The Ubiquitous Librarian

Be like Emeril: my response to Steven Bell

A few weeks ago Steven Bell posted about librarian careers on the ACRL Blog. He urged us not to worry about where we are professionally- that careers are like marathons. He described the ebb and flow of the hills and valleys that we encounter and instead of getting caught up in the spotlight, encouraged us to think strategically about how we can position ourselves for the next five to ten years.

Well spoken for his generation, however my generation only cares about celebrity. Turn on CNN and you’ll probably see something about Britney Spears within ten minutes. Flip to MTV and you’ll see 16 year old princesses crying because some second-rate band won’t play at a party. Open the New York Times and you’ll read about “hip” librarians.

We’ve become a culture of instant success; Sartre’s nightmare of fashion above all else. The American Dream has shifted away from a good job, a white picket fence, two kids, and a dog--- and is now about prominence, contempo-organic living space, and 15 minutes of reality TV fame.

And the thing is… I would not want it any other way.

What the library profession needs are transformative personalities. Emeril Lagasse is a perfect example. Before he came along my diet was microwaveable, and cooking shows were horribly boring. Martha Stewart is my grandmother’s brand. Emeril brought style, flair, showmanship, along with expertise. He opened the doors for others like Bobby Flay, Jamie Oliver, and even Rachael Ray. If you look at the Food Network demographics over the past decade I’m sure you’ll see a dramatic increase in male viewers, and it’s not all just because of Giada.

Emeril transformed cooking; he made it cool, popular, and approachable. The same can be said for Howard Schultz and coffee. Before Starbucks the town I grew up in had one coffee house where lots of wanna-be pretentious artist types hung out, along with the wanna-be wanna-be’s like me. Growing up no one talked about coffee, that was something our parents drank. Now there is coffee shop on every corner and someday there will be one in every library.

Emeril and Schultz have had a tremendous impact not only on the food and beverage industry, but on our society. Why don’t librarians think like that? Why don’t we talk about experiences instead of transactions? Bell urges us to ford the river, but I say build big bridges.

Happy New Year everyone.

Chicken Wings and Egg Rolls: The Library Menu Concept

I constantly get menus from local restaurants that want to deliver food to my apartment. I used to just toss them out, but now I collect them. I’ve become fascinated with appetizers and like to see the full range of possibility. Sure Pizza is the core, but tell me about the wings, the cheese bread, and those cinnamon sticks.

That’s how I see libraries. Collections are the core, and we need to make sure they’re fantastic, but what about all the accessories and side dishes? We have a ridiculous (but awesome) mix of stuff: cables, headsets, mics, multi-card media readers, laptops, cameras, video cameras, scanning adapters, gorillaPods, MP3 players, graphing calculators, digital voice recorders, wireless presenters w/ laser pointers, zip drives, USB drives, web cams, external DVD burners, and so on. Plus free black and white printing, color printing, large poster-sized printing. AND… most patrons (and staff for that matter) have no idea about all this cool stuff that we have to offer.

Last Summer I started to dabble with a menu concept. I wanted to feature students around campus, not necessarily in the Library, but individuals who would be recognizable to others. Originally I intended to do three versions: an athlete, an artist, and a scholar. The premise is that instead of tossing it aside, maybe some students would keep it. Make something cool that they’d want to hang on to and embed atypical library information that is functional. “Oh cool, they have digital camcorders!”

This is a very rough mock up. I designed it as a proof of concept, but our graphics designer would have polished it up, so work with me here. What I really liked was including the shuttle service info, along with a few restaurants that deliver on campus. If we’re going to allow food and drinks, let’s give them options.

