1. Public Libraries:
Strategic Considerations
Stephen Abram, MLS
County of Los Angeles Public Library
Los Angeles, CA
April 5, 2012

2. Change
These slides are available at Stephen’s Lighthouse blog

3. Several Things Should Happen Today
 You should have fun first.
 You should get too much information
 You should share with each other
 You should get new viewpoints and
perspectives that challenge the norm
 You should question the status quo
 Uncomfortable is OK, annoyed too
 You are responsible for your own learning

4. We Only Get So Many
Once-in-a-Lifetime
Chances To Do Great
Things

5. News Flash
“The Internet and technology have
now progressed to their infancy”

9. So how must library
strategies change?

10. Conclusions Up Front
1. Prioritize Programs not Collections
2. Drive ‘Reference’ with Data and Know Your Top
Questions
3. Balance of Physical and Virtual
4. Invest Time in Demographics
5. Put Technological Tools in Context
6. Build Recreational Reading Away From Effort and
Get Real About the eBook Issue
7. Homework: Deal With It
8. Transliteracy is a Key Opportunity
9. Partnerships are about everything

11. Specific Challenges
1. Setting Priorities and Making Sacrifices
2. Innovation Culture, Pilots and Diffusion
3. Program Hiatuses
4. Backroom and Front Room Balance
5. Alignment with Goals
6. Measuring the Right Stuff
7. Organizational Structure and Governance
8. Investing in HR Development & Cross-training
9. Sacred Cows (desks, books, …)
10. Promotion, Marketing, Communication, Advocacy

12. Change can happen very fast

13. Sensemaking

14. What is an EXPERIENCE?
What is a library experience?
What differentiates a library experience from a transaction?
What differentiates public libraries from Google/Bing?

15. The Evolution
of Answers

16. Why do people ask questions?
Is your library experience conceptually organized around
answers and programs?
Or collections, technology and buildings?

17. Why do people ask questions?
 Who, What, When, Where
 How & Why
 Data – Information – Knowledge - Behavior
 To Learn or to Know
 To Acquire Information, Clarify, Tune
 To Decide, to Solve, to Choose, to Delay
 To Interview, Delve, Interact, Progress
 To Entertain or Socialize
 To Reduce Fear
 To Help, Aid, Cure, Be a Friend
 To Win A Bet

18. What are your top 10-20 questions?
What is the service portfolio model
that goes with those?

19. The Baker’s Dozen: LVA Top 13
1. Health and Wellness / Community Health / Nutrition / Diet /
Recovery
2. DIY Do It Yourself Activities and Car Repair
3. Genealogy
4. Test prep (SAT, ACT, occupational tests, etc. etc.)
5. Legal Questions (including family law, divorce, adoption, etc)
6. Hobbies, Games and Gardening
7. Local History
8. Consumer reviews (Choosing a car, appliance, etc.)
9. Homework Help (grade school)
10. Technology Skills (software, hardware, web)
11. Government Programs, Services and Taxation
12. Self-help/personal development
13. Careers (jobs, counselling, etc.)
14. Readers Advisory was 14th

20. Top 12 Patron Hobbies
Recreational Reading
Cooking & Recipes
Computers
Movies & Film
Exercise, Cycling & Walking
Traveling, Tourism & Vacations
Top Hobbies?
Music
Top Homework Questions?
Pets Top Travel Destinations?
Gardening
What do you know?
Television Shows
Arts & Crafts
Knitting & Needlecrafts
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

21. News Flash
News Flash
Tech Shift Happens

22. Seth Godin on Decisions (June 8, 2011)
o Which of these are getting in the way?
o You don't know what to do
o You don't know how to do it
o You don't have the authority or the resources to do it
o You're afraid
o You believe that money matters most
o Once you figure out what's getting in the way, it's far
easier to find the answer (or decide to work on a
different problem).
o Stuck is a state of mind, and it's curable.

24. What Are Libraries Really For?
• Community
• Learning
• Discovery
• Progress
• Research (Applied and Theoretical)
• Cultural & Knowledge Custody
• Economic Impact

25. What Are Librarians For?
• Expertise
• Relationships
• Transformation
• Service (not servant)
• Vision
• Leadership
• Economic Impact

26. Columbus, Cook, Magellan and Libraries:
Searching for the corners of the earth, the edge of the
oceans and discovering dragons ...

