If you need a lift, look at these innovative public libraries...

The library landscape is incredibly bleak at the moment with events in the US, so I wanted to flag up a couple of brilliant examples of library innovation that might give information professionals reason to smile.

In March I presented at the Edge Public Library Conference in Edinburgh - hence the header pic of that beautiful city - on Social Media for Public Libraries in a Post-Twitter world. (The organisers asked me to do this after hearing people say nice things about a similar session I'd done in Kilkenny - if you're interested the slides from that are not identical but cover the same theme.) It was a brilliant event, very uplifting, and huge thanks to Gráinne Crawford and her team for inviting me and making me feel so welcome.

As part of the same conference they have three Innovation Awards and I was honoured but somewhat daunted to be asked to judge the Digital category. Edge 2025 had lots of nominations and I was sent the four finalists - my job was to pick the winner and the highly commended, who would be invited to the Gala Dinner to receive their awards. Here is a summary of the winning entry and first runner-up - I found reading their entries good for the soul.

Highly commended: Tickets for the Afterlife

Tickets For the Afterlife is a web-app to "…help users navigate choices related to their body, memories, and legacies after death." It's not the typical thing a library would provide, but Redbridge saw a need to help their community and learned the skills required to make it happen - and they executed it so, so well. You can read a Guardian article about it here but honestly I’d recommend experiencing it for yourself at afterlifetickets.co.uk.

I loved this whole project, and it's beautifully done - here's what I wrote to be read out at the Awards:

“I’ve been in librarianship for a long time, and I can’t remember seeing such an original idea as this. We like to think of libraries as being at the heart of community but that doesn’t happen automatically - we have to make it happen by getting our communities where they need to go. Redbridge identified a unique way to provide support to their community and beyond, in an area that is absolutely universal - dying, death and grief - and did so in such a friendly, accessible way. Tickets for the afterlife is beautifully put together, completely unique, and hugely valuable - a brilliant piece of work.”

— On Tickets For The Afterlife

Huge congrats to Anita Luby and Redbridge Libraries on a truly different, innovative service.

Winner: The Hive

Darlington Borough Council created The Hive, a digital hub with virtual reality gear, coding and robotics, 3D printing, animation, digital sewing and quite a lot more. (In fact you can get a good idea of what's on offer by checking the 'what's on' section at the bottom of the Darlington Libraries homepage).

I know that there are quite a few libraries creating maker spaces and so on, but the way Darlington have done this is fantastic - it's a beautiful space, and full of creativity. The reason I chose it as the winner is the extraordinary impact it has had - as Suzy Hill said in her award application, footfall was down, book issues were decreasing and the perception of the digital offering was that it was poor, and The Hive has completely changed that to an amazing degree. Visitors are up by so much, and so is everything else - I feel like they've changed what a library MEANS to the people of their community, and gone from struggle to real triumph.

Here's the comments I wrote which were read out at the Gala Dinner, to announce the winner:

“‘The Hive’s digital transformation has been extraordinarily successful. Sometimes the word ‘digital’ can be overused and be so general it loses all meaning, but what Darlington have done is made the digital tangible - they’ve made digital resources and activities of so many kinds available to groups who really need and appreciate them. In doing so I’m confident they redefined the idea of what a public library IS for their local community, and have converted scores of youngsters into lifelong library users. I’ve chosen them as winners partly due to the sheer impact of what they’ve done - this digital transformation has had a halo effect on all their services. Borrowing is up, digital borrowing is up, educational interactions are up, website use is up and the number of people visiting the library is way up. People come for the digital transformation, and they STAY for everything else we have to offer in libraries. Finally, it’s hard to imagine better feedback for anything, ever, than this comment from a Year 3 pupil who visited The Hive: “This is the best day of my entire life!” Congratulations to our incredible winners!’”

— On The Hive

I love this project: I found The Hive's work to be uplifting, hopeful and genuinely inspiring.

Edge2025 was brilliant - I missed some talks I really wanted to see on Day 2 as I was hot-footing it to Dublin for another talk, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the conference if you’re able to go next year.

