2016 Charleston Library Conference

Sharing the results of T&F library focus groups, surveys, interviews and other research from 2016, this practical session will look at innovative ways libraries are communicating their value to a range of stakeholders. With concrete, low cost examples the audience can take back to their own institutions, the session introduces a shifted perspective on communicating value that goes beyond simply marketing new book titles or databases.

Hear stories from librarians who are finding ways to keep their libraries relevant by getting creative and leveraging resources they already have. Some of these stories include inviting alumni to library events, providing students with exclusive after-hours library access, involving adjunct faculty in collection management and using library catalogues to track more than just books.

Finding a fresh take on library value propositions begins with viewing the patron as a customer. Customers have choices and the library should always be a top choice for students and faculty alike. Our panel will explore actionable tactics including key elements of email marketing, effective training for new faculty members, hosting successful events and finding the time to get creative with these tips and tricks by using lean practices.

Publishers and libraries have a shared responsibility to connect the right content to the right reader; communicating the value of library services is essential to making that connection. Libraries are not only a collection of vital resources and research support, but the outward looking heart of an institution focused on students, faculty, and their wider goals.

In their groundbreaking work, Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever (2003) cite an extensive body of research to establish the circumstances that make negotiation fundamentally more difficult for women than it is for men. [1] According to the authors, a significant factor in this discrepancy is that "before we decide to negotiate for something we must first be dissatisfied with what we have;" unfortunately, women are "satisfied with less." [2] What does this mean for a profession that is 83% female? [3] In this Lively Lunch, participants will be asked to both share positive and negative negotiation experiences and crowdsource successful strategies to ease the challenges of gender and negotiation.

1. Babcock, Linda, and Sara Laschever. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Princeton University Press, 2009.
2. Ibid., p. 41.
3. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Household Data Annual Averages: Employed Persons by Detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity.” Current Population Survey, Table 11. Washington, D.C., 2015. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf.

Academic Libraries continue to strive to stay relevant to their educational communities composed of students, faculty and researchers while metropolitan or public libraries serve the needs of the general community composed of multi-generational and ethnically diverse scholars, students, professionals, recreational readers and gamers, who seek information in varied formats. The challenges today to respond to this range of service and collection needs is unsurpassed. Libraries have taken on the onus to be instrumental in fostering lifelong learning in a society that changes careers more often, has greater access to information online and more demands on their time and attention than ever before. How do our libraries respond to these changing and intensifying needs and what can we do to collaborate more between the academic and public sectors?

An exchange among four librarians representing both academic and public libraries will showcase how their libraries address these challenges, and offer insights in to programming and collection strengths that maximize what they can offer to their user base. Elevating this conversation are librarians from the Netherlands and the UK who will share how their constituencies require increasingly specialized services and resources that demand the use of diverse technologies, delivery mechanisms and help make the library a relevant and meaningful institution in their communities. Surprisingly, the differences that distinguish academic and public libraries in this digital era may be less significant than we think and the nature of the work and how it is conducted may tend to over-emphasize these differences.

Some of the most amazing innovations have come out of science fiction writing. Doors that open authomatically! Ipads! Wireless phones! These were once seen as crazy, outlandish, pie-in-the-sky ideas, and now they're a reality of our everyday lives. Librarians constantly lament the limitations of money, space, personnel, and time. What if those limitations were to no longer exist? What kind of future could we imagine if we threw off the shackles of circumstance?

Do you have crazy ideas about the future of libraries? Do you want to HEAR about and discuss crazy ideas about the future of libraries? Come to this round table discussion to brainstorm and discuss wild concepts! Who know? Maybe the next BIG idea in librarianship will come out of this session!

There will be a short presentation, followed by a round table discussion.

The growth in collaborations between libraries and publishers for e-resources projects signal a desire to challenge and complement long established roles. What types of innovative collaborations are being explored to further e-resources growth? What opportunities will these collaborations offer? How can they benefit both libraries and publishers?

This lively lunch will feature discussions about library and publisher partnerships on topics such as: print and e-resources backfile consolidation, demand-driven access, collaboration for course and program support, and library marketing assistance.

Do you have an innovative collaboration to share? Please join us. Ideas and examples from this session will be shared in the Library Technology Innovation series.

Providing pleasure reading is one of the great success stories for public libraries, but public librarians seem to be hesitant to brag about this wonderful accomplishment. Instead, they more often talk about helping people find jobs, introducing new technology, and fostering economic development. While these functions deserve praise, I would bet that many more patrons check out best-sellers, current non-fiction, and genre fiction. Without the public library, an avid reader of one book per week could easily spend over $1,000 annually.

In Against the Grain, I proposed several reasons for this reticence. Is it a remnant of the American Puritanical tradition? Does the focus on literacy suggest that this skill is useful only for job performance and practical tasks? Do librarians fear that their funding agencies will cut the libraries' budgets if they discover how much is spent on genre fiction instead of economic development? Does the library director worry about the expenditures for the integrated library system, staffing the reference desk, and purchasing databases when many patrons go right to the fiction shelves where they know they'll find what they're looking for without using these expensive services? Will librarians wonder why they got their expensive degrees only to watch patrons leave the library with stacks of best sellers without asking a complex reference question?

I hope that this session will be more an informal discussion where we can all share our thoughts. I especially invite those who disagree with me to attend. I love a good debate.