1. FrankenLibraries: The Latest Trends
Stephen Abram, MLS
New Jersey Library Association, Atlantic City, NJ
June 5, 2013

2. Every Day in every way libraries are
throwing pebbles

3. It’s simple really, shift happens!
Gedoverit

4. This economy is the new normal
• 4 years of economic growth with real GDP growth
• 4 years of declining unemployment and increased job creation
• Stock market at record levels (S&P doubled in 4 years)
• 30% decline in federal deficit but increased debt
• BUT . . .
• Pressure on taxes and higher state and municipal debt – cash flow
• Real declines in personal income (except top 2%)
• Reduced tax revenue – especially if property tax dependent
• Student debt at record highs affecting a Millennial-based economy
• Maxed out on post-secondary student growth
• Post-secondary institutions are maxed out on borrowing
• Increased global competition and economic restructuring
4

5. • Users & Communities will continue to be diverse in the extreme
• Consumer / user expectations around timeliness will increase
• We will have a foot in both camps for many, many years to come: digital
and physical - gedoverit
• Content will (and is already) be dominated by non-text (gamification, 3D,
visual, music, video, audio, etc.)
• Search will explode with options and one-step, one box search is for
dummies, discovery services require a new frame
• The single purpose anchored device is already dead as a target
• Devices will focus on social, collaboration, sharing, learning, multimedia,
creation and successful library strategies will align with that
• Librarians will need to focus primarily on professional service(s) and
strategic alignment (reduced roles in organizing knowledge and
step&fetchit politeness) . . . Service Professionals NOT Servants, True
educators not Supplements
• E-Learning, collections and metadata will go to the cloud massively

6. Library Megatrends
It doesn’t take a genius to see librarian
skills and competencies applied to the
trends and issues in library communities in
very strategic ways – social, economic,
cultural/creative, and research/discovery
impacts.

7. Libraries
• Recommendations (Bibliocommons, LibraryThing
for Libraries / Book Psychic)
• Community Glue: cohesion and stories
• Programs on steroids strategic alignment
• Repository archipelagos need to end
• Bi-directional ‘real’ partnerships
• REALLY committing to learning … credits / diplomas
• A volatile supplier space
• Economic Impact and VALUE studies
• Renewed advocacy moves to Influencing and selling

8. Vital Need for Increased Cooperation
• Consortia
• CRKN, OCUL, TAL, CULC, Readers First, etc.
• Dealing with the small town mindset
• DPLA & OCLC Linked Data, RDA and global metadata
strategies
• Library Renewal / EveryLibrary Advocacy PAC
• 3M e-books (CALIFA / Douglas County initiatives)
• Digitization of special collections, dark literature,
orphan works, etc.
• Cloud initiatives
• Library and Consortia Mergers increase

12. Deer in headlamps slide here.

14. Libraries core skill is not
delivering information
Libraries improve the
quality of the question
and the user experience
Libraries are about learning
and building communities

15. Libraries Have Seasons

16. Librarian Magic

18. Smelly
Yellow
Liquid
Or
Sex
Appeal?
The Complex Value Proposition

19. Books, eBooks
Magazines
Websites
Buildings, Branches
Rooms
Desks
Programs
Nouns can be warehoused
and ‘cut’
Serve
Answer
Engage
Link
Entertain
Tell a story
Do
Action verbs imply dynamism
and impact

20. Are you locked into an old library mindset?

21. A Verb . . . an Experience, enlivened for an audience

22. A Noun . . . A foundation but not sufficient with professional animation

23. Retail Sales Down?
Teen Reading Down?
Titles Down?
Circulation Down?
Reading Down?
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO
Focus on the REAL Issues
Not BOOKS! The experience

24. Grocery Stores

25. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

26. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

27. Meals

29. Library Land
What changes, disruptions and
shifts are already in the
environment?

30. Forced public sector Mergers and Acquisitions
What if state and municipal governments change
funding models?
What if higher levels of consortial cooperation
are mandated?
What about shocks to the economy?

31. If all users are ubiquitously connected with
broadband, have downloading skills for books
and movies, own smartphones, whither
libraries?
What about the ‘digital divide’
If the school system (K-12 and HigherEd) changes
radically …? Common Core / 21st C

32. What if all music, audiobooks, and video moved
to streaming formats by 2018?
What if the DVD and CD go the way of vinyl, VHS,
and cassettes?
Obviously that’s already the plan…

33. What if all books are digital?
What if book services move to a subscription
model of unlimited use for $7/month?
What about next generation e-books?
Is your frame too Big 4-5 fiction oriented?

34. What if all books are ‘beyond text’?
Can we support books with embedded video,
adaptive technologies, audio, updating, software
tools, assessments, web-links, etc.

35. Could your library support advanced higher
education and offer accredited courses or
support universities and colleges for distance
education? Have you catalogued them?
Can you see your library offering diplomas?
Certificates? Degrees? GED? With 800 staff
lecturers?
Is everyone trained to use LMS and deliver lesson
level content and experiences?

36. Can your library support distance high school
education, credits, and home schooling on a much
higher level?
What would be the economic impact of credit
recovery in your community and its capacity for
success?

37. • Can your library support any kind of mobile
device experience?
• Are you fully ready to deliver, agnostically to
desktops, laptops, tablets, phablets,
smartphones, televisions, appliances, at a
much higher level?

38. Are you prepared for new forms of content?
Real multimedia? 3D objects and databases?
Holographics? Enhanced media?
Can you be ready for makerspaces, creative
spaces, writing labs, business and start-up
incubators, etc.
Can you publish for your community?