Public Library Social Media in a Post-Twitter World

Last month I went to Kilkenny to present at the Library Association of Ireland’s Public Libraries Conference. The short version of this post is, it was a fantastic conference; libraries in Ireland get a lot more support from their government than British ones and it SHOWS in their confidence and morale and general fabulousness; and I uploaded my presentation to Slideshare if you’d like to see it:

Public library social media in a post-Twitter world from Ned Potter

I was running some training online for Irish public libraries earlier in the year, and I said jokingly (or, half-jokingly…) ‘as great as this is, if anyone would like to invite me back to Ireland I’d love to come!’ and Mary Murphy from the LAI took me at my word! I’m so glad she did because the whole thing was a great experience.

It reminded me of when I ran workshops in Australia - when a nation truly values its libraries, the whole conversation around them is just different. It starts from a place of positivity, and moves forward from there into creativity and inclusivity - the capacity for those things is greater because the librarians aren’t having to be on the defensive and trying to justify their existence. Someone said to me on the coffee break ‘whichever party is in Government, we always get support’ - can you imagine that being said at a British conference? It was lovely to visit such a place and a get a sort of library-serotonin boost…

The other great this about this whole trip was that my wife Alice could come with me, and in fact - for the first time ever - she saw me talk at an event. It was odd to mix these two worlds, and I had to consciously not think about her presence while I was presenting so I didn’t get in my own head. Whenever I do conference talks I always ask the audience to speak to each other about a key part of the topic, around ten minutes in - it turns everyone in the room into active participants and raises the energy levels all round; I love it and whole-heartedly recommend it to presenters. I didn’t warn Alice about it though, so she found herself talking to the librarian in the seat next to her about things she had no context for or interest in - lovely stuff…

On the way home we diverted into the Wicklow Mountains and it was beautiful.

Thanks to Mary and everyone at the LAI who invited me, and to all the conference deletagates I chatted to and who asked great questions during my talk. I loved the whole thing - I hope someone will have me back over in 2025!

Upcoming Power Hours on UX and Marketing

Two of my favourite people in Libraryland, Phil Bradley and Val Skelton, are running Power Hours on a Friday lunchtime. The idea is a packed hour of useful CPD, with space for discussion afterwards, for £35 a session. I’ve done one of these already and it was great, with loads Chat back-and-forth; they have sessions coming up on Canva, AI and more - plus three in the diary between now and the new year, hosted by me!

I hope to see you at one or more of them. Here’s what we’ve got coming up.

Introduction to UX in Libraries: November 17th

Libraries using UX are discovering rich and often fascinating data on their patrons, which is proving a nuanced feedback method to complement traditional surveys and focus groups. We'll explore what ethnography really is and why you might want to use it, then look at specific examples of techniques to try out. We'll also look at examples of changes libraries have made to their services based on UX projects.

More details of the UX In Libraries session on Eventbrite

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Jargon free introduction to Library Marketing

This session will focus on how to approach marketing libraries in all sectors. How do we frame messages so they have the most impact? What actually matters to our audiences? How do we keep things simple without dumbing down?

This works as a stand-alone session, but can also work as an introduction to the Strategic Marketing session below.

More details on the Intro To Library Marketing on Eventbrite.

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Strategic Marketing in Library Campaigns

Library marketing becomes hugely effective when it is coordinated and joined up. In this Power Hour we'll explore marketing strategically and in campaigns. We'll work on segmenting audiences and tailoring messages for each group, before tying everything together in a strategic marketing plan.

This session works as a stand-alone session, but also picks up where the Intro To Marketing, above, leaves off, if people want to take them as a pair.

More info on the Strategic Marketing Power Hour on Eventbrite.

Social Media Manifesto video

Following on from my talk at #VALA2022 in Melbourne, the organisers have kindly made the video available. Apart from the fact that the kitchen / slides synergy is even more pronounced than I’d feared it was, I’m happy that I don’t seem too asleep for the hour (12:15am, UK time…)!

