Innovative Services & Practices
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
John Blyberg, Head of Technology and Digital Initiatives, Darien Library
Gretchen Hams, Head, Children’s Services, Darien Library
Sarah Ludwig, Head, Teen Services, Darien Library
Kate Sheehan, Head of Knowledge and Learning Services, Darien Library

The way libraries prepare for the future is not sustainable, cultural reaction pushed back against expectations of the users

took everything apart and reexamined their services, both from patron and staff side

meet together and allow innovation to drive change

could be any area– not just technical

best thing about culture of innovation– it’s okay to fail

futurecasting and planning for it, makes leaps– it’s okay, say “we were wrong, we’ll fix it”

ADAPT

adaptation synonymous with being an agile organization

small library so can change quickly

staff has bought into– user expect it, don’t see it as drastic but responding to their needs

experiment, trying new things and share their failures help create excellence

cycle of innovation-fail-adapt effect sustainable change over long term, build in culture of change (all staff, users, new hires expect it)

UX focuses on the user (staff, user to the door, and users of web site)

analyzes interface points and suggests changes, with eye toward aesthetics, community, usability

helps make ure this is pushed out to other departments

Gretchen:
too often children’s dept is treated like an island, not at table for innovation

children’s doesn’t serve kids– it serves kids and their parents….

they see the library as the third place – stay for hours, storytime in morning, stay till lunch

but children’s section not arranged for browsing (arranged picture books in sections rather than alphabetically)

who is it for? what is it about?

had to handle every book and make a decision about it, color coding works…

serves both BROWSERS and SEARCHERS

calling the collection “FIRST FIVE YEARS” coded the spine label as FF instead of call number

circulation is way up!

in order for children to grow, they need to feel validated and “published”

creation station so that kids can create and share something (camera, recorder, flipcam, laptop) NOT CATALOGED, NOT BARCODED we trust them because it’s theirs

Sarah:
1. Teen hang out room — no homework, no service desk, it’s their space and we don’t want to invade it (relax and have fun)
2. then “power library” has 25 computers and service desk
3. then classroom for tech training
4. then several study rooms
5. then a small office home office (all the stuff you’d find at Kinkos)

2 positions that are supposed to investigate tech, post about tech, etc.

Teens are the beta users, they are fearless and will tell us what they think….

iMacs with really big screens so four kids and fit around and then they can easily collaborate

all furniture is designed to be easily movable and make the space their own

all walls are glass and they are allowed to right the on the walls (wrote all over how much they loved the libraries)

they ended up using markers on the walls for their homework

HAVE to have gaming in your library if you’re serving teens, don’t program around gaming– just plop it down for them after school and allow them to play as much as they want… WE TRUST THEM

Have Teen Advisory Board manage the Facebook page and they post the events

On Facebook, make a professional profile and friend ONLY the teens, not your colleagues

Kate:
No reference desk, all roaming– meet people at point of need (without being invasive)

not get rid of Dewey, keep some though

start up intensive one-on-one deep reference, also be the point person to work with local knowledge experts

Created subject browsing, gathered different ranges of Dewey into “glades”

Tools to make it work: tiny laptops, EEE PCs, wireless phones, and a slimmed down Reference point (a little curvy table)

Takes Reference out of tech support, guest pass giving out, and allow us to focus on Reference…..

Most important tool: Nametags

Doing IM reference through Meebo, Meebo is tough on tiny screens (moving to Libraryh3lp)

reorganizing collection was a great bonding experience

having a reorganizing collection gives opportunity to constantly review– why is this hear? a new intimacy with the collection…. do we really need this? now we are thinking about, touching the collection all the time instead of it just sitting there

staff at Darien willing to change– they say, “we try a lot of things and sometimes they don’t work… that’s okay”

Libraries are like open source, the more we give away, the better we get

we’re giving more than just information, we’re giving of ourselves more

no more sitting at the reference desk, sitting “apart”

what is most fundamental is to maintain a genuineness and our chief export is kindness