for libraries. There has been some amazing, and loud, debate surrounding Harper Collins' new policies surrounding library's purchasing their ebooks. In simplest terms, Harper Collins - working with Over Drive - will sell their ebook to a library, but that ebook can only circulate 26 times before the library has to repurchase said book.

Librarians are not pleased, and between Facebook, Blogs, and Twitter they are letting the world know how disgruntled they are. To see the crazy amount of noise that librarians are making for yourself, just go to twitter.com and search for #hcod. You don't even have to log in or create an account, the results will pop up. Just be sure to come back here when you're done.

And it makes sense why librarians are up in arms. This would take collection development in a whole new direction. When library funds are limited it can be challenging enough to try and make your collection grow appropriately. But, as this youtube video highlights, Harper Collins' new policy would add even more constraints to collection development.

It would be like trying to buy gas, but for every five gallons, you would have to buy back the keys to your car.

I am finding this debate absolutely fascinating. Working in a medical academic library, we certainly emphasize electronic journals, but not so much electronic books. This issue is going to affect public libraries the most...

...While ebooks have been around for about a decade, best practices for delivering content to the masses still need to be figured out. Even for-profit organizations are scrambling. Traditional booksellers like Borders are going belly up while independent writers who avoid traditional publishing houses are making millions. And it's just as confusing for libraries. There has been a lot of discussion among my classmates on what the best answer is, and the debate seems to follow most debates in librarianship: services versus systems.

So, what's the best answer? I have no idea. I'm not sure anyone does. But that's not important. What is important is that librarians are contributing to the discussions. While many people argue that libraries are irrelevant in the 21st century, this debate is proving that librarians help shape the way individuals will receive digital content. Need evidence? Both authors and publishers are taking notice:

Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat and This Book is Overdue, posted on her blog that while publisher and authors need to be compensated, it should not be off the backs of libraries.While it may be lukewarm, Harper Collins themselves commented on the debate that librarians are stirring up. They call for collaboration, but it doesn't sound like they will change their policy.

I'm real excited to see where this debate goes. But I am mostly excited, and proud, of the way that librarians are refusing to give in without a fight.While I may only be on the sidelines, battles like this are the reason I went into library school.

Tattooed Librarians, on the radio...

As I mentioned last month, it has been awesome seeing where the Tattooed Librarians of the Pacific Northwest Calendar has been popping up. Seeing it on a librarian's blog from the Netherlands was exciting, but today's discovery blew that out of the water:

Ziba Z, a distance-learning library student with University Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, stumbled across our calendar on the internet, she tracked down the cover girl, Amber, and finagled aninterview with her....

...and it's awesome.

They talk about Amber's journey into librarianship, the intersection of social justice and public libraries, Seattle, music, Amber's alternative identity as DJ Dewey Decimal and (of course) Tattoos.

Be sure to check out the other radio shows on Ziba's awesome blog.

And Ziba, if you're out there, the world would love to see a Tattooed Librarians of California Calendar (and I think a zebra tattoo would be rad, too) !!