Re-imagining the library : Afterword
An interesting day in London for the hick from the country. Gazing around at all those tall buildings (Hereford’s tallest building is some 5 stories high, and that’s the car park…) leaves me somewhat mindblown. Afterall, London’s poppulation is some 8 million, but little Herefordshire has only 178,800 people.
It was good to finally meet Dave Pattern, swap moo cards and to chat with people from other library services around the country; the long coffee que was good for something. 
I’m sitting here saturday morning trying to come up with some pithy or witty comments and failing miserably, probably need more coffee. Much of the day was spent looking at how mixing of existing tools can achieve something new, not just in the internet world of web 2.0, but also in the world of posters and library buildings.
While it is facinating to hear about how web services can be combined, (after all I did speak on the subject briefly! see the slides - Re-imagining the virtual library) I am left with two strong impresions from the day.
The first is that public libraries and government departments seem to have a major problem in communicating their needs with their IT departments. And as such, putting together a simple map might seem like a major hassle. In Herefordsire, we are beinning to break the barriers by having our IT department account manager join with the Library Management Team so that IT can be aware of what the library is planning, and vice versa.
The second is that our image of ourselves is a huge barrier to how we communicate with our users. It’s like looking at your shoes when you are talking to someone. Antony Brewerton’s witty expose of his past marketing campaigns for libraries demonstrated beautifully the need to meet our users where they are. How do we in Herefordshire get to that point? We’ll see…
Finally, if you want to see pictures of people pointing at the screen, Richard Wallis has posted his photo’s from the chair.
Technorati Tags: cilip, talis, library, librarian, re-imagine
April 26th, 2007 at 10:53
[…] This is a message that I hear a lot, and one that you may have noticed I have blogged about before. And it is not just your own managers, it is the managers of other influential departments […]