library tech initiatives

Both Jessamyn and Casey have written about this recent survey of Wisconsin public library users. Although I am uncertain how applicable it is beyond Wisconsin, it certainly should be required reading for anyone working in library tech. For me, the most telling part of the report was the following table:

The only positive in this whole laundry list of initiatives is wifi in the library which we already offer at our main branch and will soon offer at our Hespeler location. And it is only barely positive and only for current library users.

The lack of interest in audiobook downloads also interests me as we are planning to start offering this at some point this year. To be honest, I have no opinion on its chance of success. I can imagine it will be extremely popular with a small segment of our patrons. Is that enough? I guess that is why I’m taking this report with a grain of salt. When we first considered offering RSS of our new books, my logic was that even if only 5% of current Internet users were using RSS, that they were the “right” 5%. That is, that other users would eventually follow. So I think that is some of what is going on here: a lot of the users in this survey don’t yet know that they are interested in these services but they may well eventually be.

The biggest negative on the list is also quite telling: loaning out tech devices. Again, this seems to be about libraries getting outside their perceived areas of expertise into places they are not expected to be.

This sounds eerily familiar to me and echoes something we found when we were developing our teen site and soliciting feedback from our teen focus group about what type of content they would expect to find or want to use via our website. When the topic of gaming came up, it was pretty much unanimous that they did not feel the library was a recognized authority on the topic and we should stick to the things we know something about. I always think of this when the topic of “gaming in libraries” comes up. It’s not that I’m some sort of Luddite or dislike gaming, neither of which is the case. I’m just still not getting what the hell gaming has to do with libraries.