Leader's Digest April 2007

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Leader's Digest April 2007

by Leslie Dillon

April 9, 2007

Harvard Business Review

Here are summaries of 3 articles from the April issue of Harvard Business Review.

What your leader expects of you

How do you to promote effective leader-follower relationships in your team? The author of this article, Larry Bossidy, suggests "forging a boss-subordinate compact that defines a mutual set of crystal-clear expectations." As a direct report, your boss expects you to to offer your creative ideas. As the boss, your staff expects you to "tell your people where the [organization] is going, why, and how they’ll benefit if they accomplish key goals." Additional expectations in the boss-subordinate compact include:

  • As a subordinate:
    • Get involved. Step in the moment someone falls behind in their commitments, when an interpersonal conflict occurs, and when a crisis erupts. Deliver bad news to your boss yourself.
    • Collaborate. Overcome differences between you and others so you can work together effectively.
    • Lead initiatives. Be willing to associate yourself with unproven ideas. "Raise your hand, and you’ll climb the ladder faster than those who don’t."
    • Develop your own people. Take an active interest in your staff's development. "Go out of your way to criticize and praise your people when they need it. And get directly involved in performance reviews, supplying people with specific, candid, and useful feedback."
    • Stay current. "Know what’s going on with your customers—how they’re changing, how their competition is changing, and how technology and world events are affecting" them.
    • Drive your own growth. "Seek perpetual education and development... Seek feedback from your boss, and accept demanding assignments."
  • As a leader:
    • Define specific goals for your staff. Specify what you expect from them as a team and as individuals. This will "help them decide where to invest their energy and time."
    • Be available. If you expect your staff to stay up to date and keep you informed, "be accessible when they need to see you." And don’t make it hard on them if they bring you bad news.
    • Compensate employees fairly. Ensure that people understand how the compensation system works.

(Lawrence A. Bossidy, "What your leader expects of you," Harvard Business Review, April 2007. Available on EBSCOhost's Business Source Premier; or you can order a reprint from HBR for $6.00.)

Promise-based management: The essence of execution

Promise-based management is built on the foundations of contract law in the Roman Empire. It also draws on speech act theory, which "explores how people commit themselves to action through...questions, requests, promises, declarations," etc. The authors of this article believe promises are "the fundamental units of interaction" in organizations. "While they hold an organization together, they are as fragile as they are crucial... Leaders must therefore weave and manage their webs of promises with great care... If they do, they can enhance coordination and cooperation among colleagues, build the agility required to seize new business opportunities, and tap employees’ entrepreneurial energies." Here's what promise-based management can do:

  • Increase coordination and collaboration. Dialogues are central to promise-based management. They let people "achieve a common understanding of what needs to be done. Promises also foster a mutual sense of personal obligation" to get things done.
  • Increase agility. Promise-based management lets "organizations act more quickly and flexibly." Organizations "with well-honed business processes usually do a good job of executing on high-volume, routine activities." But those processes can keep organizations from taking advantage of new opportunities, e.g., "rolling out a large-scale IT system... The very standardization that generates continuous improvements in traditional...processes limits...flexibility."
  • Increase employee engagement. "Rigid processes...dampen employees’ initiative and engagement." But organizations that use "well-made, reliable promises create a sense of community" among staff. Staff "promise to do things because they buy in to the...overall mission and priorities and see their part in making things happen."
  • Conversations for commitment. "A promise is a 'pledge' a provider makes to...a 'customer' within or outside an organization." In this case, 'customer' and 'provider' "refer to roles, not individuals, and these roles can vary depending on the situation."

The five characteristics of a good promise:

  • Good promises are public.
  • Good promises are active.
  • Good promises are voluntary.
  • Good promises are explicit.
  • Good promises are mission based.

The article contains a great chart that gives solutions for getting past problems like organizational silos, staff disengagement, lack of accountability, lack of agility, status-quo entrapment, etc. If you don't read anything else, be sure to check out the chart!

(Donald N. Sull and Charles Spinosa, "Promise-based management: The essence of execution", Harvard Business Review, April 2007. Available free here (you may have to get past a Terms & Conditions page before you get to the article or segments of it) or on EBSCOhost Business Source Premier if you want to print a PDF.)