27. Columbus, Cabot, Cortes

28. Magellan Columbus Cook

30. Questions for Libraries Today:
1. Are our priorities right?
2. Are learning, research, discovery changing
materially and what is actually changing?
3. What is the foundation of future library
success . . . Books? Meh…
4. What is the role for librarians in the real
future (that is not an extension of the past)?

32. Grocery Stores

33. Grocery Stores

34. Grocery Stores

35. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

36. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

37. Meals

38. Let’s chat
What is a meal in library end-user or education
and learning terms?

39. The new
bibliography and
collection
development
KNOWLEDGE
PORTALS
KNOWLEDGE,
LEARNING,
INFORMATION &
RESEARCH
COMMONS

43. Chefs, counsellors, teachers, magicians
Librarians play a vital role in building the
critical connections between
information , knowledge and learning.

44. Service Metaphor
o Cafeterias
o Take Out
o Private Dining Rooms
o Private Chefs
o Variety

45. Programs
What are the components of a program focus?
What lifts PL’s beyond the foundation?

46. You have the tools.

47. Stop Making it So Hard!

49. Trans-Literacy: Move beyond reading & PC skills
 Reading literacy  News literacy
 Numeracy  Technology literacy
 Critical literacy  Information literacy
 Social literacy  Media literacy
 Computer literacy  Adaptive literacy
 Web literacy  Research literacy
 Content literacy  Academic literacy
 Written literacy  Reputation, Etc.

51. Steal
This
Idea

52. E-Learning

56. List of content farms and general spammy
user generated content sites:
 Experts Exchange (experts-exchange.com)
 All Experts (allexperts.com)
 eZine Articles (ezinearticles.com)
 Answers (answers.com)
 Find Articles (findarticles.com)
 Answer Bag (answerbag.com)
 FixYa (fixya.com Helium (helium.com)
 Articles Base (articlesbase.com)
 Hub Pages (hubpages.com)
 Ask (ask.com)
 InfoBarrel (infobarrel.com)
 Associated Content (associatedcontent.com)
 Livestrong (livestrong.com)
 BizRate (bizrate.com)
 Mahalo (mahalo.com)
 Buzle (buzzle.com)
 Mail Archive (mail-archive.com)
 Brothersoft (brothersoft.com)
 Question Hub (questionhub.com)
 Bytes (bytes.com)
 Squidoo (squidoo.com)
 ChaCha (chacha.com)
 Suite101 (suite101.com)
 eFreedom (efreedom.com)
 Twenga (twenga.com)
 eHow (ehow.com)
 WiseGeek (wisegeek.com)
 Essortment (essortment.com)
 Wonder How To (wonderhowto.com)
 Examiner (examiner.com)
 Yahoo! Answers (answers.yahoo.com)
 Expert Village (expertvillage.com)
 Xomba (xomba.com)
 )

60. The nasty facts
about Google &
Bing and
consumer search:
SEO / SMO
Content Farms
Advertiser-driven
Geotagging

61. Strategic
Analytics

63. What We Never Really Knew Before (US/Canada)
 27% of our users are under 18.

We often 59% are female.
 believe a lot
29% are college students.
that isn’t
 5% are professors and 6% are teachers.
true.
 On any given day, 35% of our users are there for the very
first time!
 Only 29% found the databases via the library website.
 59% found what they were looking for on their first search.
 72% trusted our content more than Google.
 But, 81% still use Google.

64. 2010 Eduventures Research on Investments
 58% of instructors believe that technology in courses positively impacts student engagement.
 71% of instructors that rated student engagement levels as “high” as a result of using technology
in courses.
 71% of students who are employed full-time and 77% of students who are employed part-time
prefer more technology-based tools in the classroom.
 79% of instructors and 86 percent of students have seen the average level of engagement improve
over the last year as they have increased their use of digital educational tools.
 87% of students believe online libraries and databases have had the most significant impact on
their overall learning.
 62% identify blogs, wikis, and other online authoring tools while 59% identify YouTube and
recorded lectures.
 E-books and e-textbooks impact overall learning among 50% of students surveyed, while 42% of
students identify online portals.
 44% of instructors believe that online libraries and databases will have the greatest impact on
student engagement.
 32% of instructors identify e-textbooks and 30% identify interactive homework solutions as having
the potential to improve engagement and learning outcomes. (e-readers was 11%)
 49% of students believe that online libraries and databases will have the greatest impact on
student engagement.
 Students are more optimistic about the potential for technology.

