For the last time, Google is not our competition in libraries...

Tweet

There's a very famous Neil Gaiman quote among librarians and lovers of libraries: "Google will bring you back, you know, a hundred thousand answers. A librarian will bring you back the right one."

I found this on Jennie Stolz's Pinterest page. Click the pic to go to there.

You see it on social media. You hear it used as a soothing balm at library conferences. More than one library has it printed on their floors.

There are various different versions of the quote - often people will attribute Gaiman with having said a million answers from Google, and pretty much no one puts in the 'you know'. In order that I, a librarian, could use the RIGHT quote for this article I...

Well, I Googled it. Obvs.

Because how else would I find it? I don't want to put us as libraries and librarians in competition with Google for loads of reasons, but we still do it a lot. I contributed to a SWOT analysis on libraries in LibFocus and someone put the Gaiman quote in there too:

An excerpt from a crowd-sourced LibFocus article - click the image to read the full thing

The thing is, most people aren't seeking 'right answers' on Google. They just want basic or general info. Here's what SiegeMedia discovered were the top 15 searches on Google in 2015 in the US, if you exclude brands and porn (the top 5 if you don't exclude them is Gmail, Craiglists, Amazon, Yahoo [why?!] and porn).

Click the pic to read the full article on SeigeMedia

How many of those have a right answer a librarian could bring back? The weather, obviously - but you'd find that out by Googling it. Perhaps a librarian could find you a more reliable dictionary, that could be a 'right' answer. What's on at the Movies, cheap flights - again we'd at least go online and search, if not specifically Google.

In the UK in 2015 according to Google itself, the top 5 searches were 1) Cilla Black, 2) Lady Colin Campbell, 3) Rugby World Cup, 4) Jeremy Clarkson and 5) Paris. Is there a right answer to 'Cilla Black'? Right answers are not what Google is for. More broadly, people aren't searching Google for things they used to come and find at libraries.

The reason the Gaiman quote includes a 'you know' is this wasn't some grand written statement, it was part of an answer to an interview question he was asked upon becoming honorary chair of National Libaries Week in 2010. The full answer, with the Google part right at the end, can be seen in this video:

What a great quote that whole thing is! Fantastic. He GETS it. This isn't some well-meaning but misguided celeb talking about how much they loved the smell of books as a child in their local library. This is someone who understands how libraries are about social inclusion. I love the full answer. I think Gaiman is brilliant. I just wish we, as a library community, hadn't quite latched onto the Google part of it so much, as the dichotomy isn't helpful.

Also, I don't personally think I can find the 'right' answer in most of the situations I find myself in, even as an academic librarian helping people are who ARE actually after very specific information. Our role is more about helping people find answers for themselves - not in all cases and branches of the profession, but in most - as a couple of people pointed out on Twitter:

@ned_potter Neither would I ever claim to be offering a 'right' one.

— Clare McCluskey Dean (@claremcdean) November 3, 2016

@ned_potter @libfocus wow! no pressure on librarians so. I thought we were empowering people to find answers for themselves.

— Lorna Dodd (@LornaDodd) November 3, 2016

Of course this dichotomy isn't somehow Gaiman's fault or exclusive to him, you see it everywhere among librarians. This tweet from Internet Librarian International encapsulates a sentence you hear a lot about libraries and competition:

Our competition are your googles, apples, amazons who are doing a great (better?) job of what we in libraries do #ili2016 #challenge

— Martin O'Connor (@martinoconnor3) October 19, 2016

(It was reflecting something the speaker had said rather than Martin's own opinion.) I find this rhetoric troubling for lots of reasons, many of which I've spoken about before but the idea of Google as competitor just won't go away...

Here are my issues with it:

1. As discussed above, people don't now use Google for things they previously used libraries for
2. Google doesn't do what we do. It precisely the human element of libraries that will ensure they endure
3. If Google IS our competitor then we will lose every battle, forever
4. Ultimately, to pit libraries against Google is to reduce libraries to their most basic function (provider of information) and indeed the one which IS most easily replaced...
5. ... and then try and convince people not to replace us with Google by telling them Google is not any good, when in fact - for all the troubling things about Google, and there are many - it IS pretty good at bringing back info of sufficient quality that most people who are non-specialists find it to be excellent for their needs
6. Related: no one ever won any friends by slagging off something useful (that they themselves use every day)

The fact that Google and the internet more widely has made it so easy for people to access information without needing to physically visit a library is a GOOD thing. So I'd like us all agree to stop trying to make it into us versus them, and focus more on the things we can do to cater for the needs of our users and potential users. They don't need us to find them info on Cilla Black but they DO need us for plenty else. 