Find the gold in toxic feedback

Managers need feedback, even if it’s biased, rude, off the mark, or irrelevant--and much of it is. The trick is learning to extract and decode the meaningful stuff and turn it into something usable. The authors of this article believe they "have uncovered a number of 'alchemists': rare individuals who are adept at transforming the base minerals of low-quality feedback into pure gold." Their behavior follows a few patterns that other managers can learn from.

When feedback is:   Alchemists:
Personally offensiveListen carefully, manage their emotions, and maintain a neutral tone.
InaccurateFocus on what's accurate and look beyond the literal meaning.
IrrelevantFocus on just the information that can help them deal with the problems they face.
UnbalancedPlace negative feedback in the context of prior positive feedback from others.

Alchemists are able to learn from even the most obnoxious or seemingly useless comments. They are able "to be aware of and manage their visceral reactions and...extract the useful information intelligently... The result is that they distinguish the message from the medium and focus on the information they need." (Fernando Bartolomé and John Weeks, "Find the gold in toxic feedback", Harvard Business Review, April 2007. Available free here or on EBSCOhost Business Source Premier if you want to print a PDF.)

Negotiating Outcomes

A recent book from Harvard Business School Press might be worth your time. Negotiating Outcomes is said to offer immediate solutions to common management challenges. Per the blurb advertising it on the Harvard Business Online web site:

Negotiation is the process by which people resolve their differences. Whether those differences involve the purchase of a new automobile, a labor contract dispute, the terms of a sale, or a complex alliance between two companies, resolutions are typically sought through negotiations. This guide will help you prepare, conduct, and close a negotiation successfully.

Quick takes

State of the blogosphere

Technorati's David Sifry has put out another of his quarterly reports on the state of the blogosphere. The full report contains lots of great charts and visuals--useful, for example, if you want to demonstrate the exponential growth of tagging on the open Web. Here's a brief summary of the report:

  • 70 million weblogs
  • About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or 1.4 new blogs every second
  • 1.5 million posts per day, or 17 posts per second
  • Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
  • Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
  • English second at 33%
  • Chinese third at 8%
  • Italian fourth at 3%
  • Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
  • 230 million posts with tags or categories
  • 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
  • 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

(Sifry's Alerts, Apr.5, 2007 via ContentBlogger, Apr. 6, 2007 and The Times, Apr. 6, 2007.)

Study shows users willing to consider ads in scholarly content

Outsell asked primary readers of scholarly literature about their use of and attitudes toward advertising in connection with information-seeking and scholarly literature. Results of this research show that there is ample room for experiments with direct advertising support of scholarly content. (Outsell, Mar. 23, 2007.)

Librarianship and Human Rights

Librarianship and Human Rights: A XXI Century Guide "demonstrates that many librarians are aware of the power they have and their responsibility of fairly using it. They have already assumed an active, creative, imaginative, consistent, and supportive role in their job and, consequently, in our society. Toni Samek’s work also gives evidence of many librarians waking up from a hundred-year-old dream and being able to knock out their library’s walls, open the bookcases, and allow books to reach every corner of their communities. Her work tells us about those librarians who dare to shout and dream at the same time that they recognise the painful reality that surrounds them. These professionals are always trying to find solutions for users’ needs and interests by working next to them." (Edgardo Civallero, Forward, Librarianship and Human Rights: a XXI Century Guide by Toni Samek, 2007, 8 pages; PDF, via ResourceShelf, Mar. 27, 2007.)

Literacy in Everyday Life

NCES has released Literacy in Everyday Life, a report providing extensive information on the literacy of American adults and changes in their performance since 1992. It also examines the relationship between literacy and several demographics. Findings include the following:

  • Women have closed the gap with men in Quantitative literacy and have surpassed men in Document and Prose literacy.
  • Younger and older adults have lower literacy than adults in other age groups.
  • Median weekly earnings increased with each level of literacy.
  • At each higher level of Prose literacy, more adults were employed full time.
  • The percentage of parents who never helped their school-age child with homework declined at each higher Prose literacy level.
  • About half of US citizens of voting age with low literacy reported voting in the presidential election of 2000 compared with 84 % of citizens with proficient literacy.

