Check out this interesting report on young people’s perceptions of Idaho’s public libraries. The report, prepared by Corona Research for the Idaho Commission for Libraries in August 2007, compiled the results of six focus groups conducted with “digital natives”–young people between the ages of 12 and 25 regarding what they thought of and how they used their public libraries.

Some of the findings are perhaps not surprising. Public libraries are seen as providing programs for little kids and adults, but not for teens. Libraries are serious places to do research, but not to read for enjoyment. Libraries that are open, well-lit, and have comfortable seating are perceived as more user-friendly. Because libraries are seen–and enforced as–quiet places, they are not viewed as being good places for young people to socialize at (and amen to that, say I). Any library’s teen section should be sound-proofed to the nth degree–but I digress.

Of course, to make some of the changes suggested by the participants such as staying open later at night or adding a teen section, libraries would need to have funding. A lot more funding. Most of the libraries I know of are short-staffed and are kept from adding services because they lack the people. Still, the report is a good read especially if you are interested in bringing more young people into your library.

Here’s a selection of quotes from the participants:

• “A library needs to say, ‘Come read, stay here, have a nice day.’”
• “When you’re little, they have programs where they’ll read to you and stuff… but they don’t really do anything for older kids.”
• “I’m not sure how to say it without it sounding so cliche, but I think books, just paper books, kind of transcend time.”
• “I think a library has to have a building to call itself a library, or else it’s just a website.”
• “You can’t talk in there, really; you get in trouble, so we don’t go there anymore.”
• “The library I like has coffee, and it’s open (has more space)… and you can find stuff easier than the one that’s closest to me.”
• “It’s no fun. You can’t talk to your friends in a place where it’s supposed to be quiet.”
• “Our library has a lot of activities… they have the community involved, and it’s a good library.”
• “When you put a book on hold, it takes forever to get there, a week and a half or two, and by that time, you don’t want to read it anymore!”
• “And there’s only an adult and a little kid section; I think there should be a pre-teen and teen section.”
• “For me, it’s hard to… find the books by yourself. It’s hard to find them without a librarian.”
• “I love learning. It makes me feel smarter, more knowledgeable, and more powerful.”
• “As far as a purpose for the community, I would think more of the younger kids, for the summer or something.”
• “It’s a community source of information.”
• “I always think of Hastings (Bookstores) as like the ideal library.”
• “It’s hard to search for books unless you know an actual title.”
• “Their advertising isn’t very good; the only advertising you ever see is when you’re at the library.”
• “I like the bookstore myself; you can see the covers, just to hang out and scan the books and stuff like that.”
• “Libraries right now look so boring. (I)n Salt Lake, that library is an experience to go to. It’s big, it looks good, it’s appealing to your eye.”
• “I always want new release books, and they’re never there. I think also, that might be another generational thing, instant gratification.”
• “I think the public libraries would have a hard time with having the resources to accomplish a full online library like the universities do.”
• “Even though I have a laptop, I still use the library because they have free wi-fi.”
• “Coffee and books, that’s just the best thing, relaxing with a book and drinking a coffee… I don’t know, the coffee’s just nice.”

And my favorite:

Regarding librarians: “They’re the easy way, the shortcut. They’re like the Google of the library.”

Jennifer Macauley has included my post on “What Library 2.0 Means to Me” on her Library 2.0 Roundup-Redux page, a handy source for thoughts on Library 2.0. There are opinions from well-known librarians as well as from your average Jane librarians like myself.

If you are looking for more librarian blogs to check out, have a gander at Top 25 Librarian Bloggers by the numbers. Some of the blogs I recognized, some I didn’t. Good jumping off point.

Daniel Cornwall, one of my Arnorian colleagues, has put together this list of amusingly titled government documents. My personal fave: “Who are the Zombie Masters and What Do They Want?”. Brains would be my guess …..

