Epic fail - or epic challenge?

Leigh Ann Jones over at the Shelf Consumed blog has two posts well worth reading by all librarians: Epic Fail and Rounding Up Readers.

In her first insightful post, Leigh Ann talks about a high school girl who is an avid reader but simply does not use the high school library.

Epic fail, as the kids say. We have kids in our school who love to read but never come to the library. Ouch.

Why? From the post:

Some Reasons MS/HS Readers Don't Come to the Library (in no particular order):

1. I'm too busy/my schedule doesn't allow time to come when I'm at school.
2. I didn't know the library had the books I wanted.
3. I thought checking out books was mostly for the younger kids.
4. I go to Barnes and Noble when I'm at the mall.
5. I get lots of Barnes and Noble gift cards for my birthday, etc.
6. I'm afraid I'll lose library books.
7. I thought you had fines in the library.
8. I thought you had to return library books in one week.

OK, I can see that the school library can't do much about 4 or 5 - nor would we want to if we could, but the rest of these reasons could be ameliorated. And Leigh Ann, bless her proactive heart, shares in the follow-up post, her actions...

• Display New York Times bestsellers that we have in the library for middle grade readers and teens (see photos [in blog post]).
• Go to Barnes and Noble on a regular basis to grab lots of brand new books to minimize the lag time from when the books hit stores to when students check them out (I check reviews in the store using my phone).
• Simplify checkout by eliminating the library card.  Students now self-check using their lunch number.
• Email the middle school and high school reading/English teachers to ask for help in spreading the word about great books and friendly policies in the library such as no fines.
• Beef up the digital eBook collection.
• Make school-wide announcements asking students to save their cash and come to the library to request the book they want to read instead.
• Recruit students to recommend books for our library blog.
• Greet every student who comes to the library.  Engage them in conversations about new books and reading if possible.

How about eliminating fines for overdue books - once and for all? (One major reason I don't check out books from any library.) How about accomodating those busy schedules with before and after school hours? Does the library need a Facebook fan page to keep kids up to date on new materials? Is there a way for students to request books online via the library website? (see below) Any special programs that the library can hold to attract students? Does the library have any non-book services and resources that might bring kids in who would then see the book displays?

The question every library today should be trying to answer is "Why should people come to my library?" Leigh Ann has given us a good start in answering this question.

BFTP: One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy - telephone sales calls

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post March 6, 2008.

My friend Tim Wilson over at the Savvy Technologist blog posted this little rant about vendor presentations. Go, Tim!

I've made similar observations as well about F2F sales presentations, but maybe it is time to educate those poor lost souls who do telephone cold calling.

I sincerely dislike sales calls. I am a very tough sell. I am tight with the district's money. I am a born skeptic. And I am unfailingly polite. Being nice to someone who annoys me causes cognitive dissonance which annoys me even further. 

Sales callers (I imagine you looking like Ernestine - yes, even you guys), here are a few tips for selling to hard cases like me:

1. Talk to the right person. Believe me immediately when I say that I do not select textbooks, library books, or videos. Yes, my office orders them, but I do not select them. I make no decisions about things like photocopiers, fire walls, servers, or online databases - I only act on the recommendations of those people in the district who have the appropriate expertise and whom I trust.  Sell to the right person.

2. Tell me why I should give you my time within the first 30 seconds. Our telephones, our network, our website, our Internet filter, and our e-mail program all are working just fine, thank you. If something was not working or I had a pressing need, I would be calling you. You've got 30 seconds to tell me how you are going to save me time, save me money, or improve learning opportunities for my students. Talk fast. Oh, and give your dumb company a name that actually means something. When you say you are calling from Matrix Optimization Apogees, you could be selling diet cola or hair restorer as far as I can tell. 

3. Don't ask me how I am doing. I will tell you how I am doing. I will tell you how every tech director and every tech department employee in the entire world is doing:

I am busy. 

Unless you really want to know about my aching knees, my district's tight budget, and a troublesome co-worker, come up with a better opener.  