Google could find 100,000 things for libraries to do next, but only our communities can find us the right one...

10 top tips to build momentum in online communities

 

There are more and more communities online - working with people is great, and now it is easy, too. Anyone can create a network, or a movement, or a collaboration. But what works well and what doesn't?

I was originally going to present on how to build momentum in online communities at Online last year, but I ended up not having time to attend and this has been sitting in my drafts folder ever since. I'm going to put this out there and see if there's any more tips people would like to add.

As a bit of background, I've been involved with a few projects that involve online communities in one form or another:  the Library Routes Project,  Buy India a Library, and most relevantly LISNPN, the New Professionals Network. Crucially I've also been involved in at least one project which hasn't worked out, so I've had positive and negative experiences from which to put together these tips.

3 to 6 are basically about people, 7 to 9 are about promotion, and the others are general logistics stuff.

1. The first month is crucial, so work like a madman/woman

The word 'month' is flexible here, but basically the time around the launch is so, so important to building momentum which can be self-sustaining thereafter. It's worth delaying the launch of a new network / community / project until you know you (and your team - see below) have time to dedicate to making it work.

2. Stagger new developments

As much as its tempting to launch your new project in its final, ninja-level awesome state, if you can bring in new developments and ideas over the course of the first few months, this really helps keep up momentum. New things re-engage people, and make them more likely to share links to your project via their existing networks.

3. Assemble a team

Working with other people is BRILLIANT. They'll think of things you haven't thought of, spot potential you hadn't considered, and save you from embarassing or costly mistakes you hadn't forseen. (Or is that just me?) A team of people also means more natural advocates for the project, and more support for the community itself.

4. Empower the members

Trying to control any kind of online space is SO 2005. You're better off giving power and responsibility to the whole membership, rather than trying to micromanage everything. Once your project launches, accept it is going to have a life of its own and try and encourage that. Empowered members are engaged members - they're more likely to feel the kind of ownership which gets them more involved.

5. Have a horizontal hierachy

Very closely related to number 4- as much as it is important to have people acting as administrators in an online space, it's better if people aren't waiting on you (or whoever is nominally in charge) to make things happen. So allow people to edit the online space, to set up their meet-ups, to contribute resources, etc etc.

6. Utilise champions

Word of Mouth Marketing - it can't be beat! If the right people talk to the right networks, that's a far more effective way of spreading the word than doing it all yourself. Find people who love the project, and give them all the information and tools they need to spread the word more widely.

7. Disseminate online - everywhere!

This obvious but there's a really important underlying point here, which it took me AGES to learn - promotion works best if people find out about something in more than one way, and more than once. It's very rare that a single event will have a massive effect - so, a single ad in the perfect journal, or a single blog-post guesting on the perfect blog; you'd think they'd cause a massive amount of people to check out your online community, but they won't. It's actually people seeing the same thing in a variety of sources they trust and value that makes people actually DO SOMETHING - i.e. click a link and have a look at a post or a website. This is why strategic marketing works so much better than one-off-promotion - what Terry Kendrick would call a 'series of touches at the right times' result in positive things happening.

To take a really simplified example - if someone tweets a link to a blog post with a title which doesn't inspire you, you'll probably ignore it; but if 4 or 5 other people you respect RT it, you'll probably think it's worth checking out anyway, and have a look.

8. Use mailing lists

I'm not a fan of mailing lists and don't subscribe to any, but a lot of people do and whenever stuff like LISNPN got promoted on JISCmail lis-serves, there was always a huge increase in clicks on the site and people becoming members. I think it's literally because there's no gap between finding out about something and seeing it in the flesh - you just click the link and your there. For that reason, it's good to link to an intersting page!

9. Avoid print, or at least don't rely on it

I've found the opposite of 8 to be true with 9 - articles in printed publications just don't seem to bring people in. I'm sure it helps in a small way (it continues the series of touches described in number 7) but there's a massive drop-off in direct action resulting from a print-article, probably because there's no link to click so the half-interested never think of it again, and the quite interested don't remember to go back later on when they're at a computer.

10. No one wants to be first onto the empty dance-floor so you need your ducks in a row before you launch

For LISNPN, we got 50 people as members BEFORE we launched, and made sure the forum was populated with some introductory posts etc. After that, for the first month we had an average of 636 page views a day and 10 people signing up per day - that was sufficient to create self-sustaining momentum thereafter.

People are drawn to stuff which is already happening; they don't want the responsibility of making it happen themselves...

- thewikiman