Coalition Building

Tuesday, May 5 3:00 (Time Change)
Coalition Building: Developing Citizens Support for Your Library
Speaker: Margie Schuster

Margaret Schuster, formerly the Volunteer Services Manager and Friends of the Library Coordinator for 15 years at Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis, MN. Margaret now serves as liaison to 26 current Friends groups and is now assessing the feasibility of starting Friends groups in the 15 Minneapolis library locations.

Margie Schuster began by encouraging us to take one more step—in addition to lobbying and message development—and create a coalition to expand into a broader sphere. The idea is to create an alliance that can talk about what the library is doing. Trustees and Friends form the most powerful union for advocating for libraries. Coalition building is about forming alliances that can do more than one person or one library can do. Margie talks about an alliance between Best Buy and the local library where she is from in Minnesota. Margie also relates a story about Friends groups bombarding city hall in Minnesota to prevent the closing of four small branch libraries. There is an emphasis on the one working with the many. The strongest alliance is with the Trustees and the Friends. Every Friend and every Trustee needs to look at every organization they belong to and examine how that organization and their library can work together.

Ms. Schuster reminds us to establish ways of reaching out to the community, such as the case of her library preparing books and tote bags for mothers-to-be. She also relates a story of a non-native English speaker working with the library to develop her speech and accent to obtain a job at a renowned local hospital.
What is the library looking for, what are its needs? Be prepared to optimize a connection with other organizations. Margie gives an example of a PC user group looking for a tutorial on the subscription databases. Such a tutorial led to a regular tutorial for basic PC use in the community. Such alliances led to an increase in the number of people who became Friends because of the support and visibility, the willingness to support the community and a number of different ways. This also leads to a discussion of perception, how the public views the library and its librarians. It is also important to stay in touch with the needs of the community to optimize alliances that benefit the library and the community, rather than depend on traditional means of support, but rather thinking creatively and looking toward the future.

Spreading the word and sitting on clubs—looking for opportunities—is vital to the future of the library. As Margie reminds us, coalition building—those impromptu alliances—are the present and future of the library, especially in these trying and difficult times.

Collective Brains Building a Community for Learning

Speaker:
Katie Baxter, Library director of Noble and Greenough School in Dedham Ma.
Other experts present:
Judith Anne Sykes, Author of Brain Friendly Libraries
Dr. Leslie Farmer, California State University

Are you wondering why teenagers do the things that they do? Well, simply put their minds are much different than adult minds. Of course we know that their minds are still developing. But this moment in time is so unique because we can study how the brain works. This understanding allows us as educators and librarians to react to their actions in appropriate ways. And to design our lessons in order to meet the needs of our students.

The sessions began with some group sharing. This helped to invigorate our brains and begin thinking about the teens we serve.
We were then asked to write one word on a brightly colored piece of paper that represents what working with teens means to us.

Some answers: knowledge, understanding, behavior, learning, mindfulness, empathy, change.

Then we were directed to set up our learning space. Chairs were moved and energy was heightened. This not only allowed us to share better but increased our energy level (which has been waning on the last day of our conference).

The point of these exercises was to understand that students (and all people) need a change in routine to keep them from becoming bored and to re-energize learning.

Research shows that teens are social and need collaboration in order to learn.

Key concepts:
They experience increasing input of information
They need hands-on activities to learn
They need feed back from many different sources
We need to reduce threat and increase comfort level
We need to involve students in decisions about their space
We need to make content interdisciplinary and inquiry based
We need to meet all learning styles
We must account for emotions

Students are pushed and pulled through out their school day. As librarian were have a unique opportunity to create a safe social space where students can work with their peers and access necessary information for their education. It rests on our shoulders to make both students and administration happy.

How might you handle finding a student using computer time to play hangman? When you ask what he is doing. The answer may be learning about words. Challenge that. Ask if they know the origin of the word they just guessed. If they don't show them where to find that information.

The main point of this first session was to build an awareness about the differences between teens brains and adult brains. And to stress our responsibilities to work with students appropriately.

Some helpful websites:

Caine and Caine

Eric Chudler and Brain Awareness Week

Ken Wesson

Building Community Through Photographs

Building Community Through Photographs
Speaker: Elizabeth Thomsen, Member Services Manager, NOBLE

http://www.noblenet.org/ethomsen/et@noblenet.org

Elizabeth begins by talking about the whole conference established by the idea of community, connected and seen as a group rather than as individuals.

Photographs really identify a group or community, or even a time.
Elizabeth showed Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother: Nipomo California," 1936 as an iconic image of the depression. Lange's picture epitomizes the idea of a culture or era.

