Dan Kraus up at American Libraries has done a really great job of filming and editing a short video interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who will be the keynote speaker at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting. The shots of his hands are particularly amazing. Says Dan, “I was sort of obsessed with them - they were the size of small dogs. If it had been my own movie it would have been three minutes of his hands.”

Take a look if you haven’t seen it:

http://alfocus.ala.org/videos/conversation-kareem-abdul-jabbar

Today I’m reading Liz Doucett’s manuscript for Creating Your Library Brand, and for me it shed some real light on the ongoing debate about whether libraries should become more like community centers. The answer lies in your library’s story:

Branding is one component of marketing strategy. Branding is the process of defining a library’s story into a short, appealing statement that tells the whole story in one sentence and then visually conveying the story via the library’s logo and other branding elements. But what is the “story”? The library’s story is the articulation of the role a library plays or wants to play in its community. To be a powerful story, the library should be talking about a role that no one else can duplicate. The story is meant to inform anyone considering using the library about what makes it special and a place worth visiting. The story can be about the details of the library (great customer service, a large collection, a beautiful building) or it can be about the needs that the library could fill in the lives of its patrons. The story might be that the library is a place where a community connects and comes together. It might be the intellectual center of a small town. It could be seen as the tool that parents could use to give their kids a head-start in life. It could be the center of campus life for a college or a place where a student can feel part of a community at a large university. Any one of these stories could be compelling to people thinking of using the library. They are powerful definitions of what makes the library relevant and important in its community.

It is imperative to remember that as a library develops its story, it should check back with its patrons/potential users to make sure that its story is not just unique but also relevant and meaningful. It is great to say that a library has the largest serials collection in the county, but if potential users don’t care about serials, then that story has no relevance and will not help make the library attractive. A meaningful story will motivate potential patrons to come to a library because they are seeking what the library provides.

A former private-sector marketer turned librarian, Doucett provides straightforward, jargon-free direction and guidelines for libraries that want to communicate their value and relevance to their communities. Look for Creating Your Library Brand in our spring/summer 2008 catalog.

I met our author Susan Gibbons for the first time at the Charleston Conference last week. We were both leaving a plenary session. Susan was headed down the street to the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library, where she was a co-presenter on a “Lively Lunch” discussion of e-books. To go from the main hotel to the Addlestone Library one crossed the gate into the College of Charleston’s campus, sharing the sidewalk with the “net generation,” whose social (software) behavior was the topic of so much talk. A sort of visual affirmation.

Similarly, last night on my train ride home, I paged through Susan Gibbons’ The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student. Coincidentally, a student had sat in the seat across the aisle from me. She immediately laid down on her seat, knees propped up, and put in her earbuds, not the norm among us nine-to-fivers commuting back to the suburbs. Not long after I was reading through Susan’s description of the helicopter parents and how libraries can develop programs for them, the student was on her cell phone, presumably talking with a parent, apologizing that she had messed up, plaintively noting that she “felt like shit,” and offering assurance that she had tried to explain things to her professor.

We see the Net Gen all around us, or at least in front of us at Starbucks ordering complicated drinks. Susan Gibbons, associate dean for public services and collection development at University of Rochester River Campus Libraries, had the advantage of grant funded anthropologist studying her students. For more information, see the report, available as downloadable PDF and in print, or listen to a podcast interview of three researchers. Drawing on a perspective from the research results as well as Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive technology” concept and successful business models described in Jim Collins’ Good to Great, Susan offers an intelligent, convincing, and readable synthesis on how academic libraries can respond with action.

Recently one of our authors asked me for a list of of ALA Presidential Themes, 1990 to the present. I knew that our in-house library staff would have the answer, and I could have walked or called upstairs to the library, but I’m all about the multi-tasking, don’t you know. So I pasted the question from the author’s e-mail message into the Ask-the-Librarian VR chat box on ilovelibraries.org, which is staffed by our very own librarians.

Snip, snap, and the answer is served up, easy as pie. A great service for our authors and our copy editors! Thanks!

It’s a frustrating fact of the print publishing business that we sometimes have to decline a good book topic because the market for it is just too small. To cover the costs of editing and production for a low-sales book, we would have to charge much more per book than the market would bear.* This happened recently, and while I tried to direct the authors to other avenues within the association that might be able to publish the material, I doubt that it will see a life in print. I’m hoping that there will be a home for it online.

But even an online offering is not without editorial and production costs. Advising authors on how to present their content, editing it for clarity and style, and designing and executing a pleasing and useful layout is part and parcel of what we do here at Editions, regardless of the final format. And while an online offering saves the time and costs of printing and binding, it also results in reduced sales. Customers are not yet ready to make the switch from print to electronic in sufficient numbers to allow us to “pass that savings on to you,” as they say.**

I’m waiting for that day, though, and it may finally be coming around the corner with the introduction of the .epub file format standard and free tools like BookGlutton’s Unbound Reader (now in beta).

*For an extreme example of “small market = big unit cost” take a look at The 2007-2012 Outlook for Polyethylene Household Food Storage, Sandwich, and Freezer Bags and Pouches in Greater China. 144 pages in paperback, available from Amazon for the low, low price of $495.

**There are other things to consider such as DRM, distribution, and preservation, but (I think) these are issues that we can find our way through, not solid obstacles to success.