But the reality of this is changing. As newspapers struggle to stay alive, they’re exploring new revenue streams - our local paper recently started charging families to list obituaries, instead of providing that service for free. The paper is only published once a week for a town of 32,000 residents, but you can still see the effect below:

And of the 80 obituaries in 2009, only 12 were from June-December. With dramatically fewer obituaries appearing in the paper, the long-term research value of a library’s newspaper holdings is diminished. There must be other factors at play too, but hopefully newspaper revenues will stabilize and this downward obituary trend will be reversed. Regardless, there will always at least be a gap for anyone doing genealogical research or just looking up a friend of family member.

And this doesn’t seem to be just a local thing. A Slashdot post describes the same thing on a bigger scale. There’s also a Boing Boing post that looks into Legacy.com, the company many newspapers are using to outsource obituary listings. The bottom line in both posts is that obituaries and death notices are turning into a cash cow business - and as it becomes more and more expensive to run an obituary, there are going to be fewer and fewer of them.

So, all of that is sad news - doubly so since it’s out of the control of libraries (unless we start publishing family-written obituaries on our own websites for free). But at my library, we have been working to improve access to what we do have. Tune in next week for Part Two of this post, detailing how we created an online index to the obituaries in our newspaper microfilm records, to make then easier for patrons and staff to locate.

So I thought, wouldn’t it be great to set up a Google custom search engine to search all library-related blogs? Before I did, I checked if anyone already created one, and it turned out Library Zen had - four years ago (I’m even further behind than I thought).

LISZEN Search searches over 500 library blogs, and has an accompanying wiki to keep track. If you write about the library world, add yourself.

Something related that would also be nice is a custom search of just library websites - so it would be easy to quickly see what other library’s policies are regarding ebooks, or circulating laptops, or how much they charge for printing, etc. But considering the breadth of libraries and the complexity of maintaining it, just using regular Google might be more realistic.

A patron came rushing up to the desk (literally) and said he quickly needed to know John Philip Sousa’s religion. Since time was important, I gave the patron Encyclopedia Britannica and showed him how to find the John Philip Sousa article, while I searched Wikipedia. Neither identified his religion, so the next step was to grab the one Sousa biography we had on the shelf, and the patron looked through the index under “faith,” “religion,” etc., while I kept searching our databases and the internet.

Again, neither of us located anything quickly, except for a quote online attributed to Sousa:

My religion lies in my composition.

That didn’t exactly answer the patron’s question, but he felt Sousa must have meant that, regardless of what religion he was officially, he wasn’t himself a very religious person, and that was good enough for the patron. He thanked me and rushed out.

But I was still surprised that such an simple fact wouldn’t have been more readily available. I decided to keep searching until I found it, and then add the fact to Wikipedia - mainly because I can. I was already in the library’s catalog, so I requested a Sousa biography from another library (John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon) that seemed likely to have the information.

When it arrived, I started flipping through it, then wondered if this had been scanned into Google Books - turns out, it had. I searched the content of the book for “religion” and found the answer I was looking for at the bottom of page 102.

I then composed a little paragraph and added it to Wikipedia:

Although Freemasonry is an organization influenced by religious beliefs, John Philip Sousa himself was not. He was an Episcopalian, and while tolerant of religious beliefs in general, he personally regarded music as providing more Divine inspiration for people than Sunday sermons.^[13] He is also widely quoted saying, “My religion lies in my composition.”^[14]

So I was feeling pretty good with myself for tracking down this information and contributing it to Wikipedia - with the logic of, “if you can’t find a reference, make a reference.” But then it occurred to me: if the book I found the information in is in Google Books, why didn’t show up in my initial internet search.

I don’t know if it did then and I just missed it, but now this book, linking directly to page 102, is showing up as the fourth result for a search on “john philips sousa religion.” Hmm. So despite my boasting last week, even information professionals can miss things. Oh, and by the way, he was Episcopalian.

The books that caught my eye are these (biggify the photo to see the Dewey numbers):

• Ref/809.927/Prin - Imaginary people: a who’s who of modern fictional characters
• Ref/809.933/Ency/2002 - Encyclopedia of Holocaust literature
• Ref/809.933/Mang/Pb - The dictionary of imaginary places

And here’s the Dewey breakdown:

809 - History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures
809.91-.92 - Literature displaying specific qualities and elements
809.933 - Literature dealing with specific themes and subjects

I didn’t see .927 described in either DDC21 or DDC22, but it was the call number specified in that book’s CIP data (©1987), so it must have been phased out long ago.

