Tom Peters presented on successful library technology services at the ALA Annual Conference, emphasizing the importance of user needs and effective promotion for tech adoption. He shared insights on collaboration and scanning stations, highlighting that these innovations were driven by user benefits rather than requests. The presentation concluded with lessons on the necessity of promoting services effectively to avoid negative perceptions and improve user experience.

1. A Presentation made by Tom Peters at
the ALA PR Forum at the ALA Annual
Conference, Anaheim CA 6/24/12

3.  IT expert? Sorta
 PR expert? Nyet
 Librarian for 25 years
 Yes, I’d do it all over again
 Library user for 54 years
 In 4 years, I will have been a librarian
for half my life.

4. www.SlideShare.com/

7.  Not this: Generalities peppered with a
few examples.
 But this: Examine a couple of very
successful library technology services
 How did they happen?
 What role did PR play?
 What can be concluded from these instances?

8. Collaboration
Stations
 Plug-n-Display
 Toggle with
“More Meds”
Buttons
 Bistro Tables
 “Dating Game”
Chairs

9.  Flatbed
scanner with
book edge
 Single-pass,
doubled-sided
 PDF, Word,
JPEG, etc.
 USB, G-Docs,
email

10.  These technologies have been
around for awhile
 Real adoption and diffusion is
much more interesting than
cutting edge tech

11.  Neither of
these info tech
successes are
Cutting Edge
Technologies

12.  Collaboration Stations  Scanning Stations
 Vendor demo  Vendor contact
 Frustration over price  Vendor demo
 Local offer to build  Friends discussion
 Specs and design  Temp location
 Furniture selection  Staff orientation
 Location selection  Furniture selection
 PR blitz  Permanent location
 Fortnight of high anxiety  Soft launch mid-
 6 more added within yr. semester
 Added another soon

13.  Obvious needs
 Built and improved upon known user
behavior
 Tied to current pedagogical styles and
curricular goals
 Easy to use with obvious benefits
 Located thoughtfully within the library
 Good promotion, with help from users

14. Doug Smith, Classroom Technology Support
 Years of experience
 Both a thinker/visionary and a builder
 Maintains current knowledge about Tech
 Cost conscious
 An keen eye for durability and the
point of quickest failure or obsolescence

15.  Inexpensive
 Design and construction
team is nearby and easy
to contact
 However, you literally are
a guinea pig as they work
through various
iterations of their design

17.  Mathews, Brian. 2012. “The Library is [Just]
a Philosophy (it’s not about chairs)”
Chronicle of Higher Education (June 19).
 Available at http://bit.ly/LJ2YQ0
 The library is a belief system, an application of a
philosophy translated into a tangible form.
 Space should be designed for intentions,
not for users.
 What do the chairs enable users to do?

18.  Figure out the why before you figure out the
what and how.
 It takes a lot of villages and neighborhoods
[i.e., use/experience zones] to make a library.
 What are the intentions of the library?
 Academic Support?
 Preservation?
 Knowledge Creation?
 Instruction?

19. “…consider the best means for
making those intentions tangible,
rather than just the current means.”

21. “If you build it, he [they] will come.”

22.  The phrase appeals to our lack of
PR prowess.
 It’s generally false, especially
when it comes to library
information technology.

23.  Website
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Student Newspaper
 Alumni Magazine
 Banners on the actual tables
 PowerPoint slide show on one of the screens
 Offers made to groups working on projects
 Word of mouth

24.  Free
 Easy to Use
 Green (not stressed)
 Simplify the choices
 Thank you, Friends

26.  “Word-of-mouth marketing is the most
powerful form of marketing these days.
And, libraries can afford it.”
 Don’t wait for word-of-mouth marketing
to just happen.
 Encourage people to tell their friends.
 Peggy Barber (June 23, 2012) at a session of the
ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim CA

27.  Does computer tech
need any promotion?
 Aren’t most library users
enthralled by info tech?

28. No, Technology Services Require
some Planning, Thought, Study,
and Imagination

29.  How do you imagine each
service being used?
 Think like a potential user.
What will be the benefits for them?
 How will this tech service improve
their information lives?

30.  Some students just like the collaboration
station furniture. They ignore the tech.
 One student used a station for several
hours alone, because he had dropped his
laptop and the screen had cracked.

31. Locate the service where users can find it.
Locate the service where users will like using it.
 Collaboration Stations in the large, open study
areas within the library
▪ Collaboration Station in a group study room isn’t used
as much (but users asked for it!)
 Scanning Stations in “Copier Row” – a high-traffic
area on the main floor

32.  9 out of 10 users are actively using portable
devices (laptops and/or phones, mainly)
 Lots of small-group work with two or more
laptops open and being shared
 Lots of people making paper-to-paper
copies

33. …neither of these highly successful
library tech services was suggested
or requested by users.

34.  More Specifically:
When asked,
people have a hard time imagining
and articulating what they want.
 Crisis of Imagination in Librarianship?
 When presented with something
useful, people will use it.

35. Survey says:
MORE
OUTLETS!

36.  Exits
 Emotional Outlets
 Outlet Malls

40.  Risk management concerns about
anonymous emailing from the scanning
stations
 Systems concerns about ongoing support
 Apple dongles for the collaboration stations
left everyone dazed and confused
 Rapid roll-out and mid-semester
deployment concerned some librarians

41. 1. Personalities
2. Politics
3. Pecunia (money)

42. When a tech service
becomes successful
and breaks away
from the service
pack, the rest of the
pack tries to elbow it
back into the pack.

44.  They say: If we offer a
scanning station as a free
service, our photocopying
revenue will decline.
 I respond: Scanning
stations are desired by
users, are much easier
and cheaper to operate,
are greener, etc.

45.  Don’t refuse to innovate because it might
harm existing revenue streams.
 Don’t do it!
 That way lies madness and obsolescence
 (Pass the hat)

46.  7 collaboration stations added in one
academic year for less than the price of a
single vendor-supplied station
 Too soon to tell about any decline of
photocopying (and that revenue rivulet)

47.  When possible, construct with
local talent and materials
 Just do it
 A wildly popular service trumps
frugal fiscal management

49.  Now expected by
most library users.
 One of the most
heavily used library
services
 Biggest challenge:
Avoiding negative PR
when the wireless
network teeters

51.  Because good wireless access is now just
assumed, the only PR possible with
wireless is now negative PR
 Poor coverage
 Limited capacity
 Device problems
 User ignorance
 Often never gets reported to librarians
 What halo effect does this negative PR have?

52. No, not in this instance

54.  We should have promoted the heck out of
the scanning stations when we first
deployed them
 Perils of a Soft Launch:
 Confuses and angers users (Why didn’t the
library tell us about this great service sooner?)
 Confuses and sends mixed msg to library
workers (soft launch = tepid commitment)

55. Probably never will be
No black rotary phone
era on the horizon
Remember Mathews’
Villages and
Neighborhoods

56.  Launch and promote
 Then watch and learn
 Then modify/expand
as appropriate
 Be happy with success
 Lather, Rinse, and
Repeat

57. Tom Peters
 Today: Assistant Dean for Strategic Technology
Initiatives, Milner Library, Illinois State University
 As of Aug. 1: Dean of Library Services,
Missouri State University
 Phone (probably until I die) 309-660-3648
 Email tpeters@tapinformation.com