1. Big Trends in Library Land:
Member Engagement or Books?
TRADIGITAL!
Fairfield Public Library
Friday Oct.2, 2014
Stephen Abram, MLS
2. THE TPL ECONOMIC
IMPACT STUDY
Insights from Qualitative and Quantitative
Impact Measurements
Presented by
Kimberly Silk, MLS - Data Librarian, Martin Prosperity Institute,
Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Co-Author, “So Much More: The Economic Impact of Toronto Public Library on the City of Toronto”
3. So Much More:
The Economic Impact
of the Toronto Public
Library on the City
of Toronto
January 15, 2014
Katherine Palmer
Dr. Kevin Stolarick
Kimberly Silk, MLS
4. Agenda
1. Why the Study was Necessary
2. Key Findings & Messages
a. Economic Impact of TPL
b. Value of Library Membership
c. Value of an Open Hour
3. Why These Findings Matter
4. What We Learned
8. 8
Toronto Public Library delivers $5.63 of
economic impact for every $1 spent
9. 9
Return on Investment
ROI is 463%
The return from the City of Toronto’s investment in the Toronto Public
Library is 463%, which is the midpoint of a range very conservatively
estimated to be 244% and is comfortably shown to reach 681%.
10. Neighbourhood Branches Provide Communities Intangible
Benefits
10
“Cities that promote diversity and tolerance
also tend to become places that are open to
new ideas and different perspectives,
promoting creativity. This in turn builds cities
that are attractive to individuals and
businesses involved in the creation of new
ideas, products and services.”
The Importance of Diversity to the Economic
and Social Prosperity of Toronto, MPI, 2010
11. Intangible benefits deliver value
Opportunities for residents to
improve their literacy skills, enhance
their educational and employment
opportunities, and improve quality
of life for themselves and their
families through library collections,
services and programs deliver a
lifetime of value to residents and
increase the economic
competitiveness and prosperity of
Toronto.
12.
13. Why These Findings Matter
• At the City Council meeting, January 15-17, 2013, Council passed a motion to request that
the Chief Librarian prepare a cost-benefit analysis of the Open Hours Policy and the
economic impact of Library services and provide a report to the City Manager for review
and report prior to the 2014 budget process.
• The 3 key findings addressed the information request from Toronto City Council.
• These findings provided the information councillors needed to make an informed vote re:
TPL proposed budget.
• Result: TPL’s 2014 budget request for a 1.4% increase over the 2013 budget approved,
including funding for for the first year operating costs of two new branches, Fort York and
Scarborough Civic Centre. It also includes funding for increased open hours at seven
district libraries and the Toronto Reference Library, standardizing hours for all research
and reference libraries and district branches to 69 hours per week, including Sundays.
(Source: TPL news release)
14. What We Learned
• Collecting lots of data doesn’t mean you’re collecting the
useful data.
• Data collection must be directly linked to the message /
proof you need to deliver to stakeholders.
• A data snapshot isn’t enough – data collection strategy &
analysis must be an ongoing process, to provide ongoing
evidence of economic value.
16. Libraries core skill is not
delivering information
Libraries improve the quality
of the question and the
success of user experiences
Libraries are about
improving learning
and building communities
17. Focus on the REAL Issues
Not BOOKS! The experience
Retail Sales Down?
Titles Down?
Circulation Down?
Reading Down?
Teen Reading Down?
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO
18. 18
Stop Having and Engaging in Trivial Discussions
• Libraries are more relevant than ever
• We have no good reason to be on the defence – change to offensive
positioning
• Reading is UP
• E-Books aren’t replacing p-Books - the dynamic is a new hybrid
marketplace
• E-Books have benefits that p-Books don’t
• Librarians are being hired and doing well
• Our market is growing
• Change is our tradition
• We have all evolved and become TRADIGITAL
• Out image in public opinion lags this evolution
22. What are the BIG Questions?
What are your top 20 buckets of questions?
When you know that, what are your staffing,
programs, and collection alignment strategies?
22
23. 23
Re-Framing
• Libraries are essential economic, social, and educational
infrastructure.
• It’s not just going beyond books – we always did!
• Community engagement is a platform. Books are a foundation. The
magic happens in the programs.
• Every collection justifies and aligns with a program.