39. What kinds of real community spaces are needed
in the future?
Can you support learning spaces, community
meeting spaces, performance spaces, maker
spaces, real advisory spaces, true relationship
and consultation management . . .?
What performances are in your library?

40. What if everything was in the cloud? (software, ILS,
LMS, databases, metadata, content, 3D objects, . . .)
What would you do with those ‘old’ system skills on
staff?

41. What if search immersive resource discovery
becomes as ubiquitous as search engines?
Are you ready to differentiate from consumer
search aggressively?
What if schools and public libraries partner on
discovery services (a la NYPL, BPL, QBPL, and
NYED with their Bibliocommons initiative)

42. What if all metadata and content discovery is
freely available using open APIs through the
OCLC WorldShare vault and the Digital Public
Library of America / Europeana vault of open and
free metadata?
What does your experience portal look like? Top
questions?

43. And what would you sacrifice?

44. Up Your Game
• Know your local community demographics
• Focus on needs assessment and social assessments
• Prioritize: Love all, Serve all, Save the World means nothing
gets done. . . FOCUS!
• Priorities are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, & Time bound
• Look for partnerships that add value

45. Amazon
Chapters/Indigo
Barnes & Noble
BN BookBrowser
Borders
Suggestica
Inside a Dog (teens)
MySpace Books
Books We Like
OCLC's FictionFinder
All Consuming
LibraryThing
Next Favorite
StoryCode
Rating Zone
Hypatia and AlexLit
WhichBook.net
AllReaders.com
Reader's Robot
gnooks

46. Being More
Open to
Comment

47. Being More Open to Criticism
and Feedback

48. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – every collection must be justified by
programs
• Force strategic investment budgeting
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Don’t go it alone. Focus on large scale sustainable programs
• Connect to the longer process not just events
• Virtual and in-person
• In the Library and reaching out with partners

49. What are the real issues?
• Craft versus Industrial Strength
• Personal service only when there’s impact
• Pilot, Project, Initiative versus Portfolio Strategy
• Hand-knitted prototypes versus Production
• e.g. Information Literacy initiatives (LibGuides)
• Discovery versus Search versus Deep Search
• eLearning units and program dissemination
• Citation and information ethics
• Content and repository archipelagos
• Strategic Analytics
• Value & Impact Measures
• Behaviours, Satisfaction
• Economic and strategic alignment

50. The Library as Sandbox

51. Being More Open Experimentation,
Pilots and Innovation

52. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – But add virtual experiences
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Ensure the program delivery person is embedded including
librarians
• What are your top 20 question domains? Start there.
• Don’t go it alone. Build scalability and sustainability.
• Look for replicability – every neighbourhood

53. The new
bibliography and
collection
development
Ask Us, KNOWLEDGE
PORTALS
KNOWLEDGE,
LEARNING,
INFORMATION &
RESEARCH
COMMONS

54. Know What Makes Us Different

55. Up Your Game
• Start offering diplomas and certificates
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Offer real educational opportunities not just adjacencies
• What does your community need for economic advantage?
• What courses to you offer or recommend? (TED, Khan
Academy, Coursera, Udacity, EdX, Lynda.com, etc.)

56. Support Aspiration

57. Up Your Game
• Understand the new Curriculum (esp. 6-8 and 9-12)
• Understand Pedagogy in the context of student experiences
and educational goals
• Understand human development from early years through
teens
• Connect across developmental stages, link
• Consider partnerships to put teachers in the library
• Consider coaches and tutoring partnerships

58. Up Your Game
• The strong ‘library’ brand – adding dimension
• Personal branding – Who are your library’s rock stars?
Promote them.
• Program branding
• Take risks for attention (AIDA)
• Embed your brand beyond the library walls and virtually

59. ‘New’ Library Cultures
Support Your Team

60. Being Open to New Ideas

61. Be Creative and Attract

63. Up Your Game
• Grow collections investments in strategic areas (for
example economic impact, jobs, early years, hobbies,
political alignment, homework, research agenda …)
• Develop hybrid strategies that are consistent for digital
and print and programs
• Be obsessive about recommendations and advice and
added value
• Integrate virtual and physical - hybridize

64. Up Your Game
• Deal with the repository archipelago
• Really deal with e-learning and MOOCs
• Really up the relationship game beyond liaisons
• Really understand your users and faculty

65. Up Your Game
• Dog, Star, Cow, Problem Child/?
• Reduce investment in successes
• Increase investment
• Look at TCO
• Look at all costs incurred and not just hard costs
• Review opportunity costs in soft costs

69. Is the library ready to support a world
of unlimited content, multiple
formats, massive access, and
consumer expectations of MORE?
Yes?
No?
With Effort, Vision,
Leadership?
Never?

70. Embracing Change

71. Change is….

72. Global

73. Constant

74. Inevitable

75. Stressful

76. Breathe

77. Rhythm

78. Do you like change?
Does it matter?

79. What are the risks of not changing?
Think carefully – at this point in history not changing is the bigger risk.

80. We can’t control change…
We can control our attitude towards change…

81. Deny

82. Resist

83. React

84. Explore

85. Commit

86. Change can be difficult

87. Personal change
precedes organizational
change

89. Negativity

90. Contagious

91. What can you do to deal with
change?

92. Accept that change
is an attitude

93. Create a personal vision
In the context of your team

94. Focus on what you can do…
……not what you can’t do

95. velop a perspective of opportunity

96. Learn to love ambiguity

97. NJLA…

98. Tell Your Story:
Until lions learn to write their own story,
the story will always be from the perspective
of the hunter not the hunted.

101. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Consultant, Dysart & Jones/Lighthouse Partners
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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