If you have to give public presentations of any nature, this article, “How to Make Yourself Unforgettable”, contains some of the best advice I’ve ever read on the subject. I particularly recommend taking a look at the four pointers at the end of the article. Number two, “remember it’s not about you” really goes a long way to conquering stage fright.

Because I’ve been in the midst of hiring a new assistant recently two job-related blogs, YourHRGuy and Resume Hell: Dumb Stuff I Read on Resumes, stood out for me. Both are business-oriented, but if you deal with recruiting as part of your job, you’ll like reading them.

Found these pictures posted by Iris Jastram, who’s a reference librarian at the absolutely lovely Gould Library at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Have a look at the library sign photos as they are particularly entertaining. The person who does signage around their library is clearly a card.

I am deeply envious of Carleton’s beautiful library. If you added barbed wire and armed guards to the top of the University of Arnor’s Library, it would more closely resemble the maximum security prison it was clearly based on. For a long time, the library had grey staff T-shirts that went well with the incarceration theme. All that was missing was our employee ID number across the back.

Snagged from the blog of the Librarian Avenger. Don’t know where she got it from, but I like it.

What Library 2.0 means to me is new tools to accomplish the old work of the library. I’ve knocked around in the profession long enough to know that while the technology we use changes, the main work of the librarian never really does. Librarianship in the 21st century is very much like that of the 19th. That doesn’t mean librarians are adverse to change: far from it. But it does speak to the eternal nature of the library—or maybe just human nature.

I would, however, like to take a moment to confront some of the myths currently being bandied around, directly or indirectly, about libraries and Web 2.0.

Myth #1: We going to be left behind if we don’t blog/wiki/game/hire a bunch of dancing pandas/supply current buzzword or catchphrase here. Usually accompanied by fearful handwringing.

Guys, we can’t fall behind if we were never out front to begin with. Libraries, by their very nature, are not and have never been at the cutting edge of things. We don’t write the books or create the DVDs that are a part of our collection. We don’t build the A/V equipment that our patrons use (if we did, it would be substantially better and adaptable to older formats. Don’t get me started). We are the ultimate middle men, dealing in and with products and software that have already been created. And because private companies are interested in their own profits, not the public good, we find ourselves coping with the problems created by obsolete formats and out of print works on our own.

Could that change? Could libraries/librarians become generators of content rather than passive receivers of same? Sure. In fact, it’s already happening. When my colleagues head out to collect oral history interviews which are then cataloged by me and added to our collection, we are in essence creating the content of our archive. But that’s not new. It’s simply an updated version of what scribes were doing in medieval scriptoriums during the Dark Ages.

Myth #2: Libraries are not relevant to the general public or they will become irrelevant shortly. Usually accompanied by more fearful handwringing.

Read my lips: there will NEVER be a time now or ever when libraries do not exist. I am as certain of that as I am of the sun coming up every morning. Saying that we’ll never need libraries again is like saying that eventually we won’t need a police force or a fire department. A developing community will always build a library, sometimes before it has a police force or a volunteer fire department—sometimes even before it has a city council. A library is both a community service and a reflection of its community. A library that has been let go or is no longer used says more about the disintegration of that community than it does about the relevance of the library.

Myth#3: Librarians have been, are being, or will be replaced by the Net/Google/search engines in general/giant, sentient computers/insert latest technological wonder here. Even more fearful handwringing followed by pouring ashes on head and tearing of clothes.

Yeah, right. The greater the amount of information, the greater the need to organize it. And because the organizational scheme (and the information in question) needs to be understandable to people, human beings have to be the ones doing the organizing. And because information doesn’t keep itself in order, tending the information needs to be someone’s job. And because something that’s everyone’s responsibility rapidly becomes no one’s responsibility that job will have belong to a specific (or specialized) someone or someones—read librarians (no pun intended).
Librarians have been around ever since the Chief Scribe at the Library of Alexandria looked up and said, “Hey, you, Memorex! Do something with these scrolls, will ya? We can’t find a thing.” And regardless of what our official title is, we will always be.