A LITTLE IMMODESTY, PLEASE
by Marylaine Block
It seems to me that a lot of librarians regard bragging as unseemly, no matter how much their accomplishments may warrant it. Maybe it's because we're a majority female profession; many of us, after all, were raised to be quiet and polite. Ladylike.
Unfortunately, sitting quietly and waiting for our work to be acknowledged and rewarded just because it is good, or even outstanding, has not been a winning strategy, for women or for librarians. Like it or not, we're competing with far too many claimants for the scarcest of commodities: attention and funding.
And the people we're competing with have megaphones.
No genteel hangups about bragging for these people; it's one of their basic tools. Just look at their ads, which tell you they're the most popular, they've sold the most ____, they offer the best deals, and they're adored by their customers.
Libraries have more than a few "mosts" and "bests" themselves, and it's way past time that we started bragging about them. Effectively.
Look at OCLC's report, "Libraries: How They Stack Up" <http://www.oclc.org/reports/2003libsstackup.htm>, with its knock-out charts and surprising comparisons. How do libraries compare to Amazon? We have five times as many customers and every day we check out four times more items than Amazon ships. We circulate the same number of items each day as Fed Ex ships. Here's the killer statistic: "Five times more people visit U.S. public libraries each year than attend U.S. professional and college football, basketball, baseball and hockey games COMBINED."
Isn't it nice to have a partner that DOES know how to brag? Now all we have to do is learn from them how to make our good statistics compelling and surprising.
We need to exploit any awards we happen to win, any important events and triumphs. How? For starters, we have to give it a prominent spot on our web sites. Any library that's in the HAPLR top 100 should post the HAPLR logo prominently on its home page, with an explanation of what the ranking means. Take a look at how the Fayetteville Public Library's web site <http://www.faylib.org/ highlights its 2005 Library of the Year award from Library Journal. When Gwinnett County Public Library won LJ's top honor, it handed out both refrigerator magnets and 3x5 notebooks inscribed "Gwinnett County Public Library: Library of the Year 2000."
Do you have a building project going on? You could post a construction webcam prominently on your home page so people can follow its progress and start feeling a sense of excitement and ownership. Princeton Public Library sent out postcards periodically with views of the new library as it was being constructed.
Do you want to publicize a new or existing service? When Toledo Lucas County Public Library added an impressive new business librarian with a J.D. as well as an MLS, it sent out postcards to the business community introducing her -- and reminding people about all the library services available to local business.
We also need to use our testimonials. We get them every day from grateful users, in the form of offhand thank yous at the service desks, thank you notes, comments in public meetings, or interactive library blogs, or even editorials and letters to the editor. How many of us capture those compliments systematically, make a point of jotting them down and preserving them in a "brag book" of compliments and tributes?
We can actively solicit patron comments as well, both on our web sites and in our libraries. The Prospect Heights [IL] Public Library invites patron comments with forms inscribed:
"I love the Prospect Heights Library because ..."
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________
Name:________________________
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
King County Library System also has a "We Welcome Your Comments!" handout -- and to prove they mean it, they put their money where their mouth is. One side of the three-fold brochure-like form is a first-class mail permit addressed to the library system. Users' comments can then be folded inside and mailed at the library's expense. The comment form asks which of KCLS's libraries was visited, and invites library users to "Tell us of any extra effort our staff made in serving you," explain "How can we serve you better?" and offer any "Additional comments."
I think we should solicit comments all year long. If not, at the very least we should do so during "Love Your Library Month" festivities in February. That month is a good occasion to stage events, like a children's arts and crafts show based on that theme, or a fun Friends' group fundraising event like the annual Chocolate Orgy fundraiser conducted by Friends of the Allen [TX] Public Library or the "Murder in the Stacks" audience participation mystery staged by the Tulare County [CA] Library.
(If you're not already celebrating Love Your Library Month", I recommend you do it, since festivities --especially festivities with free food -- are good ways to attract reporters and get press attention for interesting things you're doing. Friends & Foundations of California Libraries has a neat web site with lots of ideas on How To Love Your Library <http://www.librarysupport.net/librarylovers/how.html>.)
Once we have the comments and testimonials, though, we can't just stash them in a scrapbook and gaze at them fondly now and again. Properly understood, they're ammunition.
With the permission of the people who wrote them, we can incorporate them into our marketing and fundraising drives -- one library annual report I've seen sprinkles such comments throughout to illustrate what the library is used and loved for. We have to make sure our boards and bosses and local reporters and taxpayers hear those 4 glowing testimonials.
The thing about testimonials is that each one has a real person with a good story behind it: a frazzled mother whose kids sit still FOR AN ENTIRE HOUR each time the children's librarian tells them stories; a geeky adolescent who comes into his own at the library's chess club; the woman who found information that helped her choose between alternative treatments for her medical problem; the man who built a new deck with the help of your home projects books; the immigrant who got a job because of your library's free classes in ESL, resume-writing and computing; people whose lives are better in some way because they used the library. True stories about real people grab attention in a way that even the best library statistics can't begin to match.
And let's not forget that the names on those testimonials belong to people who vote. Our politicians certainly won't.
So, let's overcome our natural modesty. Tell those stories. Go ahead and brag.
* * * * *
COOL QUOTE:
The assistance provided by actual humans is another killer app. In these days when customer support means hours on hold or an e-mail response, the opportunity to talk to a trained specialist about a problem is priceless.
Andy Barnett. Libraries, Community, and Technology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2002, p. 27
* * *
You are welcome to copy and forward any of my own articles (but not those by my guest writers) for noncommercial purposes as long as you credit ExLibris and cite the permanent URL for the article. Please do NOT copy and post my articles to your own web sites, however. Instead, please copy a brief excerpt and link to the URL for the remainder of the article.
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2005.
[Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.]
