Seeing so many people still talking about books and reading is part of the problem. When we put up posters saying ‘Read’, we reconfirm stereotypes, shout at our users instead of listening to them and devalue the many other reasons people come into libraries.

Though libraries have great recognition they have a really poorly-developed brand. And this continually hampers us. We waste time with silliness like claiming to be ‘cool again’ when we never really were. We might be exciting for a new reader or helpful for someone doing research but cool is something else altogether.

More to the point, we desperately need leadership – ideally at national or state/provincial level – to develop the library brand in the purest marketing sense of knowing who and what we are. Hint; ‘read’ doesn’t do it.

I’d suggest that we might do better focusing on results. I’m less interested in how much reading a patron did than in how our library has helped enrich and improve a life. They might have learned a new skill that got them a better paying job watching online how-to videos. Someone could earn a degree online at our public internet stations. Would that be such a bad outcome to be able to say we were part of?

If I’m trying to sell a pencil, I don’t tell you it has an eraser. I tell you that if you make a mistake you can easily correct it and keep going without wasting time. We need to focus less on our features and more on our benefits. The value of our features is subjective, the value of our benefits is not.

(doesn’t make me love them any less, though)

I have them in my library anyway, but it did give me pause.

Do acceptable use policies actually cause people to act acceptably? As to the CPL, since we’re talking about that, convicted sex offenders have free and legal access to pornography at Chicago libraries:

“Online pornography is so clear and evident at Chicago libraries that we could actually see a patron looking at porn simply by standing on a city street and looking through the window. …. But what he did was legal because there are no guidelines against viewing pornography at Chicago libraries. Even convicted sex offenders can use those computers to access sexually graphic images. One-third of the offenses involve people masturbating while at computers. …. We repeatedly tried to get an interview with Chicago Public Library officials. Instead, a spokesperson gave us a statement [quoting] library policy.”

It absolutely baffles me why it has been so difficult for the library community to leverage these incredible assets, and why the best they can seem to come up with are initiatives like the one described in this post.

Through the Library Lounge Nights, the CPL will probably get a temporary uptick in its metric for new library cards issued — and consider the initiative a success as a result. I’d be interested to know if they have a plan for converting the new card holders to users, and users to advocates who naturally promote the library to others (as they do for other services they use).

EXACTLY! I LOVE IT! WELL SAID!

Trying to make libraries cool by obscuring what’s still at their core–the books–really is like giving the nerd a makeover. And you know what? In those bad 80s and 90s movies, the makeover was usually a prank.

But we (nerds, librarians, and nerd-librarians) don’t need a makeover–we just need to own it. Geek chic is in. We like big books and we cannot lie. Et cetera.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Ravenclaw cloak to hem.