by Ned Potter, Europe Chapter, Leadership & Management Division
by Laura Woods, Europe Chapter, Leadership & Management and Legal Divisions
Libraries and information professionals are stuck in a bit of an echo chamber. We spend way too much time talking to one another, and not nearly enough time talking to the potential users. Potential users who have no idea really what a (future ready) library does, but who would probably come and visit if they did. Some people use an analogy of ‘floating voters’ to describe those currently indifferent to libraries, but I think our offer has changed so much and people’s perceptions of libraries are so far behind, these are people who don’t even realise there’s an election on…
Classic examples of our preaching to the converted often come when the profession or the industry is criticised from outside. When Seth Godin or someone from the national press puts us down, our first urge seems to be to find another librarian to commiserate with. This doesn’t do anything, not really – it’s great to engage the library community by blogging about it, but library blogs tend to be read by other librarians – we also need to engage the people who heard all the bad stuff about libraries in the first place. We need to fight back in public. In short, we need to take greater control of the narrative arc concerning libraries, and stop letting other people write our story for us.
The presentation below is one used by myself and Laura Woods when we talk about the echo chamber – follow the Prezi through to find out more about the concept, about how it impacts negatively on libraries, and to see some ideas for marketing libraries outside of the echo chamber in future.
Ned Potter works in the field of digitisation at an academic library in the UK; he was named as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker for 2011, and is about to attend the SLA Annual Conference in Philly as a winner of the SLA-Europe Early Career Conference Award. His blog and other presentations can be found at www.thewikiman.org.
Laura Woods is the current Webmaster and Bulletin Editor for the Europe Chapter. Her blog, Organising Chaos can be read at http://woodsiegirl.wordpress.com/.
Ned and Laura – Thank you for a creative and innovative presentation. I love the concept of the echo chamber, and you are spot on in your suggestions for getting outside of it. It has been nine years since I wrote “Building a Brand: Got Librarian” for Searcher. Have we made any progress in that time?
This dialog is great about the advocacy of libraries, and no longer just discussing issues with other librarians but going to the public to make the serious case for libraries. I truly believe that libraries are an entity like hospitals and schools, they will never be extinct. I think the real issue is getting more people into libraries for educational purposes, and continuing to move forward with the build of technology. Librarians and library advocates need to be proactive and understand their communities and environments and come up with plans to go out into the churches, community centers, schools/universities, and businesses to service their specific needs.
Marie, I totally agree.
Cindy, wow I’m so glad you read this! I’ve quoted that article you wrote in many of my presentations, right from the very first one I ever did in fact.
I think we have made some progress in the last 18 months or so, certainly in the UK (which obviously I can monitor better) there seems to have been a bit of a shift. Just talking about it via social media channels has in itself catalysed a little bit of change – you only need to adjust the way you think about library communication a little bit to at least BEGIN solving the problem. So progress is on-going, and I’m feeling optimistic at the moment that we can pick up momentum…
Ned, Laura,
I hope many of our peers take notice of the “escaping the echo chamber” conversation discussion. Info pros are wonderful at networking, so if we could just dedicate more time to networking *outside* our own peer groups, that would make a difference. Ask your local chamber of of commerce if you can come to explain to a group of business owners about how info pros can help them tackle their problems (finding information, records management, document management etc). Or internally, ask to be invited to a team or departmental meeting. Find out their biggest problems and their goals for this year, then show how you (or your department) can help.