Full results are available here. PDFs of the complete report, as well as excerpts are available here.

April 17, 2007

Exploring the future of libraries and library education

The recent NEKLS (Northeast Kansas Library System) Tri-conference symposium asked 5 library leaders 2 questions:

  1. What are the key trends that are influencing library and information services?
  2. How will these trends influence [library/information science education] programs?

Here are a few remarks by the panelists that I think are the most relevant to us all:

  • Library as place--are our libraries the libraries we want or the libraries that our users want? And, when you build, how do you know what you will want in the future?
  • Technology skills are vital, especially for new hires.
  • Skype as a reference tool? (Wow! Is anybody trying it?)
  • Personal, to-your-desk, user-centric service--new technology tools can help us provide that user-centric service. We have competition that is good, convenient and accessible.
  • People need info 24/7. We need to not only deliver, but also to figure out where to deliver.
  • If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest country in the world!
  • Libraries in the future will need to be marketed as if their livelihood depends upon it (it does!).
  • We need to reach people who are not using the library--we need to get out of the library.
  • Information literacy--how-to find information, how-to evaluate it, how-to use it.
  • One panelist's library is starting to mail out materials (Netflix model).

A reactor panel responded with these comments:

  • Need to be more technologically advanced; less focused on inner workings of the library.
  • It’s not about liking books; it’s about liking people.
  • Moving into an information consulting role.
  • Learning to mine new tools--e.g., LinkedIn.
  • Reach outside of your immediate realm--make connections.
  • Need strong project management skills-real project management skills.
  • Need strategic planning and budgeting skills.

(NEKLS Technology Weblog, Apr. 11, 2007, via Google Blog Alerts, Apr. 12, 2007.)

More thoughts on Twitter

Jenny Levine wants to know why her library isn't communicating with her by texting to her cell phone. She says she's using text messaging a lot more on her cell phone lately and sees a place for libraries there. David Lee King (Digital Branch & Services Manager, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library) wants to hook up Twitter to his catalog to send hold and overdue notices. (These are great ideas for getting out to where our customers are!) (Shifted Librarian, Apr. 9, 2007.)

LibraryThing OPAC widgets--Is this a trend?

Panlibus, a blog from the folks at Talis, a local systems vendor in the United Kingdom, has a recent post about LibraryThing's new thing: LibraryThing for Libraries.

LibraryThing for Libraries is composed of a series of widgets, designed to enhancing (sic) library catalogs with LibraryThing data and functionality. The achievement is that the widgets require no back-end integration.
We're serious. Just add a single Javascript tag, and one tag for every widget you want to display and we do the rest. To make sure the widgets use your library's version of a title and that some widgets only refer to books you have, you also need to upload a file with ISBNs in it--just ISBNs or all mixed together in MARC records or whatever. The whole thing should work with any catalog.

Talis' Richard Wallis asks "how many library system managers will be comfortable/capable/allowed to do that?" While this is an "excellent example of a trend that started with book-jacket feeds from Syndetics and NBD...to add value to the OPAC," he notes that some major developments in the implementation process will be necessary before the majority of libraries will be able to create a user interface "by mixing data from many sources." Otherwise, it "just ain't going to be sustainable in the real world." Needed developments include:

  • Simple and understandable implementation process. Maybe UI prototypes from SirsiDynix, III and Talis will address this?
  • An ecosystem on top of which these services can be delivered.
  • Standards established to eliminate hurdles.

(Panlibus, April 10, 2007.)

Speaking of widgets...

Widgets probably are becoming a trend. They're increasingly popular with mainstream companies, whose "new role is to create tools people want and push them out so people can use them however they choose."

Most "widgets resemble a tiny window on the user's desktop or Web page, similar to picture-in-picture television sets. What they do, and how they promote their clients, varies. Purina has created a tiny box that alerts pet owners about good dog-walking weather. Last month, Hewlett-Packard offered a downloadable March Madness scoreboard that continuously pulled down college basketball tournament results. Twentieth Century Fox is promoting "Live Free or Die Hard" with an iTunes player that also blurts out quotes from the movie."

