The storied library
From PLN
The storied library
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Before I became Director and Managing Editor for PLN, I was--briefly--a senior analyst for OCLC following the OCLC-RLG merger. As part of my work for OCLC during the first half of 2007, I wrote a series of essays for WebJunction expanding on an idea I'd held for some time and its implications for telling libraries' stories: That libraries are more about stories than they are about information.
That series, as with most content at WebJunction, appeared under the same Creative Commons license used for this platform (Attribution, Non-commercial), which means it can be used here or anywhere else as long as the original source is cited and you're not (we're not) charging directly for the text.
The series includes these articles:
- The storied library introduces the concept and appears below in its original form (with one link updated).
- The storied library: Filling in the story expands on the concept of library as story and collection of stories. It includes a hypothetical example based on a real (small or rural, since that's WebJunction's focus) library, "Three stories tall and 113,000 stories deep--or is that sixteen million stories?." I discuss the definition of "story" and how it applies to what a library does, the value of this perspective and its limits...and why I've always found "information" to be a somewhat unsatisfactory word for the role of libraries.
- What's your story? talks about "telling your story"--marketing under another name--and the process of discovering what's distinctive and special about your library and its "brand."
- The storied library: Developing your story suggests going on a "fishing trip" to help put your library's story into perspective--that is, finding someone from a similar library to look at your situation and point out what's special and what's missing. Why a "fishing trip"? Because of the old adage that fish couldn't discover water--which realistically means that fish probably don't fully understand what's special about their stream or river, while an intelligent fish from another river might. "Peer consulting" can help you define your story.
- Expanding your story discusses the need to look at your patrons' stories--focusing on how your library improves those stories, a much more important metric (especially for public libraries) than the sheer number of stories you provide. That piece also discusses the need to think about your library as a place and what that means for your story, and the desirability of finding personal connections--the people in your library who are loved by your patrons for their positive impact.
- Telling your story offers a few brief notes about telling the story--that is, marketing. You'll find many more resources in PLN's Marketing category and elsewhere. Two resources particularly worth noting (included in this piece): the State Library of Iowa's Telling the Library Story Tool Kit and the Library Use Value Calculator originally developed by the Massachusetts Library Association and since used by many library groups.
- Telling your community's stories - appearing at WebJunction as Your community's stories, this final piece discusses ways that libraries can help tell the stories of their community and its patrons.
Now, here's the introductory essay. --Walt Crawford 12:46, 28 December 2007 (EST)
The storied library
- by Walt Crawford, originally published here on WebJunction
Your library is a place of stories.
It always has been. It should continue to be, far into the future.
You acquire stories. You collect or provide access to stories that you don’t actually acquire. You organize stories to make them more accessible and relate them to one another. You distribute stories to those who want to read, hear or see them. You preserve the stories that make us human so that future patrons can gain from them. You tell stories directly to children. Your library adds value to its stories in many ways, making them more useful toward enriching the lives—the stories—of your patrons.
You don’t just collect, organize, distribute and tell existing stories. You also help your patrons--your community--find, enrich and tell their own stories. You may already collect and organize unpublished stories, the local and individual stories that make your community distinct. Increasingly, you may even create and publish stories.
Your library has many fictional stories and probably many more that aren’t supposed to be fiction. Many of your stories come printed on paper and bound into books. Others come pressed on plastic discs as CDs (audiobooks, of course—but songs are stories too) and DVDs (what movie isn’t a story?). You probably have tens of thousands (or millions) of smaller stories collected in newspapers and magazines. Your archive of local newspapers constitutes the variegated stories of your community.
These days, most of the stories in your library are there only when they’re needed. They sit on computers around the world—in licensed databases and on the open web—waiting for someone to find them, appreciate them, build on them.
Stories are stories, whether in books, websites, CDs or local history collections. The media may change (although books aren’t going away any time soon), but stories remain.
Why stories?
You may have thought of your library as “the information place.” If so, you’re probably nervous about competition from Google and Ask and Yahoo! and Live.
Take heart. You never were the information place. Information--facts--surround us and come from many sources. Most people don’t get the bulk of their daily information from libraries. You couldn’t handle the traffic if they did. If you’re trying to compete directly with GooYahAskLive, you’ll lose--and if you think a library’s just an information place, you’re in danger.
Sure, public libraries serve as information resources, primarily to fill in the pieces. You connect people with secondary information beyond the daily paper, the special-interest magazines they subscribe to, the resources they acquire for their jobs, and the internet tools they use every day. Public libraries serve as informational safety nets, to serve those who can’t find or afford fundamental information and to help people go beyond fundamentals. Those are important roles.
Libraries also serve other roles, to be sure—community centers, meeting rooms and more.
But mostly, public libraries deal in stories—the narratives that enlighten, entertain and communicate knowledge and wisdom.
The height of Pikes Peak is information. How Zebulon Pike documented it, how Edwin James climbed it, how it lost the apostrophe: Those are stories.
Stories are how we communicate who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve accomplished. Stories communicate our dreams, our fantasies, our hopes. Stories are, to a great extent, what makes us human.
Libraries in general, and public libraries in particular, serve a uniquely central role in the universe of stories. It’s not the only role of libraries--but it may be what you do better than any other institution. Books are only the beginning; stories are central.
Conversations
What about the library as conversation? That’s the perspective proposed by a group of authors on behalf of ALA ’s Office for Information Technology Policy, urging libraries to become more heavily involved in participatory networks. You can read about it here.
You can recast stories within libraries as forms of conversation—but do you want to convince your community to make that semantic leap? I believe every conversation begins with a story (sometimes a minimal story), and nearly every library conversation fundamentally involves stories.
So what?
You need to tell your story. Whether you call it story-telling, marketing, advocacy, promotion or community outreach, you need to make the library’s story heard in your community. You also need to make sure you understand your community’s and patrons’ stories and how your library can serve those stories, both through participatory networks and other new tools and through more traditional means.
To tell your story effectively, you must understand your own story—what you’re about, how you’re central, what you do offer and what you should offer. I’ll be writing a few pieces on aspects of that topic. As you understand and clarify your library’s story, it helps to begin with a workable foundation. I believe information is more quicksand than foundation: You’ve never been as central as you might like, and you’re becoming less central all the time.
We’re flooded with information, more than anyone can possibly use. We’re not short of stories—but stories are more manageable and speak more directly to us. Libraries do stories well; you need to do your own stories better.
What’s your story? I believe it’s mostly a story about stories.
Related articles
- Essay:Telling the library story - The March 2008 LLN Peer Panel discusses library outreach or "information literacy."
- Looking in the mirror - On an institutional and personal level, you need to reflect on who you (and your library) are and what you want to become. What's your library's vision? What about your own?
- Brands - notes on a more business-oriented approach to defining the library in the community.
- From awareness to funding - Two commentaries on this 2008 OCLC report
