Presenters were from the Arlington Heights (IL) Library and the Ann Arbor (MI) District Library.

Passive reference, of librarians sitting at a big desk waiting to be asked questions, is pretty much over. However, even though capital-R Reference is dying, lowercase-r reference is still a core library service. Difference is Reference desk, Reference collection, Reference staff, vs. referring people to the information, services, and skills they're looking for.

Where reference service should be going: Niche Reference
Use the reference desk only for in-person reference - keep all calls, email, and chat reference in the back room. This will improve service to both types of reference, because one person isn't trying to balance everything at once.

Identify needs in your community and address them

• have a "start your job search here" desk
• get a grant from the Rotary club to bring in professional resume reviewers
• put an add in the job classifieds to "get job search help at your library" (I came up with this, but I'm not sure if I like it)

Have staff be specialists, not generalists

• reach out to the business community to help them get started or get better
• hold one-on-one or group classes on research topics
• [me again: this might work for large libraries, but does not scale down well]

Focus on community interest

• what does your community have/want that people are interested in?
• create something like, "What's the history of your house?" and let patrons provide the content - this is something that can be built on in the future
• run a "question of the week" in the local paper - and ask for questions
• create a local wiki (like Daviswiki) and don't "own" it - let other people add content
• treat social media as a conversation starter, not one-way announcement stream. ie, on Facebook have a "stump the librarian" day and solicit questions (like Skokie, IL)

Focus on programming

• whatever's interesting: job search skills, "What is it like to be a..." series (town manager, police officer, doctor, etc), urban agriculture, etc
• Business Bytes: how to use social media to connect with customers, how to use Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare, etc
• ideas: Computers 101 (basics), Working Life (job skills), Digital Life (beyond 101, and online), Creative Life (painting, video editing), Informed Life (search and finding skills)

Libraries should be like kitchens, not grocery stores: focus on getting patrons to come in and discover and interact, not just grab stuff off the shelves and go.

Posted under Uncategorized on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 at 8:38 pm, by Brian Herzog. Post and comments available via the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.