Widgets "are the glue between people and the content they want." (So it looks to me like the sooner libraries or their vendors can implement widgets for their customers, the better!) (Kim Hart, "Wave of widgets spreads on the web", Washington Post, Apr. 9, 2007.)

The mobile web

According to the Online Publishers Association (OPA), "the mobile web is a compelling platform for content and marketing." Going Mobile: An International Study of Content Use and Advertising on the Mobile Web involved more than 6,000 interviews in the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Key findings:

  • Access to the mobile web is widespread, and usage will continue to grow in 2007. About 75 percent of all consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe have access to the Web on their mobile devices, and 32% use it. 41% of those without mobile Web access expect to have it on their next mobile device.
  • The mobile web is particularly important to consumers of popular content verticals: 53% of online weather consumers use their mobile devices to get weather information; 49% of online sports information consumers; 36% of online news consumers, and 35% of online stock quote consumers.
  • The mobile internet complements activity on the PC internet; 18% of users spend more time on the PC internet since they began using the mobile internet.

(Online Publishers Association, Mar. 8, 2007, via OCLC Abstracts, Apr. 9, 2007.)

The business of innovation

Organizations that consistently emphasize "delivering value" over creativity are significantly more effective at innovating! (According to the 2007 futurethink Innovation Tracker, a survey conducted by innovation research, tools, and service firm futurethink.)

"The free flow of ideas and creativity is very important, but they're only a means to an end, not the end result," says Lisa Bodell, CEO of futurethink. "Innovation is not about creating ideas, it is about consistently creating value." Three key hurdles to innovation are:

  • lack of leadership
  • lack of time to work on innovation
  • organizational aversion to risk

"Respondents provided a clear message," futurethink said in a statement, "that business growth through innovation begins with effective leadership." (Inside Training Newsletter, Mar. 22, 2007.)

When to use a wiki

Are you wondering when it's appropriate to use a wiki in your library? Here are some hints--adapted from an article in managesmarter from Sales & Marketing Management.

  1. To update records for team meetings. Wikis can help attendees add or correct information on meeting minutes.
  2. To facilitate communication across departments. When different teams all have to work together on documents (such as RFPs), wikis can help ease the process.
  3. If you have multiple sites. Staff from many locations can provide direct valuable input into reports.
  4. If you work with other library partners.Wikis can give multiple users access to approve or update materials.
  5. To substitute for expensive content management software. Because wikis typically use open-source software, they are usually free or inexpensive.

(managesmarter, Sales & Marketing Management, Mar.22, 2007.)

Are you addicted to your job?

Forty-four percent of Americans consider themselves workaholics, according to a recent Gallup Poll, and employee burnout costs the U.S. economy about $300 million a year. Chances are you know someone who is overworked, or you may be yourself. Here are some telltale signs of workaholism:

  • Failure to use vacation time
  • Refusal to stay home when ill
  • Inability to delegate work
  • Tendency to seek control of group projects

These behaviors can hinder development of other employees and injure team dynamics and relationships. "Despite the appearance of being a hardworking employee, the workaholic is costly... A person with healthier work habits would be more desirable." An industry expert "encourages managers to consider work/life balance as the wheels on a car...work, family, leisure and personal health...are four tires that need balancing."

Workrave.com offers a free downloadable program that can regulate breaks for you. It reminds you to take coffee breaks, stretch and stop working for the day. The program keeps track of how many times you skip breaks and can help end bad habits that lead to stress and the onset of repetitive stress injuries. ("Are you addicted to the job?", managesmarter, Sales & Marketing Management, Mar. 16, 2007.)

