Questions on my mind for ALA Midwinter
From PLN
Questions on my mind for ALA Midwinter
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Holt's Perspectives
by Glen Holt, published January 31, 2007
It is a sign of my advancing age that I actually try to understand change rather than just cope with it. This column examines four different developments in society and their implications for libraries. I hope that at least one of them strikes a chord with you.
"You" and "I" are Person of the Year
Did it bother anybody else to find out that “You” and “I” (depending on your point of view) are being honored as the 2006 “Person of the Year?” Time magazine, with its fake-mirror cover proclaiming its choice, along with several other publications and columnists (mostly appearing late enough to be derivatives of Time) each told me that “You” and “I” had achieved this great honor.
I thought the honor was nice until I read the articles, and, in each case, found that “You” and “I” gained the honor because of a machine. Specifically, the honor came because of how “You” and “I” are using the high-speed Internet and the potential for Internet 2. We are using computer/communication setups to express our egocentric views, explore our identities, build secondary and tertiary communities and look for friends because this kind of interaction is less trouble (and often more trouble-causing) than person-to-person transactions.
My problem, quite simply, is that, under these criteria, I don't want to be “Person of the Year.” The honor is as much about the hype of new product promotion by lazy reporters who had to make a choice from a spectacularly bland group of world leaders and cult figures. Not being able to select anyone who really stood out from their various packs, Time resorted to low-brow demagoguery, and chose “You” and “I” and “everybody else” who can manipulate a mouse or a cell phone keyboard. When everyone is honored, where is the honor – except to be recognized as the anonymous “everybody.” The honor reminded me of Garrison Keeler’s Lake Wobegon where “All the children” are above average. What an honor!
I believe that I have some control over my machines rather than my machines controlling me. And, I still believe that individuals and groups of people – fervid religious believers, elected officials, corporate executives, interest groups, and communities of interest of all kinds bear responsibility for the conditions of our world and the state of our institutions including academies, schools, museums, historical societies - and libraries.
My other thought is a library question: If the New Machines and “Internet 2” have made “You” and “I” the person(s) of the year, then how should we be using our new found status and the new machines to improve the quality of services and the (often anonymous) electronic collaboration that is the hallmark of the reason “You” and “I” and “Everybody Else” are the person of the year? (On electronic collaboration see Nicole C. Engard and RayAna M. Park. “Intranet 2.0: Fostering Collaboration.” Online. 30:3 (May June 2006), pp. 16-23.)
A statistics-driven profession?
To paraphrase a famous Julie Andrews song, “The Internet’s Alive with the Sound of Statistics.”
I am hardly a disinterested figure in the field of library statistics since I come out of the Social Sciences where statistical methodology is at least as important as ideas. Moreover, ALA Editions has just published my research team’s book on a statistically reliable and transportable methodology for calculating the value of public libraries: D. Elliott, G. Holt, S. Hayden and L.E. Holt. Measuring your library’s value: How to do a cost-benefit analysis for your public library. (Chicago: ALA Editions, 2006).
It is a conservative book that advocates conservative use of a long-established econometric methodology that those who want to give good news find easy to fudge on the benefits side. The interest in the volume and ALA Edition’s willingness to publish it, however, demonstrate professional interest in the subject of value estimation. There are some other signs as well.
One recent e-mail notes:
MPS Technologies are to launch 'ScholarlyStats Integration' at the ALA [Seattle] Exhibition. This extension to the ScholarlyStats library usage statistics service will use the SUSHI protocol to integrate ScholarlyStats journal usage data (gathered from over 40 platforms) into other library systems, and comes as a host of new institutions subscribe for the award winning service. . . . Early integration partners include Thomson Scientific, with their new Journal Use Reports service, Innovative Interfaces Inc., with their Electronic Resources Management (ERM) system and Ex Libris's Verde. Automating the integration of journal use data into these systems will make the comparison of a wider range of data quicker and easier for libraries. Allowing institutions to analyze their content usage more effectively will boost their efforts to offer the best possible selection of content to their patrons. . . . Using the SUSHI protocol, we can now automatically transfer usage data for the 70,000 journals from the 13,500 publishers that we cover" says Martha Sedgwick, ScholarlyStats Product Manager. . . .
You can preview [www.scholarlystats.com Scholarly Stats] before you head for Seattle.