• Every statistic serves to create a measurement and every
measurement supports a story and a matrix of proof for positive
impact.
25. Some (not all) ‘Trends’
Diffusion is the issue
Not ideas and pilots and experiments
It’s not the money – but leadership, rick-taking,
culture, energy and breaking inertia
26. 26
Let’s talk top tech trends . . . There are too many! Arrghhh!
• Cloud & TCO
• Mobile – mobile first and apps
• Discovery
• Engagement
• Geo
• Data through Insight – Data Info Knowledge Behaviour
• SurveyMonkey and ForeSee
• Research: Pew, Market Probe, OPLDS, OMBI, etc.
• Personas
• Steaming media
• BiblioCommons
• Experience Portals
• MOOCs, e-Learning, & more
• Measurements and Stories
• Branding
• CRM, Customer Service and cross functional teams
29. What pilots are you engaging in?:
• to replace the DVD portfolio
• for audiobooks, talking books
• for podcast discovery
• for the visually impaired community
• to deal with subscription and community gaming
• to support discovery and reviews
• to support multilingual discovery
• non-fiction vs. fiction video discovery
• Trailers
29
30. • Word on the Street
• Sidewalk Sales
• Mall Walkers
• Survey and cardholder campaigns
• Reach (vs. Outreach)
• Mobile Makerspaces
• Partnerships (Chambers of Commerce, Clubs, etc.)
• Search G-Images for Pop=Up Library or Little Free Libraries for
inspiration…
30
32. 32
Record your Story Hours
YouTube Your Story Hours
Tie in to collection
• Parenting
• Children’s Health
• Continuing Education
Moms and Caregivers Social Glue
Teddy Bears, PJ’s, Pets, Toys
How do you find kids’ books?
36. 36
Douglas County and Colorado Models
Lulu, Amazon Singles, Self-publishing
Fifty Shades of Grey
This is an economic activity
37. 37
Hand-knitting Sweaters or an Industrial Revolution for libraries
Consider scalability and replicability
Cooperation on a massive scale
Mobility of programming
Thinking big – over 1000 attendees or 30?
Mobile Makerspaces
Mobile staff talent
41. Education Changes (Common Core)
What do you know about curriculum? (e.g. Shakespeare)
IQ Changes
Human Genome and Learning Styles
Behavioural Changes
Developmental Understanding
41
42. Community service indexing – 211, Blue Book, making sense of so
many governments, social services, and charities. . .
Finding and choosing schools and continuing education
Services to veterans and in-the-field military
Seniors – social glue, isolation, home bound, connections to teens
& community
What are your passions?
42
43. 43
Websites and e-mail
Blogs
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
Tumblr
Vimeo / YouTube / Vine
Instagram
Etc.
Integrate!
46. The justifications are efficiency, effectiveness, and
productivity aligned with user demand and behaviours
Responsive Design
Responsive Design
Get ‘em
Do it with your team
Consortia and partnerships
46
Mobile – too many devices
Mobile – screen differences
Apps
ILS in the field
Cloud
47. Understand the difference
between Search and Find
• Roy Tennant and I have been saying for years: “Users want to find not
search”.
• Librarians enjoy the challenge of search and try to create mini-librarians.
• Information literacy is different than contextual information fluency.
•The user experience is mostly “elsewhere”.
• Learning, research and decision-making processes trump search.
48. Understand the difference between
the roles of discovery services and
native search
• Search is the identification of potential objects to read or view in
either a known item retrieval scenario or – more importantly – an
immersion environment where choices are made.
• Until recently, we handled immersion environments in the context of
defined subsets of content (a single database or small group).
• Discovery services are one step before search – the identification and
discovery of the resources (databases) that are worth searching.
49. 1000%+
Growth
Get the naming and labeling right
• Vendors must develop unique names and brands for their services to meet
positioning, marketing and sales needs to you.
• There is no need for you to fall in line and pass through these names – or
worse try to train end users to know hundreds of them!
• Can anyone defend using these titles to be the single most important label
for end users? MLA, Scopus, Compendex, ABI/Inform . . .OPAC!?
• Honestly! The needs of trademark law don’t match the needs of users to
identify resources.
