Reinventing Refernece | ALA Conference | Michael Stephens
Michael Stephens gave the first presentation of the Reinvented Reference Preconference all-day workshop. He just finished and we're in a break before David Ward from UIUC will be next talking about IM Reference Services.
Stephens' talk was on the future of user services and web 2.0. He was a great speaker and I find it hard to see how the other speakers will compare to this first one. He was so energetic that I couldn't get a good photo of him, he kept moving around too much. He had a lot of interesting things to say and a lot of which I have covered in this blog over the past year. So you can see, I liked his talk and agreed with a lot of what he had to say.
Highlights:
Libraries need to let go of control
-in regards to Do's & Don'ts signs in the library - don't ban technology because it's technology - let users keep their cell phones on, let users game and access email, give them space to explore
Go where the users are
-must read - Cluetrain manifesto (haven't read it yet but will put it on my booklist)
-the Hyperlinked Organization/Hyperlinked Library - have conversations, be open and honest, be transparent, PEOPLE WANT TO HAVE CONVERSATIONS (believe it or not)
-Involve and engage your users - user centered planning, involve frontline staff in planning because they hear what the users are saying
-content - offer the mechanism (for the user) to create content - on library website and other places, be the engager, teacher, learner
Learn
-be involved with training web 2.0 - talked about Learning 2.0 (I've blogged about this before)
-why do this? reach a segment of your users that might not encounter the library any other way
Emerging Tech Group
-start a group to focus on emerging technology - meet once a month/6 x's a yr, blog about your meetings/findings/discoveries
-be a trendspotter of tech and web
-apply blogging to internal communications
Adopt a 2.0 philosophy
-in your mindset of how you approach your library board and the higher up's.
-learn from gamers
-discover, play & experience new tools
5 Things You Can Do Now:
1.) Be a trendspotter
2.) Form an emerging tech committee
3.) Try a Learning 2.0 program
4.) Create a "What's New" blog (ah-hem! like this one??)
5.) Explore the idea of presence
-don't do everything, pick and choose the things that work the best for you.
whew! ok David Ward is up, I'll blog about that next...