As always is the case, public libraries are marching to the statistical drummer in greater disorder than academic libraries. Some notable examples of significant statistical efforts have occurred, however.
SirsiDynix’s Chief Statistician Bob Molyneux continues to work the federal-state statistics files, the company’s own additions to his “Normative Data Project” pot, and his well-known analytical skills to explore quantitative relationships among public libraries. We have begun to see the early results through 2006 on SirsiDynix’s NDP website. We will see more of Molyneux’s analysis results through 2007 in various publications, including Public Library Quarterly which Leslie Edmonds Holt and I edit.
Meanwhile, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has accomplished an economic-impact analysis on its own that has received far too little publicity in the profession. (Highlights of that study can be found here. The whole report is on CLP’s website.) The same thing can be said for the 2005 economic-impact analysis of the Seattle Public Library. Seattle commissioned a high-quality economic-impact analysis for its new Koolhaus-designed Central Library. The analysis demonstrates that Seattle’s new central is quite a draw for out-of-town visitors. The outside income is helpful to a city that manages to tax its tourists (especially those renting cars at SeaTac Airport) heavier than any other city or nation in the world. The bonanza of this good publicity and the new tourist taxes, however, has not helped solve Seattle’s problems with its library operating budget, a disgrace for a self-proclaimed world-class city.
Finally, though we know less about this effort, Consultant Susan Imholtz is calling supporter-stalwarts together to discuss the preliminary results of the Americans for Libraries Council-sponsored study, Public Library Valuation: Needs and Opportunities. This study was launched last year at a New York City meeting of interested methodologists. The organization’s homepage is [www.americansforlibraries.org here].
Leslie Edmonds Holt, EBSCO executive Stratford Lloyd and I tried to set this burgeoning measurement and evaluation movement into some perspective in one of the essays we published in Library success: A celebration of library innovation, adaptation and problem solving (EBSCO Publishing, 2006). The essay makes the argument that both because of Federal law and greater dependence on philanthropy, libraries are becoming much more self-conscious about how they look statistically.
Future of SirsiDynix
SirsiDynix is by library standards a very big deal both in North America and worldwide. Its future, therefore, is of enormous significance to our profession.
SirsiDynix has come under partial (some sources say nearly full) ownership of an investment company named [www.vistaequitypartners.com Vista Equity Partners]. In its news release, SirsiDynix posed its new relationship with Vista as an “investment partnership” though no details were forthcoming on who held control when it comes time to make big policy jumps.
A quick examination of Vista’s website shows the partnership is hardly one of equals. The SirsiDynix release emphasized the deep pockets of its partner, i.e. Vista has $1 billion in venture capital to invest with or already invested mostly in mid-cap technology companies. On December 27, the date of the press release from SirsiDynix, Vista’s newest update on its website was from October. There was no mention of the SirsiDynix deal.
One other thing that is apparent on the Vista website: Vista Equity both buys and sells companies.
Since SirsiDynix became one company, a few have wondered whether the Sirsi culture or the Dynix culture would win out in management thinking. To those who don’t recognize the familiar pattern in the Vista partnership, I recall a Bottom Line article which had the dramatic title, “R.I.P. NOTIS: preparing for vendor death and transformations.” (v.8, no. 1, Summer, 1994, pg. 54-55). Early in that article I wrote:
A recent press release from Ameritech assures us that NOTIS is not dead. Instead, the company states, “NOTIS has become “Classic NOTIS" - unfortunately recalling the "Coke Classic" marketing fiasco of a few years ago. Now, Ameritech says, we have a clear choice: We can have "Classic NOTIS." Or we can select their "Dynix." And, if we want a client-server system, we can have their Dynix Marquis now. But if we can wait, we can have their "Horizon," a new-and-improved client-server system still under development. . . .
After Dynix became part of Ameritech, it was spun back on itself. Then, Ameritech was taken over by Southwestern Bell, which became SBC, which purchased AT&T and reoriented its operations under the old Ma Bell label. As that consolidation occurred, Dynix became part of the much larger SirsiDynix, including all its previous pieces. Now SirsiDynix is one among many electronic information companies owned or at least mostly owned by Vista Equity Partners.
