Time for librarians to leave desks, feel pulse of community

"The world will change with or without you." These were the opening words of Stephen Abram in a recent speech at the North Suburban Library System.

Abram, president of the Special Libraries Association and widely regarded as a library futurist, is also the vice president of Innovation for SirsiDynix. In other words, Abram gets paid to watch how the world is changing and bring his observations to his company which offers strategic technology solutions for libraries around the world.

Generously, Abram and SirsiDynix are willing to share these insights with librarians. In this particular presentation, Abram noted several trends and suggested how library planners might adapt services to better serve their constituencies.

Abram's first point centered on how people 18 to 24 years old represent a new market for the library. This age group grew up playing video games. There is some evidence that they have rewired their brains and actually think differently as a result.

"Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo because Yahoo understands 18- to 24-year-olds," Abram said. He exhorted librarians to recognize the preferences of this age group, citing the example of the library at Penn State University, which racked up a whopping 30 percent increase in student success when librarians were equipped with hand-held communication devices and answered students' queries via text messaging.

Abram noted the traditional strength of the library in the question-and-answer process.

"It's the sensitivity of the librarian in knowing the difference in a question about divorce if asked by a 10-year-old or a 30-year-old," he said. At the same time, Abram recognized the pervasiveness of Internet search engines.

"Librarians do 'how' and 'why' questions better, while Google is pretty good at 'who/what/when/where' questions," he said.

Abram cited events of the last year as a "perfect storm," including Google reaching the 10,000 mark in the number of books digitized. "When gasoline is $4 a gallon," he quipped, "more readers will be willing to pay .99 cents to download pages from an online book rather than get in their cars and go to the library."

Abram did not prophesy the end of reading or the end of the book.

"Today, 75 percent of Americans report reading a book in the last year. In 1947, only half that many could make that same claim. Circulation of library books and other materials is up 25 percent in the last five years, retail sales of books are up, and even teen reading is increasing," he reported.

Abram's big message to librarians was to understand the importance of interacting with the community. He also made a pitch for understanding that people learn differently. Citing Bloom's "Taxonomy," a classification of the stages of cognitive learning developed by Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s, Abram pushed not only for library services to meet the needs of teens who spend an average of 40 minutes a day on Facebook, but also for single moms who are pressed for time but have significant information needs, and the newly retired who are looking for materials and services to challenge the mind, just to mention a few special groups.

"It's time for library staff to get out from behind the desk and get out into the community both literally and virtually, know the community at a personal and political level, and set real goals reporting back with the return on investment achieved by the library," he continued.

Hear more from Stephen Abram via my podcast interview with him now on my Web site at www.sarahlong.org as we discuss five things your library should be doing to remain relevant in the 21st century.