Quick takes

Harvard tagging

A workshop organized by Harvard University Libraries, “Social Tagging @ Harvard: A Del.ici.ous Alternative or Passing Flickr?,” looked at the online practice of tagging and sought to weigh the separate techniques to determine the best method of taxonomy. Some general presentations about tagging, some discussion of social bookmarking sites (e.g. Connotea), citation management services (e.g. RefWorks), and some specific Harvard projects. This multi-sidedness makes it more interesting than some general tagging discussions. It was also interesting to see the steps the library has been taking to engage with general and specific initiatives. (Lorcan Dempsey's blog, Apr. 7, 2007.)

ProQuest CSA adds content to Illustrata and Illumina

ProQuest CSA and Elsevier will make tables, figures, and illustrations from a selection of Elsevier’s natural science journals available through CSA Illustrata: Natural Sciences. Elsevier natural science journals, including Deep-Sea Research Part I, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Toxicology and Virology, will be cross-searchable with journals from other publishers.

CSA Illustrata is a Web-based solution (that runs on the CSA Illumina platform) providing access to indexed tables, figures, and other objects found in scholarly research literature. Forthcoming CSA Illustrata releases are planned in other key research areas. Additional information about CSA Illustrata is available here. (Information Today NewsBreaks, Apr. 9, 2007.)

Thomson Gale introduces demographic tool for libraries

Thomson Gale has introduced a new online resource called Demographics Now Library Edition that is designed to offer public and academic libraries an affordable geographic business-intelligence solution. This business database is new to the library market and includes demographic estimates, consumer expenditure, and retail sales potential for all levels of geography across the U.S. It aims to meet the information needs of students studying entrepreneurship and business and of small-business owners.

Demographics Now Library Edition generates easy-to-read HTML reports that can be saved in Acrobat format or emailed for later retrieval, including standard reporting in four major categories: summary, comparison, ranking and mapping. In addition to business use, it can also provide cultural patterns and sociological trends in cities around the U.S. (Information Today NewsBreaks, Apr. 9, 2007.)

Librarian: One of Kiplinger's seven great careers

"Librarian. Forget about the image of librarian as mousy bookworm. Today's librarian is a high-tech information sleuth, a master of mining cool databases (well beyond Google) to unearth the desired nuggets. Plus you'll probably have regular hours and good job security. See the American Library Association's Web site or The Librarian's Career Guidebook by Priscilla Shontz and Straight from the Stacks: A First-Hand Guide to Careers in Library and Information Science by Laura Townsend Kane." (Kiplinger.com via Shifted Librarian, Apr. 8, 2007.)

Digital audiobook services through libraries

If you haven't seen or heard about it yet, the January/February 2007 issue of Library Technology Reports "examines in some depth digital audiobook services that can be purchased or leased. It also looks briefly at a few free online digital audiobook sources." "The purpose of this report is not to convince librarians to implement a digital audiobook service, but to help librarians make an informed decision." Among the areas that author Tom Peters covers:

  • The popularity of audiobooks and the demographics of the users who consume content in digital audiobook form;
  • Major library vendors for digital audiobooks and free sources of digital audiobooks;
  • How the interaction with audiobook content is understood or perceived by librarians: "As you consider a digital audiobook service," Peters notes, "it may be beneficial for librarians and other library staff members to discuss how users will interact with the content... Do users 'listen' to audiobooks, or are they 'reading' the book? This is not a merely semantic question. How your librarians answer may reveal the value they place on using audiobooks."
  • Current digital rights management (DRM) issues (such as the "The iPod Impasse") impacting audiobook services for libraries;
  • Content comparison and decision points, e.g., content characteristics; cost components; purchase, lease, and licensing options; circulation models; integration with other library services; and technical support;
  • Methods for implementing and sustaining digital audiobook services in your library;
  • Reports from the field (e.g., The Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center's field tests); and
  • Potential new vendors of audiobooks this year and beyond

(ALA TechSource blog via Shifted Librarian, Mar. 31, 2007.)

April 24, 2007

Harvard Management Update

Here are summaries of 3 articles from the April 1, 2007 issue of Harvard Management Update. (Full text of each article is available on EBSCOhost's Business Source Premier. PDF or hard copy is available from Harvard Business Online for $4.00.)

When the boomers leave, will your library be ready?