Anyway, I got caught up in the Fall Semester and was never able to bring this into existence, however I was happy to see that our Circ Staff did. They twisted it to promote the accessories that they provide but the menu concept lives on:
 

It’s cool that people here are starting to buy into the library as product mindset. On a personal note, I’ve also recognized a change in myself. I used to want to control my ideas from conception, through development, and into implementation. But now I am much more satisfied to give ideas away to others. Maybe its maturity or just being too far stretched, but it’s nice to be someplace where I don’t always have to be the one to push the crazy ideas. Our Circ Staff has really gained a sense of ownership, and it’s cool to see them experiment.

So yeah, do your patrons know everything on your menu? What else have you got besides Pizza? Do they know about your Chicken Wings and Egg Rolls?

Food, Movies, Music (CeLIBration, PART 5)

As I mentioned in the original post , our goal was to host an event for incoming freshmen with mass appeal. We pulled together a few specialized activities, such as speed dating and ninja tag , and surrounded them with games , food, and other amusements.

Food is a big deal. The common thought is that you can draw people into any event if you feed them. Two years ago we offered pizza, but it went too quickly. Last year we offered hot dogs and were stuck with tons of leftovers. This year we switched back over to pizza. Dominos offers mediums for $5 each, so we planned on ordering 100 pizzas, 25 each hour. We had to alter our plans because turnout was greater than expected. Dominos suggested we pay $2 more for larges—which seemed to work out much better and over all didn't cost us too much more. (Yeah, yeah, I know they just wanted to get paid!)

Students had to wait in a long line until our second delivery arrived. Next time we'll order 75 pizzas from the start and then go from there. We'll also consider two lines, two separate distribution points to help spread people around. We also tried to diversify our pizza toppings, but the old saying, ‘you can't please everyone' is so true. Next time, half with pizzas will be just cheese, since that's what people wanted the most. Sorry you veggie people.

We are very fortunate to have Coca Cola as neighbors; they are literally just across the street from us. Coke donated about 250 bottles of soda and water, which greatly helped keep our costs down, however we ended needing to purchase additional drinks. Diet and Zero didn't go so well, whereas water, Coke Classic, and Vault were gone quickly. We used the kiddie pools with ice distribution method.

We also rented two popcorn machines for around $200 and set them up in different zones. One was near movies, of course. There is just something cool about movie theater style popcorn that cannot be duplicated in a microwave.

This trifecta of soda, pizza, and popcorn worked well and we'll probably offer those again next year. Don't forget about plates and napkins.

Movies are nice, but attendance was pretty weak. We offered a handful of Dave Chappelle and Aqua Teen Hunger Force episodes, along with some short student films. Our aim was to capture the passerby with short funny videos, as opposed to a longer feature like Shaun of the Dead . I guess I wanted us to strive for the ‘sampling' model in which everyone spent a few minutes in each zone. Location might have been an issue here because the movies were tucked away from the heart of the activity. Maybe if these were viewable from the food line, people would enjoy them? Once students picked up their drink and pizza, they seemed focused on talking, hanging out, or playing games. They didn't want to sit around and watch TV shows.

Music draws people in… that's what we found out. The student radio station set up just outside the Library and played an eclectic mix. This entertained people who were waiting while we rushed with last minute prep. It also let the campus know that something was up!

As I mentioned in the original post , we had specific music for dating and tag. We wanted each zone to have a unique feel. I wanted to feature live bands doing short acoustical sets, hopefully next year. We were able to feature the GT improv comedy troupe, Let's Try This !. They did two shows, the first one (8pm) had about 100 people, while the later one (10pm) had about 15.

The Freshmen Orientation office gave away free t-shirts, but we wish we had something to offer too. Not typical library things like pens, candy, or bookmarks, but maybe 1 free itunes download, or temporary tattoos, I don't know, something… something inexpensive that we could give a lot of. We spoke about doing a raffle, but those are so random, I'd rather we have some type of mind game, puzzle, or challenge that they could complete in order to be eligible for a variety of prizes. Lots of room for improvement.

(Next up is the ‘justification' – why do we do these things? Academic Libraries are all about books, journals, computers and studying, right? Oh yeah, and information literacy!)