My hope with this talk was that it would be cross-platform (the ideas in the manifesto will hopefully apply whether you’re a Twitter user, Instagram user, Facebook user etc) and also cross-sector, for public, academic, health, business, special and school libraries all being able to potentially apply these principles.

Thanks for watching!

A library social media manifesto

Last night at quarter-past-midnight, I sat in my kitchen and was live-streamed into a #VALA2022 conference room in Melbourne. The hybrid thing worked really well, more on which below, but first things first, here are my slides.

The presentation

A library social media manifesto

When I was invited to present on the topic of social media I wasn’t initially sure how to frame it. I talk about social media in workshops all the time but that’s a different thing, really - 3 hours instead of 30 minutes, hands-on rather than a talk, and normally quite focused so for example just covering one tool or approach. In the end I submitted an abstract I was not quite happy with, and then about a month later was struck by the ‘manifesto’ framing for the info and asked the organisers if I could change my plans! They kindly said yes, updated the website etc, and so the slides above are the product of all that.

I’ve tried to create something universal, so whether you work in public, academic, health, school, law or business libraries this should apply equally. I’ve also tried to create something that will help libraries feel refreshed and re-energised - some people I’ve spoken to have talked about a bit of a lull in their social media progress, after making some real progress a year or so into the pandemic… Anyway, check out the slides and see if the ideas help you. The video of the talk will be available in due course.

I absolutely love, love, love this sketch-note of my talk from Kim Williams. It captures all the key points and works as a companion piece to the slides above. Thank you Kim!

Just saw @ned_potter's late night presentation on social media and libraries, and agreed with all the points. Thank you so much for chatting with us at #VALA2022 pic.twitter.com/M21jEFqmzh

— kim williams (@thelibrarykim) June 16, 2022

The hybrid experience

I realised on the afternoon of the presentation that my slide theme of slate grey and yellow matched my kitchen… What hadn’t twigged at that point was that I’d be presenting in that same kitchen! (The main ‘home office’ space is in our bedroom, in which my wife was asleep due to it being 12:15am, so the kitchen was really the only opion for this.) The people of #VALA2022 must think I’m REALLY serious about slide design and always match it to the room…

Ned, thank you. So impressed that your slides matched your kitchen. https://t.co/XYN0NJ7uWL

— Graham Massey (@LibrarianMassey) June 16, 2022

He’s not wrong…

ANYWAY the hybrid experience worked really well for me, and gave me hope for the future of conferences. I just attended UXLibs in person and, of all the conferences I’ve ever attended, I think that is the least doable online - we absolutely HAVE to be in the space together to make it work. So it’s a stark choice of, either have it in person or don’t have it at all. But for most conferences, hybrid can work well and VALA2022 is a great example of that.

I was on Zoom, and both my webcam and my slides appeared on the big screen in the room in Melbourne. I could also see and hear the room audience through Zoom, which makes a huge difference to how connected I felt - when I said I was drinking gin while presenting for the first time, and heard people laugh, I settled in right away.

The other key thing to all this was the conference app. People could ask questions the whole time on the app, whether they were watching online or in the room. I had these up on my second screen and responded to them in real time, which I really enjoy. Interactivity all the way through is always my preference over ‘questions at the end’.

Anyway, I had a great time, people said nice things on twitter so I’m assuming it worked well from their end too (much as I would have LOVED to be there - libraries of Australia, please invite me back over to your wonderful country! Running marketing workshops a few years back in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne was on of the best things I’ve ever done professionally). If you’re thinking of running a hybrid conference, talk to the VALA2022 people, they know what they’re doing!

(And if you’re wondering why hybrid is necessary, read Fobazi Ettarh’s post on the subject, and have a look at the Twitter conversation it sparked.)

Thanks to VALA for inviting me, thanks especially to Sam Gibbard, thanks to the organisers for letting me change my talk details and also for recording the session, and thanks SO much to the audience who came along - making your way early to the earliest session of Day 3 no less, and knowing it was a streamed presentation: I appreciate you!