Librarianship isn't the only field with a graying workforce. Fifty percent of corporate executives will also be eligible to retire in the next five years. This major change "portends leadership crises" for organizations "that haven't prepared the next generation of younger managers to step into the departing executives' shoes." This article gives advice from experts on providing your organization's future leaders with effective training. Here are a some suggestions:

  • Identify future leaders. Your "high potentials" are the ones who learn quickly, are strong problem solvers, are skilled at working with diverse groups of people, and handle change well.
  • Stretch them in multiple directions. Give future leaders a series of relatively short-term assignments that round out their skills, for example an assignment that complements their regular duties.
  • Charge them with tackling problems as a group. Giving your "high potentials" a challenging problem to solve will help speed their learning and strengthen cross-organizational relationships, plus let them engage in "analysis, persuasion, and negotiation essential to their success" as leaders.
  • 'Encourage them to learn from the experts down the hall. "Creating mixed teams of 'high potentials' and experienced...managers is an efficient way to transfer knowledge" to the next generation.
  • Make learning objectives explicit Be explicit about the desired outcome of each assignment--which skills to strengthen and gaps to fill. Keep learning goals front and center.

(Ann Field, "When the boomers leave, will your company have the leaders it needs?", Harvard Management Update, Apr 1, 2007.)

How to retain your best staff

"Retaining top talent will be a major...imperative...in the next decade." This is particularly challenging for libraries now, when our most talented staff can be snapped up by vendors and other companies in the information industry. This article looks at decades of research on "job embeddedness": the more "embedded" an employee is in their job, the less likely they are to leave it. You'll find specific practices you can use to increase job embeddedness--and thus retention.

First: Stop thinking about what causes people to leave, and start thinking about what causes them to stay!

There are three interdependent aspects to job embeddedness:

  1. Fit: An employee perceives himself/herself as compatible and comfortable with the organization and the community.
  2. Links: An employee has strong, positive connections with other people in the organization and in the community.
  3. Sacrifice: An employee believes that leaving the organization and the community would mean giving up things she/he values.

The closer the fit between employees and their organization and community, the less likely they will defect.

The article lists ten ways you can improve "job embeddedness." Although they don't necessarily all fit in a library setting, I'm including them all. You'll recognize the ones you can't use!

10 things you can do now to improve job "embeddedness"

  1. Give employees information about community activities and resources.
  2. Offer perks based on tenure.
  3. Let employees design their work environment and company celebrations.
  4. Offer workers bonuses for referring candidates who then become hires.
  5. Encourage your direct reports to publicly recognize one-anothers' accomplishments.
  6. Assign mentors to coach new staff.
  7. Let people choose which teams or projects they want to join.
  8. Invite employees’ input into decisions that affect them.
  9. Encourage knowledge and best-practice sharing among staff.
  10. Sponsor employee sports teams in community leagues.

(Adapted from “Increasing human and social capital by applying job embeddedness theory,” by Brooks C. Holtom, Terence R. Mitchell, and Thomas W. Lee. Organizational Dynamics, vol. 35, no. 4 (2006). Lauren Keller Johnson, "A new approach to keeping your best on board," Harvard Management Update, Apr 1, 2007.)

Pernicious myth: "Leadership ability--you either have it or you don't"

One of the most "pernicious myths about leadership is that the ability to lead is a mysterious, almost magical power that only a lucky few possess." In this interview, Marty Linsky, cofounder of Cambridge Leadership Associates and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, talks "about the error of this myth and describes steps that anyone--at any level in an organization--can take to become more effective at exercising leadership." Every essential leadership skill can be taught and learned.

The two most important leadership skills are relationship skills and the ability to let others take the reins.

Leadership also entails risk. Critical steps to becoming a better leader include:

  • Clarify your purpose. What are you willing to take risks on behalf of?
  • Practice Getting on the Balcony [stepping back and asking yourself, "What's really going on here?"]
    • How are you understood by others?
    • What are your predictable responses that enable others to undermine your interventions?
    • What behaviors do you need to nurture to broaden your tool kit?

"With self-awareness, you can create a plan of action. You can identify what leadership skills you need to start practicing and stretching." (Marty Linsky, Christina Bielaszka-Duverna, "Conventional wisdom: 'Leadership ability--you either have it or you don't'," Harvard Management Update, Apr 1, 2007.)