66. What do we need to know?
 How do library databases and virtual services
compare with other web experiences?
 Who are our core virtual users? Are there gaps?
 Does learning happen? How about discovery?
 What are user expectations for true satisfaction?
 How does library search compare to consumer
search like Google and retail or government?
 How do people find and connect with library virtual
services?
 Are end users being successful in their POV?
 Are they happy? Will they come back? Tell a friend?

67. Top-Level Benchmarks
Gale-Cengage Browse Survey
August 01, 2010 - August 31, 2010
90 90 90 89 90 90 90 90 90
88 87 87
85 84
78 77
71 75 76
73 74 74
71 72 72 72
70 70 69
68
65
62
59 59
48 48
41
37
33
30 30 30 30 30
0

68. Emboldened Librarians hold the key

69. So how must library
strategies change?

70. Books

71. We have a shallow understanding of the
Codex – the book format(s)
Transition from scrolls – illumination – codex
– and beyond

73. Strategic Challenges for Reference and
Research Work
in the Coming Decade

74. The BASICS
 Data
 Information
 Knowledge
 Wisdom NOT
 Behavior

75. Death of Reference
 Who
 What
 Where
 When
 Why
 How

76. How & Why Questions
 Now that’s research
 The interview is more involved
 Transformational not Transactional
 Expertise counts
 The position and reputation of the delivery
professional is key
 Expertise is shared mutually
 Groups and patterns matter

77. What does all this mean?
 The Article level universe
 The Chapter and Paragraph Universe
 Integrated with Visuals – graphics and charts
 Integrated with ‘video’
 Integrated with Sound and Speech
 Integrated with social web
 Integrated with interaction and not just
interactivity
 How would you enhance a book?

78. What is Changing?
1. Evidence-based Reference Strategies
2. Experience-based Portals: The New Commons
3. Personal Service on Steroids
4. Quality Strategies: Consumer vs. Professional
Search
5. Social Networks and Recommendations
6. Trans-literacy Strategies
7. People-driven Strategies
8. Curriculum and Research Agenda
9. Service and Programs

79. Recommendations
 Strengthen Your Personal Brand
 Reposition the Library and Librarian
 Don’t Tie Yourself directly to Collections or
Physical Space
 Network with Your Users Socially
 Measure, Don’t Count
 Engage in partnerships
 Know
 Take Risks

80. Books
 Reception of Reading and Experience
 Fiction – paper, e-paper
 Non-Fiction
 Articles - disaggregation
 Media – physical vs. streaming
 Learning Objects
 Stories vs. Pedagogy

81. Technology Context
 Cloud (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)
 Laptops and Tablets
 Mobility / Smartphones
 Bandwidth (Wired, WiFi, Whitespace)
 Learning Management Systems
 Streaming video and audio vs. download
 HTML5 and Apps – the battle
 Advertising auction models and ‘product’
 New(ish) Players (Amazon, Apple, G, B&N, Uni’s,
states/provinces/nations)

82. The BASICS
 Containers for Pedagogy
 Created by Teams (e.g. 40,000 authors a year
for Cengage alone) (yes that’s a lot of lawyers)
 Copyright and complicated layering of millions
of rights (creators - pictures, graphics, video,
tests, text, documents, etc.)
 Serious Lawsuits: Feist, Texaco, LSUC, Tasini,
NatGeo, Authors Guild, GBS, etc.
 Complex extension opportunities (links to
articles, databases, library assistance, etc.)

83. Book Challenges
 Format Agnosticism
 Browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari
 Devices: Macintosh, PC Desktops & Laptops
 Mobile: Laptops, Tablets (iPad, Fire, etc.)
 Mobile: Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry,
Android, Windows, etc.)
 Container: PDF, ePub, .mobi, Kindle, etc.
 Learning Management System: Blackboard /
WebCT, D2L, Moodle, Sakai, etc.
 Purchasing (Amazon, B&N, Chegg, CengageBrain,
Apple Store, University Textbook Store, etc.)

