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Good question, Steven – I’m not familiar with the specific mission/vision that BCC libraries have, but I’m sure that would be the best place to start to determine strategic fit. It’s also a question of space – space in the budget, physical space, space in the schedule for staff to set something like this up. But if it was a high priority, I’m sure all these hurdles could be overcome.
Pinterest looks like a great way to deliver RA, thanks Katherine! It does look like the board has been left alone for a while and, as you mention, there aren’t any comments on the individual pins – if the whole point of social media is engagement, I’m not convinced they’ve met the mark. In saying that, social media is a specialised marketing skill and it’s hard to get it right, even for the ‘experts’ out there who get paid a lot for it. I doubt most libraries would have room in the budget to pay an external provider and may also struggle to justify an inhouse resource. Plus, the social media landscape changes quickly and keeping an eye on trends can be a full time job in itself. So, until it dawns on those with the purse strings that libraries should be given bigger budgets because of their importance within the community (!!!), I think librarians are going to have to do the best they can with what they’ve got.
Hi Saurav, there’s 4 computers at the library. It can get busy on school holidays but generally speaking there’s usually one available. Or, if not, it’s not a bad lesson for kids to learn to wait a little bit!!!
Oh, and I am physically cringing at the thought of a middle aged person attempting to rap in front of a young person, but just a thought, the original rappers are themselves approaching middle age (Dr Dre was born in 1965, Snoop Dogg in 1971), so it’s not completely strange that the disparate age groups might share taste in music? Disclaimer – whilst I knew the names of the aforementioned rappers, I did have to Google their ages!
I love how Larson suggests that story time “allows” a librarian to be a performer! I’m quite happy to roll up to story time with my kids and have a bit of a nursery rhyme sing-along with the crowd – if I was leading the story time though, I think there would be stage fright to overcome. Certainly a skill worth practicing and with repetition the trepidation would wear off but still, I’m not sure how many librarians could whack “performer” on their CV straight up!
Ok, I had to Google zine – no idea what they were! Incidentally, the links for zine definition in the post were expired – might need an update? Anyway, I really enjoyed your post, it was obviously informative (I now know what a zine is) but I think I would like to seek out some zines for a read. Curating a collection of zines would be tricky, I imagine. Anything electronic that is freely available could come down to ensuring digital literacy skills for patrons to access themselves? And paper zines, would it be limited to local or more widespread? And how much space should be allowed in a collection for something that is likely to grow? And possibly a specific weeding policy to deal specifically with zines? Just rhetorical questions really, my thoughts on paper 🙂
I like the idea of the line being blurry between public libraries and community centres. They both have the public in common. On the Gold Coast, my 3 nearest libraries are co-located with community centres – I think the co-location would assist with driving patronage to both. Win-win!
I really like the idea of homework help in a public library – if teens have a place where they can meet friends (some who may attend different schools), do homework in a collaborative environment and be themselves (within reason, of course!), it gives them a positive association with libraries which hopefully should follow them through life. I think this is a better opportunity for public libraries than school libraries – as much as teens should be engaging/learning/developing skills as much as possible in their school library, if this is there only library contact, once they finish school they may not transition to public libraries and they could be lost.
Great post, Luke. One thing that caught my attention was your point regarding teens currently living in a world where there is an over-abundance of information to consume. I can at times feel overwhelmed at the amount of information that comes at me all day, every day and have always assumed that children and teens would feel the same. I did some reading the other night though about digital natives and digital immigrants – there are some studies to show that children and teens now process information differently due to our digital 24/7 world and are far better equipped to handle the amount of information that is hurled at them. I feel I’m a reasonably well adjusted digital immigrant but sometimes I wish I was able to process a little faster like the natives 🙂
Interestingly, a Facebook group that I belong to recently debated the quiet/non-quiet library. The library in question has a pretty awesome children’s area that includes a small slide and childsized padded “holes” in the shelving so children can climb through into the next aisle. It can get pretty noisy in there at times but, the entire children’s section is separate from the rest of the library, almost a separate wing, but there’s no actual dividing wall so the noise probably does carry. There were comments on the Facebook feed to the effect that the slide and holes in the shelves were inappropriate and unnecessary – I found the level of dissatisfaction expressed quite interesting. I tend to agree with Stacey – if it’s not my kid, I don’t hear a thing 🙂
It really does depend on who takes the story time. I used to take my eldest daughter (when she was about 6 months old) to a particular library where I would meet up with some friends and their children. We would always hope for a particular librarian who was a bit of a Mary Poppins type – the children thought she was a bit magical – and she really engaged the whole group, including parents for the full half hour. When our Mary Poppins librarian wasn’t around, it was no where near as good. And one day, Mary Poppins told the group she was moving into another role and wouldn’t be taking story time any more. I stopped going to that library – I wonder how many others did the same?
Thanks Sarah – good point on the big keys for the elderly. I used to do work for a retirement village and they had special phones for the elderly residents with large buttons and numbers so it was easier for those with visual or physical disabilities – definitely same goes for tech. They could also very easily be an access tool for young people with disabilities to have a certain level of digital literacy.