Elizabeth followed by showing a Lewis Hine photograph. Typically, we never see Hine photographs of the Boston area. Elizabeth shows a Hine from Salem (1911) with a boy who is Elizabeth's boss' grandfather. This particular Hine, from the National Archives, is interesting for its local connection. This photograph really belongs to the community. Elizabeth mentions the "morningsonmaplestreet" project led by Joe Manning. Joe is a Mass. native who writes essays and compiles poems and photographs, including work on Lewis Hine.

Elizabeth discusses the ubiquitous presence of photography today thanks to the camera phone and digital photography.

• Cameraphones--news, crime and art
• Camerapedia--camera information wiki
• Online photo editing--Picnik, Photoshop Express
• Cool tools (often associated with flickr)--Big huge labs, Dumpr

Photosharing

• Social networks
• Flickr and other photo sites
• Sharing by default
• Any picture might be of interest to someone
• Photostream
• Casual organization through sets of tagging
• Social organization through friends and contacts (important to librarians)

Flickr is a great web application that allows people to share photographs. It is a great tool for libraries to post and share images, especially for purposes of programming.

Flickr Facts

• Pro Account: $24.95/year
• Permissions (Commenting, tagging, etc.)
• Copyright (photos protected by copyright--can change settings on flickr to be more generous)
  
• Groups: Local and regional (librarians should put photos in local groups where they will be seen by people interested in the community)

Libraries on Flickr

• Library pictures: programs, displays, artwork, garden
• Sprinkle, don't flood (do a little at a time)

Pictures of People

• Noe expectation of privacy on the street (public)
  
• Libraries public? yes and No--need to be careful
• Presumption of privacy

Pictures of the Community
We often don't preserve pictures of our community, of our local places. People are not often interested in preserving the tree in the park or the church; it is often the bakery or hardware store that people remember, or that marks local history. Lost places, then and now photos, and historic trails should be considered. These are picture related to history of the area.

Elizabeth showed pictures from around the area and related their importance to the community, such as a statue, or program from a local library, or the architecture and tree in bloom outside of the library (as a marketing tool). Another photo shows the volunteers having fun. Pictures can be used to communicate a message,as with Lewis Hine or Dorothea Lange, on a local level.

Participation in photography is good. Elizabeth suggests getting permission to use digital images. Borrow pictures to scan, get volunteers to take pictures, and capture memories and pair them with oral history. Do a Mass Memory Road Show, such as the show that goes on the road and scans images to preserve local history/memory in other communities.

Elizabeth shows the virtual community garden that Melrose Public Library created. Elizabeth is not a big fan of photography contests, but it is a good way to get people to participate, and an opportunity or participation, especially when establishing themes and categories.

Photography can be participatory with fun games such as Sleeveface--lining up a record cover with the face and take a picture so that it looks like the record cover is your face.

Elizabeth advises us to start with photos that are often requested, such as the LOC American Memory project started scanning with the picture of Nixon meeting Elvis. Find an excuse to incorporate photos, such as an anniversary or holiday, and weigh nostalgia with history.

Elizabeth also suggests ways to incorporate photos to maps, such as Google Maps. Programs can include teaching people how to create a map, create a historic trail, or even, Elizabeth suggests, create a slide show or movie. She shows Animoto, which allows us to make music slide shows with our pictures. Animoto can be used in library programming with a teen slide show, etc.

Check out Elizabeth's photographs on her wiki. There are links to flickr and animoto so you can play around with them.

If You Build it, Will They Come?: Marketing from an Academic Library Point-of-View

If You Build it, Will They Come?: Marketing from an Academic Library Point-of-View
Speakers:
Lisa Wiecki, Assistant Director for Public Services and Outreach, Library and Technology Services, Brandeis University;
Joshua Wilson, Associate Director, Library and Technology Services, Brandeis University

I have a personal interest in this session. I wrote before that our library at Salem State College quite suddenly closed last October. In relocating in offices around campus, librarians really had to refashion and repackage what they do on a day-to-day basis. There seemed to be a lot of marketing involved in communicating with the campus what the librarians do, and do well, without a library building. This has been a good model for librarians to become highly visible in a profession that is constantly changing.

Lisa and Joshua introduced a tool that helps with communication, called the communication scorecard. There are two case studies in implementing marketing in an academic library.

Lisa and Joshua say they are a Liberal Arts/Research University and created a model for communication. The model is a distributed model designed for the 110 full time staff members in an effort to get the word out efficiently to campus constituents. There are still hurdles to effective communication with such a large number of staff--hence the scorecard that was created by Lisa and Joshua.