And so, I get that these books are each about specific kinds of literature. But come on - a book about the Holocaust shelved between two books about imaginary things? It really is like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other fool Holocaust deniers got into OCLC and caused this to happen - a cataloger sleeper cell.

I’m going to talk with my Head of Technical Services to see how we can fix this.

This is a great idea for a dating website - it seems a much better way to get at someone’s true nature than filling out a profile by guessing what will make you attractive. I checked around the site a bit (without creating a profile), and wonder if there’s a way to tie-in with sites like LibraryThing and Good Reads to capitalize on peoples’ full libraries. LibraryThing sort of already does this, with their You and None Other meme.

But here’s something funny: at my first library, we toyed with the idea of a “singles night” book group. We thought it’d be a perfect program for Friday nights, after work, to come and meet other single people interested in books. It never happened, but I always liked the idea. Maybe that’ll eventually manifest in Alikewise meetups.

And wouldn’t this be a heck of a social networking widget to add to a library catalog? “Like this book? Click here to meet other patrons that do, too.”

via Burlington Free Press (thanks, Carney) and more at NPR

The phone rang, and the person on the other end said she was a librarian fresh out of library school, working at elementary school in Colorado, and having trouble locating some poems her teachers wanted for class. She knew the titles and authors, but couldn’t find the actual text in her library or online. She called me because she likes my website and hoped I could help.

My first suggestion was Granger’s Index to poetry - it wasn’t in her collection but was in her local public library. But because online resources are more useful for these long-distance questions, and it was a very quiet afternoon at work, after we hung up I thought I’d try searching for the text myself, too.

The four poems she was looking for were Eating the World, Last Kiss and Statue by Ralph Fletcher, and Spaghetti by Cynthia Rylant. I started by searching for title/author combinations, grouped together with quotes (ie, “ralph fletcher” “eating the world”). I was somewhat surprised that, even after going through the few pages of results, the texts weren’t there.

Then I thought maybe they were scanned as part of the Google Books project, so I clicked the link on each page to switch to searching Google Books (see image above). And if I was surprised at not finding the texts in a regular web search, I was doubly surprised to find they were the first or second result when searching Google Books.

So far, including the phone call, this all took me literally less than ten minutes.

I emailed the four story links to the librarian, and she replied that they were exactly what she needed. So that’s nice.

But I do think this is also a nice example of why librarians remain relevant in the internet age - an inexperienced searcher may not have known to enclose the author names and titles in quotation marks, or may not have known to try the more specialized Google Books search when the first attempt produced no results (keeping in mind that there are also lots of non-Google tools available, too), or may not have recognized the answer even though it was in a form other than what they were expecting (these poems turned out to be short stories).

This is especially true in light of the recent Northwestern University study that shows “digital natives” aren’t actually all that web-savvy. The study’s results seemed to imply that kids expect the internet to present them with the answer to their question, rather than expect to be engaged in the information search and critically evaluate resources themselves.

My favorite quote:

During the study, one of the researchers asked a study participant, “What is this website?” The student answered, “Oh, I don’t know. The first thing that came up.”

If it were someone from the iGeneration searching for these stories, it seems likely they would have stopped after the first search, empty-handed. So, yes, there certainly is, and will be, a need for librarians and experienced information searchers.

So I’m happy to hear that the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is opening in his home town of Indianapolis in this Fall.

It is fitting to call it a library, because he was certainly a prolific writer and a great supporter of libraries. However, the description on the website makes it sound more like a museum, community center and art gallery. It’s collection will house many of his letters and works and so will be a research center, and they also plan to publish a literary magazine and sponsor writers workshops.

They have a newsletter and are on Facebook, and all of it makes me really look forward to visiting.

via LISNews

Kate Spade? A clutch? These parts of the phrase were mysteries, but the book element interested me. Once a month, they’ll release little purse things designed to look like books. So, for just $325, people can look like they’re carrying a book with them, but actually are not (as opposed to making your own book safe for free out of an actual book).

But this does puzzle me: if the point is to look fashionable, wouldn’t it make more sense to make a clutch that looks like an iPad or Kindle? Or maybe retrointellectuaistas just have far better fashion taste than I. Well, yes, of course they do. It is creative and well-done, but I still need to cue Flight of the Conchords:

I might sound critical, but you know if they designed a man-purse based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I would want it.

No matter what people ask me, I make sure the words that come out of my mouth are helpful and positive - however, those aren’t always the first words that spring to mind.