84. Should we tie users and students to a
specific and proprietary device or
operating system?

85. What is the priority?
Price, Cost, Value, ROI
Managing or Mandating the Adoption Curve
Learning and Progress
Societal Impact = 17%, 40%, 70%?

86. This era will see a Fundamental
Reimagining the Book
For the present there will be those who
resist and the resisters will be the
majority.

87. Reimagine Service
Reference and Research

88. Consider the differences . . .
 Computer Commons
 Mall
 Service Commons
 Information Commons
 Knowledge Commons
 Learning Commons
 Science Commons
 Centre or Central?
 Physical / Virtual Hybrid

89. Mobility

90. A 1965 iPhone

92. What Changes with Mobile?
Everything and Nothing

93. What doesn’t change?
 The User
 User needs vs. user context
 Content (versus format and display)
 Questions and improving the quality of
questions
 Creativity and human progress
 Stability = fossilization

94. What changes with mobile?
 The Ecosystem
 Communication devices move increasingly
from feature phones to smartphones
 Personal computing moves to a hybrid
environment of laptops and tablets (plus a
few power desktop anchors)
 In libraries the dominant mobile task
environments are based on answers,
communities and e-learning

101.  Content – duh.
 Format and display considerations
 The reading experience
(PDF, App, eBook, Wall, Tweets, etc.)
 The learning experience
 The entertainment experience
 Streaming versus downloading
 Instant and ‘live’ (Bloggie)

102.  Standards
 Apps versus HTML5
 XML
 ePub, Kindle Book, PDF, HTML5, etc.
 Tablets versus e-Reader experience
(human biology does not change quickly)

103.  Concept of Place
 Geo-IP
 Google Maps integration
 Sign in and Authentication
 Rights and permissions management
 Concept of ‘Place’ tied to ‘User’
 Geo-location

104.  Identity
 Personal phone versus home/family
phone
 Consequences for library cardholder
management
 Are librarians and library value systems in
conflict with the new ecosystem and
market values?
 Will adults continue to respect and trust
library straitjackets?

105.  Frictionless-ness
 Commerce
 Square (from Jack Dorsey founder of
Twitter)
 Embedded e-commerce ecology in
smartphones
 Death of QR codes
 $5/gallon gasoline . . . and the library
value proposition of ‘free’

106.  Frictionless-ness commerce
 In App purchasing and/or seamless buying?
 Commerce in a virtual goods space (start
with $billion market for gaming goods and
extend to other goods
 Other goods are a parallel commercial and
retail environment in ‘goods’ relevant to
libraries – e-books, streaming media, audio
like music MP3, lessons and
podcasts, articles, learning
objects, games, tests, etc.

107.  Opportunity
 1. Search personalization (e.g. Google)
 2. Push personalization (e.g. Facebook)
 3. Integration of
sound, video, text, mail, communication, soci
al and business cohorts
 4. Advertising
 5. Major changes in usability: Voice
response like Siri, gesture interfaces, face
recognition, geo-restrictions, sentiment
search, semantic, linked data, data
mining, etc.

108.  Business Models
 Pressure on consumer and institutional models
as purchasing agent
 Pressure on retailer model
 Subscription models for e-Content (like Netflix
for entertainment but extended to e-books from
Amazon, 24Symbols or Bookish, etc.)
 On demand and micropayment models
 Author embedded models like Pottermore
 Books as apps or as vehicles for ads &
purchases

109.  Google (Android partners, Motorola acquisition)
 Microsoft (Skype acquisition, Windows mobile)
 Facebook (post-IPO)
 eBay
 Apple (iTunes and App Store)
 Twitter (& Square)
 Research in Motion (as an acquisition target?)
 Amazon
 Open Source or any company on the fringes
that is disruptive as a new player or an
acquisition target)

111.  Living in a parallel world
 Serving a hybrid world
 Changing their strategic planning models to add
more stretch into the environmental
scans, creative thinking and imagination
 Bringing staff and profession along the curve
 12 steps . . .