50. Are you using numbers strategically?
• Statistics versus measurements
• Satisfaction and Impact
• Visual versus data
• Stories build on data springboards
• Are your numbers showing customer satisfaction or just
activity?
• Do you trust your numbers (It’s easy to mess with an interface
and increase hits or whatever statistics you’re using.)
• How can the vendor help your numbers issues and insights?
51. 51
Talking Money
• Price
• Cost
• Billing
• Value
• Deals
• TCO
• Value of Your Time
• Value of Their Time
52.
53. Core Statistics (CLA Draft)
1. Service points and visits
2. Reference questions
3. Circulation (of particular item types)
4. Population served
5. E-resource holdings
6. Children’s membership and services
7. Staffing
8. Internet/PAC/WiFi
9. Programming
10. Total operating expenditures
53
54. Core Measurements (FOPL Draft)
1. Overall value of a library membership (usage not cardholders)
2. Value of an 'open hour' (new metric unique to MPI TPL study that aggregates
cost + value)
3. Economic impact (vs. ROI) (Households and Population)
4. Per Capita 'Usage" comparison across systems, groups (like small, medium.
large, urban, suburban, rural, remote, FN, etc.), and jurisdictions
(province/state)
5. A 'new' usage algorithm to modernize the old circulation stat and combine
digital and print usage into a standard, comparable metric
6. A metric for technology access tied to the digital/economic divide(s)
7. A standard operational effectiveness metric (Value for Tax Dollars)
8. Average cost per household (taxes are based on household rather than
population and better reflects funding models)
9. A metric for Use of Space (meetings, study, rooms) which was new for the MPI
study and hadn't been done before
54
55. 55
The Public Library Value Proposition
1. Excellent Return on Investment
2. Strong Economic Development
3. Great Employment Support
4. Welcoming Newcomers
5. Provable Early Literacy Development & school readiness
6. Ongoing Support for Formal Education and Homework Help
7. Serve the whole community equitably
8. Affordable access to community resources
9. Access to Government Services and e-government
10. Questions Deserve Quality Answers
11. Support Cultural Vitality
12. Recognized and Valued Leisure Activities for majority of residents
13. Infrastructure Support (ADA and Buildings)
Do circulation numbers even begin to capture this value?
56. Until lions learn to write their own story,
the story will always be from the perspective
of the hunter not the hunted.
57. 57
• Library Advocacy: The Lion's Story
• Are you framing your library's story well?
• Are you sharing measurements about your impact, or still beating the
drum of raw statistics that show funders where to cut?
• Are your measurement strategies too driven by easy to assemble
computer tracked stats or are you sampling and researching
qualitative insights and stories?
• Are you using great gift of social media to engage and get your
message out.
• Has your library's marketing and communication plan stepped up to
the 21st Century?
• Are we ready for advanced data mining of our websites, circulation
and membership records?
• Are you ready for the reach beyond outreach?
• What are the skills and competencies that library teams need?
58. First . . .
Let’s stop using the word technology
Let’s discuss experience and user
satisfaction . . .
59. Second . . .
Let’s start using verbs to describe
your service portfolio in the
context(s) of our members,
audiences and communities.
59
62. Books, eBooks
Magazines
Websites
Buildings, Branches
Rooms
Desks
Programs
Nouns can be warehoused
and ‘cut’
Serve
Answer
Engage
Link
Entertain
Tell a story
Do
Action verbs imply dynamism
and impact
80. It’s the stories that happen inside
your library that matter . . . Not just
the ones you have on the shelves.
Tell those stories
Encourage the heart . . .
Better yet . . . Collect the stories in your users’ voices
BUT HOW?
YouTube Channel?
81. Invest in persona development
• Segment by behaviour and goals . . .
• Does anyone really prioritize content and answers by
format?
• Are we viewing the workflow or learning flow or life
stages through a camera hole?
82.
83. Sixth . . .
Reorganize and Invest in Staff
• Align with modern structures (Municipal official research…)
• Cross-functional teams
• Customer Service Models (Disney, Starbucks, Ritz Carlton,
Marriott)
• Reduce backroom and increase front-room
• Increase outside the walls time
• MOOCs, e-learning, Conferences, PD, etc.
84.
85.
86. The signs . . . There’s always another
view…
86