The presenters ask us to think about Aspects: Context (Project, Goals, Audience Focus), Message (Message clarity, Message consistency, message distribution, message frequency, and message timing), and Materials (collateral). These consist to make a Scorecard, or a model, to follow in marketing services. The case study Joshua reports on is Brandeis' migration to LATTE (Learning And Teaching Technology Environment).


Case Study:
Project LATTE
Context: Project

• WebCT heavily used; at great risk of failure
• Decision: Launch LATTE in Fall 2007

Migrate to Moodle
Name it LATTE (Learning And Teaching Technology Environment)

CONTEXT: Goals and audience

• Sophisticated, thoughtful, strategic approach
• use branding to enhance message
• focus on faculty audience

Scorecard: Context (On scale from 1-4)
Project = 3 (clearly defined?)
Goals = 3
Audience = 4 (defined?)

Clarity and Consistency
Told a 3-Part story

• Risk: WebCT in danger of failure
  
• Benefit: LATTE offers enriched environment for learning and teaching
  
• Support: LTS will offer excetional, innovative support for faculty and students

Message: Distribution, Frequency, & Training

Spring

• CIO presentation to faculty meeting
• LATTE Project Action Plan

Summer

• Email and website news

Scorecard: Message

• Clarity: 4 (Clear and concise?)
• Consistency:4 (disseminated consistently?)
• Distribution: 4
• Frequency: 4
• Timing: 4 (Appropriate timing--prior to semester start)

Materials: Collateral

• Publications branding latte coffee bean packets, magnets, postcards and fliers

Materials Scorecard:

• Collateral: 4 (well-designed and eye catching)

LATTE was a success based on scorecard. The scorecard also helped to guide the study and implementation successfully.


LISA talked about her case study. She held short info lit sessions once a week and sought participation from the Brandeis community. Here is the case study as it is followed by the scorecard.

Context: Project

• Brandeis offers a wealth of services and resources
• 30,000 e journals and 250 databases
• mega huge challenge to get the word out

• Idea!
• Develop a weekly learning series to showcase services and info resources
• Name it Thursdays@3 (time no classes--theoretically students are available)

Goals and Audience:

• Just dive in and do it approach
• Success criteria never really defined
• Target audience sometimes students, sometimes U employees, faculty, sometimes everyone

Lisa tried different sessions, such as "trace your family tree."

Scorecard: Context
Lisa did not have ratings, but let the audience at the presentation vote.

• Project (Project clearly defined?): 2
  
• Goals (communication success?): 2
  
• Audience Focus (audience clearly defined?): 2
  

Message: Distribution, Frequency, & Timing

• Flyers and table tents
• news alerts on our website, etc.
  

Scorecard: Message

• Clarity: 3
  
• Consistency: 3
  
• Distribution: 4
  
• Frequency: 4
  
• Timing: 4
  

Materials: Collateral

Lisa had no budget--Assistant helped create logo
Thursdays@3:00 pm with the T as a tree and an owl at the top of the tree (owl=Brandeis logo)
Different flyer every week and changed color, which people were not fond of seeing.

Scorecard: Materials

• Collateral (well-designed?): 2

Taken in the whole, the Scorecard dictates a context and materials that need work, but the message was great. The case study scorecard allows for reflection and review.

Lisa had 10 sessions in the Fall, 8 in the Spring. predominantly staff who showed-up and raved about the number of staff who participated. Lisa never saw so many staff show-up.
Stuff that was "sexy" did well. Show-and-tell from archive, etc. Needed a different spin to services.
Meetings took place in "Commons" area of library where hip hang-out. udience at the presentation offered advice for working with faculty and finding other ways to arget students.

Joshua and Lisa then implemented a workshop for us at the presentation. The audience agreed to interview Heather Tompkins from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The audience participated in listening to Heather explain her project about imparting information literacy to faculty and helped to devise a scorecard to implement the project. Employed an interviewing technique based on the questions from the scorecard to really reflect and respond to a variety of projects.

Scorecard: Context (Why pursuing info literacy, learning and teaching with curriculum)

• Project: 3
• Goals: 3
• Audience: 4

Scorecard: Message (For imparting info literacy skill set to faculty)

• What message trying to send?
• How will your message change over lifespan of project?
• How will you maintain the consistency of your message?
• In what ways will you disseminate your message?
• Will these methods reach your target audience?
• What frequency and timing will best serve your communication effort?

Scorecard: Message

• Clarity: 3-4
• Consistency: 3-4
• Distribution: 3
• Frequency: 2
• Timing: 3

Collateral

• What collateral will you distribute?
• What resources will you allocate to create this collateral?
• How will this collateral amplify your message?

Scorecard: Collateral

• 2

For more information you can contact Joshua or Lisa at Brandeis University. For more about the scorecard try visiting the following link synopsis communication measurement scorecard