112.  Differential Adoption
 The generations are adopting at much
different rates and for different purposes
 Boomers are the primary adopters of e-
reading
 Adult women are a major market for e-
gaming
 Students are resisting e-textbook adoption
– for now.
 Tablet adoption (ownership) doubled over
Christmas 2011 (Pew)

113.  On the sidelines of a war
 Watching the emerging commercial
battlefield (foundation vs. application)
 Android, RIM, Windows, Apple iOS, other . . .
 The end of the flip phone or feature phone
 At the same time as the end of CD and DVD
and more e-Books and e-content formats
 Dealing with new potential walled gardens for
e-content (app stores, e-formats, single
device stuff, etc.)

114.  Playing with vendor apps
 Developing Library apps – learn by doing
 Most good content vendors have first or second
generation apps to play with and many are free
 Many ILS vendors too including ILS enhancement
layers like Bibliocommons and LibraryThing.
 It’s too early to form anything more than an opinion
and those who don’t play aren’t learning fast
enough.
 Use a smartphone.

117.  Pilot and experiment with mobile social
cohorts in the library
 Clubs
 Classes (mobile training or extended learning)
 Reading cohorts and book clubs
 Associations
 Fundraising
 Meetings
 Teams (business or sport)

118.  Actively lobby and educate to ensure that the
emerging mobile ecosystem supports the values
and principles of librarianship for balance in the
rights of end users for use, access, learning and
research.
 Support vendors and laws to be as agnostic as
possible by ensuring that, as afar as possible
your services and content offerings support the
widest range of devices, formats, browsers, and
platforms.

119.  Design for frictionless access using such
opportunities as geo-IP and mobile ready
websites
 Test everything in all browsers – mobile or not.
 Invest in usability research and testing and
learn from it and share your learning.
 Watch key developments in major publishing
spaces – kiddy lit, textbooks, e-
learning, fiction, etc.

120.  This is an evolution not a revolution
 The REAL revolution was the Internet and the Web.
 The hybrid ecology is winning in the near term for
operating systems and content formats.
 This is good since competition drives innovation.
 Engage in critical thinking not raw criticism. Be
constructive.
 Critical thinking is not part of dogma or religious fervor
or fan boy behavior.

121.  This is an evolution not a revolution
 Perfectionism will not move us forward at this
juncture.
 Really understand the digital divide and remove your
economic and social class blinkers
 Get over library obsession with statistics and
comprehensiveness.
 Get excellent at real measurements, sampling and
understanding impact and satisfaction.
(Analytics, Foresee, Pew)

122.  This is an evolution not a revolution
 We need to revisit the concept of
preservation, archives, repositories, and
conservation.
 Check out new publishing models like
Flipboard.
 Watch for emerging book enhancements and
other features that will challenge library
metadata, selection policies, and collection
development.

123. Broadband
 You must clearly understand the latest US FCC
Whitespace Broadband Decision – THIS IS
TRANSFORMATIONAL and going global
 Net neutrality, kill switches . . .
 Local wired, mobile access ‘everywhere’ to
the home and workplace on a personal basis
 Geo-awareness: GIS, GPS, GEO-IP, etc.
 Wireless as a business strategy (Starbucks)
 Mobile dominates the largest generation

124. Speaking of e-
Books...

126. Borders Kobo, B&N Nook, Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony, etc. . . .

135. GBS

141. Can we frame the e-book issue so
that it can be addressed rationally?

142. Books

143. Fiction

144. Non-Fiction

145. E-Learning

146. Be More Open to the Users’ Paths -
Filtering

147. What Would You Attempt If
You Knew You Would Not
Fail?

149. A Third Path

154. Smelly Or
Yellow Sex
Liquid Appeal?

155. Considering the Whole Experience

158. There are no knights on
horses in technology.

159. The VAST majority of library use is virtual and is dwarfed by all information use

160. ‘Reading’ trumps print books . . .

161. 7 Learning Styles

163. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
VP strategic partnerships and markets
Cengage Learning (Gale)
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@cengage.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
Facebook, Pinterest: Stephen Abram
LinkedIn / Plaxo: Stephen Abram
Twitter: @sabram
SlideShare: StephenAbram1