Generational truths

Although the focus usually is on the gap between generations, these different demographic groups also have lots have in common. Greensboro, NC-based Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), a nonprofit, educational institution, notes these similarities:

  • Values are often the same. Family is the highest value among all generations.
  • People across generations "trust the people they work with directly more than they trust their organizations.”
  • People from all generations are uncomfortable with change.
  • Feedback is very important. "Everyone wants to know how he or she is doing, and wants to learn how to do it better."

("Generational truths," Inside Training Newsletter, Apr. 19, 2007.)

Researchers' use of academic libraries

The report from a study of how researchers interact with academic libraries in the UK says the majority of researchers think that their institutions’ libraries are doing an effective job in providing the information they need. But the report notes some problems that need to be addressed; they won't be a surprise!

  • Many researchers believe libraries give greater priority to support for teaching and learning than to research, which many librarians acknowledge.
  • Researchers' visits to their institution’s library have declined sharply in the last 5 years.
  • Most researchers use digital finding aids to locate both digital and print-based resources. Print finding aids are used by very few researchers, mainly in the arts and humanities.
  • Researchers place a very high value on electronic journals, but a much lower value on libraries’ provision of other kinds of digital resources.
  • Both researchers and librarians believe libraries will have a key role as custodians and managers of digital resources.
  • Libraries will need to put effort into securing significant use of their expertise and advice by researchers.
  • Dialogue between librarians and researchers is needed to ensure that library services are developed and deployed in the most effective way.
  • Many potentially useful information resources remain under-used, mainly because they exist only in hardcopy or are inadequately catalogued.
  • Significant differences exist between researchers and librarians in attitudes, perceptions and awareness of key issues.
  • The role of libraries may be diluted as researchers, particularly younger ones, turn to the social networking space to share research-based information.
  • The successful research library of the future needs to forge a stronger brand identity within the institution.

(Researchers’ Use of Academic Libraries and their Services via ResourceShelf, Apr. 20, 2007.)

Quick takes

Weather affects productivity

Productivity suffers in bad weather. A survey of over 6,000 full-time employees found that weather--particularly gloomy conditions--affects not only mood but employee productivity and attendance. Ten percent of workers feel that their productivity suffers during cold, rainy weather. And 12 percent said that their disposition is negatively impacted when it's gray outside. Absenteeism is higher on rainy days; 21 percent of workers admit they've called in sick when it rained. (Stacy Straczynski, "Rain, rain go away: Weather affects business," managesmarter, Apr. 14, 2007.)

Value divide

When employees aren't in lockstep with organizational decisions, it's often because their employer's core values aren't consistent with their own. Aligning employee values with those of the organization needs to be made a priority. The consequences for not doing so are dire. "When employee values clash with the organization's operating values, the outcome is work avoidance; passive, unproductive behaviors--and a silent sabotage of projects and ideas." So to fix the situation, "start thinking of value alignment and employee engagement as closely linked." (Inside Training Newsletter, Apr. 11, 2007.)

Online course in virtual world librarianship

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Alliance Library System of Illinois have partnered to offer a six week online (in Second Life) course to introduce you to libraries and information services in a virtual world. The course starts May 25 and is open to all library and information professionals. Complete information is here. (Shifted Librarian, Apr. 22, 2007.)

Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium

ALA TechSource and ACRL recently announced the first annual Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, to be held in Chicago July 22-24, 2007. Even if you can't send anyone from your library to the symposium, take a look at the great wiki site that's been created for it! (ALA TechSource blog, Apr. 11, 2007.)

DDR: A college craze

The New York Times has declared that Dance Dance Revolution, a game played with an Xbox or PlayStation2, "is firmly entrenched as a college craze." My first glimpse of DDR was at ALA Midwinter, when Jenny Levine was demonstrating it as a great attraction for teens in the library. It looked like a pretty popular attraction for librarians too! (New York Times, Education, Section 4A, April 22, 2007, p. 33.)

Your turn: Talk about it

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