Remaking Twitter for libraries

When you're out with friends there often comes a time, usually late at night after a few drinks, when you start talking about putting the world to rights - or as we'd say in French "refaire le monde", remaking the world. When I'm out with my library friends, we sometimes "remake the library", from collections to training via social media. A few of us are Twitter users, and we've talked about what we'd like to do in the highly hypothetical case where we'd be in charge of a public library's Twitter account. Ideas from these discussions, as well as things I have "soaked up" from talks and conferences I've attended, have been going around my head and made me want to write this article.

So, here are a few things I'd like to do if I ever was given the freedom of managing a library's Twitter account:

• I would start by following library staff personal Twitter accounts. I would make sure staff know they are welcome and even encouraged to use Twitter at work, especially if they tweet about what they do and about things related to the library service. I would retweet them, perhaps using the hashtag #StaffTweet. View some examples in this Storify.
• As might have been gathered from the #StaffTweet examples, I'd use Twitter to promote collections and the service as a whole by talking about what library staff are actually up to. I'd love it if this could be done in a humourous way.

• I would have "A day at [...] Branch Library" every week or so, in a different location, so that the service's Twitter account is not focused only on the central library.
• I would promote library events, not just once, but several times and preferably in different ways until the actual day, and while it is happening. See examples of live coverage of events by Newcastle Libraries here.
• I would engage with people: not only by replying, reacting to their comments and retweeting them, but also by making them participate in discussions as well as games and competitions, for example with trivia questions. Newcastle University Library Reader Services (@nulibrs) often hold "guess where our library bag is in this picture" competitions.
• I would tweet about things that aren't directly related to the library service but my followers (and potential followers) might be interested in: mainly local and literary news. I would point to changes and achievements in the local area, talk about this popular author whose new book has just been published, highlight upcoming literary events, etc. 

• I would make sure the Twitter account is lively, by tweeting several times a day - not tweeting at all in any particular day is not acceptable. This would be made easier by having a team behind the Twitter account, rather than just one person.

[Text below added 31/01/13]

• I would interact with other local organisations - the obvious ones being the other cultural venues in the area, ("building partnerships"?) promoting each other's events. An easy thing to do would be talking about events that can be related to the library's services and collections: a film out in the cinema that is adapted from a book the library holds copies of, the local theatre putting on a play of which you can view the text or information about the author, background, film adaptations, etc. in the library.

Many thanks to my friends for our discussions and their opinions on this blog post!

ABF 2012, part 2/4: public participation

From 7th to 9th June 2012, the ABF (Association des Bibliothécaires de France - the French library association) held its 58th annual congress in Montreuil, near Paris. And I was there! I had been invited by a friend on the ABF regional branch committee for the wider-Paris area to help out during the three days. This gave me the opportunity to attend several sessions, most of them directly linked to the conference theme: 

The library, a public matter

The last session of the first day and the first workshop of the second day both focused on how to engage with the public in implementing policies and defining services, with numerous examples.

Dominique Tabah opened the second Thursday afternoon session by talking about her experience at Montreuil libraries. She explained that requests from the public must be collected, identified and analysed with attention, be they from library users or non-users. Those requests can be difficult to satisfy but always deserve an answer on what the library service can and can't do.

How do we collect these customer opinions? Dominique Tabah gave several examples of the work Montreuil does with teenagers. Montreuil libraries have a teenage reading committee that meets once a month to select new books for the teenage collection. This is useful to understand what these readers think and expect of the collection. Occasionally, the young people involved also defend their choices in a public debate in front of other customers. Montreuil also asks of middle school pupils doing their work placement in the libraries to survey their classmates on their perception of the service. On top of this, the work placement pupils are also expected to give to their class a tour of the library.

Next, Anita Beldiman-Moore, from Sciences-Po Paris, talked about collecting data on the use of the service and the opinion of customers in a university library.

Sciences-Po have had "test weeks" when staff record the number of enquiries they get by topic as well as depending on the time and the location. This system showed when were the busiest times for each location, and whether the questions asked actually matched the purpose of the designated enquiry desks. For feedback on the quality of the service, Sciences-Po Library uses focus groups and home-made online surveys. It has also started taking part in the international LibQUAL+ survey, which measures the gap between the minimal and maximal level of service customers hope for with the level they are observing.

Xavier Galaup, from the Haut-Rhin regional library service, focused on the importance for libraries to co-create services and contents with their users. Among the examples he mentioned were Helsinki's Library 10 and its music recording studio, more and more libraries putting historical pictures on Flickr for customers to identify or share related stories, a series of "Our customers have got talent" evenings in a town library in Northern France, Brest's local history wiki, a Belgian library streaming website with music from local bands (whom listeners can vote for), ... and many others. You can view his presentation below - in French, but, erm, with pictures!

Co-création des services et des contenus avec les usagers

The Friday morning workshop offered the opportunity for delegates to share thoughts and practice on whether and how to involve customers in some traditionally "librarian-only" tasks. I am going to set out the questions and some of the comments voiced, and then leave you to think about your own answers, and maybe to share and discuss them! Here are the topics:

• Weeding: what legitimacy has the librarian to act on a public collection? This can be a problem especially in university libraries. Solutions discussed included informing users before the items are discarded, for example by marking items beforehand so that researchers using them can indicate their disagreement, or making lecturers take part in the weeding process.
• Delegation of acquisitions: who has the right to decide what to buy for the library collection, and to what extent? This conversation actually ranged from the pressure of public policies/the local authority to the system of packages imposed by some providers of digital resources (only a few resources the library is interested in, but no choice to get them other than pay for the lot). I was surprised no one mentioned supplier selection (I almost did) - maybe it doesn't exist in France?
• Is classification the last bastion of the librarians, where they are the only ones to decide and they can do whatever they want?
• The customer as a source of knowledge: should there be a public policy on human knowledge to implement? Example: a living library where actual people are added to the library's catalogue.