If you want to see the extent of buying and selling as it has affected the fate of the dozens of ILS companies that have operated in North America and the world including SirsiDynix, take a look at Marshall Breeding’s graph showing “the history of mergers and acquisitions in the library automation industry.” Breeding’s Library Technology Guides, where this graph appears, is an extraordinary testament to the useful work that independent researchers are sharing with their colleagues in the library profession via the Internet.
The net result of all these acquisitions and reorganizations for SirsiDynix is three-fold:
- SirsiDynix has grown, and growth still is the major company theme.
- The primary desired growth is in the value of the company.
- Lots of different entrepreneurs have made a lot of money, which is how North American capitalism is supposed to work.
One final point about this story. Along with looking at Dynix history, the best prediction of SirsiDynix’s future is to look at the Vista website, especially the credentials of its three principals: Robert F. Smith, a former Goldman Sachs’ expert in mergers and acquisitions; Stephen Davis, an expert in leveraged buyouts and high-yield financing in preparation for buying or selling high-tech companies; and Brian Sheth, an expert in leveraged buyouts and mergers and acquisitions.
In more ways than one, library high-tech as summarized by Breeding’s graph, has followed the technology-development cycle of experimentation to find the market, diversification to expand the market and consolidation to capture a larger share of a mature market even as entrepreneurs innovate to find new markets.
In the end, this discussion confirms what we really need to continue to recognize: Even the core functions of libraries have been influenced by economic developments from other economic sectors. SirsiDynix is one profound example of how technology changes and business trends affect the heart of our business. No doubt there will be more.
Learning about service from and for children
My last item for this column is about children as consumers. I was attracted to this topic by a Christmas Eve teaser of a headline that declared, “Study Takes Rare Look At How Materialism Develops In The Young.”
A quick perusal of the item produced this excerpt:
Despite the finger pointing, relatively little is known about how materialistic values develop in childhood and adolescence, a University of Illinois researcher says. ’Materialism has long been of interest to consumer researchers, but research has centered on adult consumers, not children or teens,’ says Lan Nguyen Chaplin, a professor of marketing in the U. of I. College of Business.
Chaplin’s co-investigator, Deborah Roedder John, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, reportedly used collages of “material objects” and “non-materialistic sentiments” to determine at what age kids became “materialistic” and how those issues were tied to personal esteem. They then speculated on how best to influence children away from materialism and toward greater self esteem.
If you subscribe to the right journals, you will be able to read the whole article by the two researchers. It can be found in "Growing up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in Children and Adolescents," forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research.
I admit to having problems with academic research that seems to result in easier labeling of complex individual and group behavior. Although this article provides something to think about, I found it far less useful for library management than the on-going work of Texas-based scholar, James U. McNeal.
McNeal’s newest book is On Becoming a Consumer: Development of Consumer Behavior Patterns in Childhood [Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007, $59.95]. The publisher’s description on Amazon.com is as follows:
The book demonstrates how consumer development is intertwined with cognitive and motor development; each of the three dependent on the other two. Showing consumer behavior being responsible for body and mind development is new thinking; yet, the examples are clearly presented so that any interested person can grasp them. Presenting consumer behavior in stages of development, while logical, is essentially new also. We are familiar with cognitive development, for example, being described in stages, but not CB. In fact, stages of cognitive development are sometimes used as a framework for explaining consumer behavior but not its development as such. In this sense then, the book might be considered cutting edge as compared to one that offers a slightly different approach to the existing thought on consumer behavior.
McNeal’s new book is an extension of his earlier studies, reported in The Kids Market: Myths and Realities and his now classic Kids as Customers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children.
I still am enough of an idealist to believe that libraries ought to be judged – at least partially – by how well they serve their weakest customers. And, there is nothing weaker than a naïve pre-schooler, a befuddled primary schooler or that most American of stereotypes, the emotionally addled teenager. My service goal was always to ask how well the weakest customer was served by my least trusted and least trained library employee. When it comes to organizing library services for kids and attracting them to the library, McNeal and his colleagues will provide lots of answers.
Have fun in Seattle. ALA Conventions are a great place for idea testing and, if you’re willing, upsetting stereotypes about any number of things connected with libraries.
Related articles
- ALA Midwinter--what it's good for - the PLN Challenge for January 2008
- Library conferences: Why bother? - the LLN Peer Panel discusses this issue just before ALA's 2007 Annual Conference.