In the anti-spirit of my post from Thursday, here are some answers I have not given to questions patrons have asked me. You’ve heard of FAQs - now here are some ALUs (”answers left unsaid”):

• Patron: The book isn’t on the shelf, on a cart, or behind the desk - where else could it be?
  Answer: In someone else’s home.
• Patron: This computer is loading slowly - should I just sit here and wait?
  Answer: You could stand.
• Patron: All the bathrooms are in use, where else can I go?
  Answer: There are bushes outside.
• [five computers in a row rebooted while a particular patron was using them because she keeps pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL, after I showed her that CTRL-ALT-DEL reboots computers]
  Patron: I’m sure it’s not something I’m doing.
  Answer: Hmm, then maybe they just sense danger.
• Patron: The computer said the book I want is “Checked out.” Does that mean it’s checked out?
  Answer: No, that’s just our way of deterring patrons who aren’t pushy enough.
• Patron: The museum pass I want is already reserved for the day I want to go - can you cancel that person and give it to me?
  Answer: Actually, you don’t need the pass at all - just go to the museum and they’ll let you in free if you tell them the secret code; it’s “I need to plan ahead.”
• [patron on the phone]
  Patron: Can you speak up, why are you speaking so softly?
  Answer: Because I’m in a library.
• Patron: Can I ask you a question?
  Answer: You mean, another one?
• [patron brings in a broken playaway, and I offer to request one from another library or to show him where the book is on the shelf]
  Patron: You think I want to *read* this book?
  Answer: You’re right, that might be asking too much.
• Patron: I love Michael Savage - do you think he’s got just the best website?
  Answer: No, in fact, his site is so bad that one of his fans set up a separate website just to make finding his information easier.
  [note: this is from awhile ago, and apparently thesavagearchive.com is no more. But read the little "About" box on the archived version of that site - it's a polite way of saying a site is annoyingly difficult]

Sigh, I hate speaking ill of people who come into the library and ask for help, but I’m sure we’ve all been there. The good news is that questions like the above are few and far between (but they’ll never be few and far between enough).

I’m sure I learned about this in various customer service workshops in the past, and I’m also sure there’s a name for it, but I can’t remember what it is. It seems to be most relevant when there is a problem or staff has to correct a patron for violating a policy - in those cases, the words we use can go a long way to either help diffuse or inflame the situation. Here are a couple examples of what I’m talking about:

Example 1: A patron asks for help locating a book that the computer says is Checked In, but when the staff person goes to the shelf with the patron, the book isn’t there.

• Staff Response A: “It looks like someone put the book in the wrong place; let’s go back to the desk and request it from another library.”
• Staff Response B: “It should be right here, but is definitely missing; let’s go back to the desk and request it from another library.”

Example 2: A patron walks by the desk eating a hamburger, which violates the library’s no-food policy.

• Staff Response A: “They don’t allow food in the library, you’ll have to throw that away.”
• Staff Response B: “Could you please finish your meal outside before you come into the library?”

Example 3: The computer a patron is using is extremely slow.

• Staff Response A: “Yeah, these computers are really old, so you’ll just have to wait.”
• Staff Response B: “I’m not sure what the problem is, but you’re welcome to move to a different computer or I can reboot this one for you.”

Alright, these aren’t great examples, but here’s my point: in all the Response A’s, the patron is getting the message that someone is to blame, whereas the Response B’s provide the patron with a solution without any passive-aggressiveness.

This is probably a major sociological interpersonal communication issue - whether it’s better to give someone a neutral third-party “they” to focus their displeasure upon, or to dissipate the anger by working on a solution rather than assigning blame. I suppose it varies depending on the level of emotion involved, but I personally prefer the Response B approach, because it addresses the cause of the problem, rather than symptoms.

Let’s have a contest!
Since I can’t remember what this type of phrasing is called, I can’t look up examples or tips on implementing it. So I was hoping that other library staff could suggest some common patron interactions, and some good wording to handle the situations.

I posted this as a question on Unshelved Answers, and whichever answer there gets the most votes over there will win a copy of The Librarian’s Book of Lists, by George M. Eberhart. It’s an interesting book, and not just because it includes my list of 10 Patron Pet Peeves.

Even if you’re not interested in the contest, please do post any wording suggestions you have - I’m really interested in the subtleties of language (like the difference between “yes, but…” and “yes, and…”), and this is something that can be practically useful to a lot of people. Thanks.

Update 8/20/10: Congratulations to Jeff from Gather No Dust - his suggestion got the most votes, so he wins the book. Thanks to everyone, and be sure to check out the suggestions at Unshelved Answers.