4. Do a little basic research and keep notes. Don't try selling me telephone service when your company doesn't serve my area. Don't offer me Internet connectivity when I am in the third year of a five year contract. Don't even bother mentioning that Windows security system since our district is 90% Mac - just like it was the last time you called three months ago.

5. "Did you get the information I sent?" is a senseless question. I get even more junk mail* than I get junk phone calls. There is a convenient recycling container right by the mailboxes in our offices. Sweet.

6. Be ready to provide local references. I guarantee that my first question to you will be: "Can you give me the names of three schools in my area that use your product or service and the name of a contact in each?"  If you can't, I will have to consider myself a beta test site for your product and we should talk about how much you are willing to pay my district to do this work for you.

7. Understand the relationship public schools have with local vendors. It's the people in Mankato and in Minnesota that pay the taxes that support my schools. Anytime I can buy from that taxpayer (and parent) across the street, I will - even it means paying a small price premium for the privilege. Sorry, that is just the way we do business. Oh, an added benefit of buying locally is that if you need to find a throat to choke, it ain't out in California.

8. Know that it is sort of fun to be passive-aggressive with you people. I am always nice, but that doesn't prevent me from:

• putting you on hold and going to get coffee
• transferring you to somebody I know isn't in the office
• asking you to call back at a more convenient time (when I am out of the office)

Here's my best suggestion cold callers - find a job with honor, respect, and a future. Say, convenience store stick-up artist, Internet spammer, or American Idol contestant. Something you can be proud of at your kids' career day.

Don't call us; we'll call you.

 

* A little bonus trivia for marketers from The Power of Intuition: And Why It’s the Biggest Myth in Business Today  By Kevin J. Clancy and Peter C. Krieg (ChangeThis brief, February 2008)

One of the best kept secrets in American business today is that the average ROI of most marketing programs is zero or negative. Study after study, using different methodologies, approaches, and data, all come to this disappointing conclusion: 

• Nielsen reports a 95% new product failure rate.
• The University of Michigan discovered that the average cross-industry customer satisfaction score has fallen below 75%.
• The Marketing Science Institute determined that a 100% increase in advertising expenditures yields just a 1% increase in sales.
• ROI measurement firm Marketing Management Analytics found that major media advertising for consumer packaged goods brands returns 54 cents on the dollar and campaigns for non-consumer packaged goods brands, 87 cents on the dollar—two losing propositions.
• A Deutsche Bank study of packaged goods brands found that just 18% of television ad campaigns generated a positive ROI in the short-term; less than half (45%) saw any ROI payoff over the long run.
• Copernicus observed that brand equity is in decline in 48 of 51 categories where buyers perceive the leading brands as more similar than different, and make purchase decisions based on price rather than product and service attributes. 
  

With this kind of track record, is it any wonder that only two out of ten U.S. companies grow organically—through their marketing efforts and introduction of new products—by more than 2 or 3 percent per year?

7 ways to promote your library's online resources

How do you persuade kids (and teachers) to use authoritative online sources and not just “Google” the information they need? How do you teach your users to see the library as a portal to trusted sources?

Online resources do not jump out at students and staff and scream “use me” any more than our library books jumped off the shelves. Digital resources also need to be promoted and displayed. The Indispensable Librarian, 2nd ed, 2013

The librarians I know are masters of promoting books to kids. Displays, contests, book talks, author visits, posters, and other far more creative tactics move books off the shelves and into kids hands and hearts. We've had about 500 years experience in getting people to read, so we should be good at it.

But lately I have heard a different frustration expressed. After investing significant amounts of our library resource dollars in commercial online products, they too often go unused or underutilized.

Wouldn't you think that today's "digital native" [insert cynical snort here] would just automatically find and use full-text magazine services, online encyclopedias, subject specific databases, e-books, video content providers, and other digital sources of information that are vetted and reliable? 

"Oh, you mean there are other places than Google, Wikipedia and YouTube to find information?"

Can we apply some of the same techniques for promoting print resources to digital resources? And what new techniques do we need to use? Here are a few starter ideas...

1. Library orientation programs must of course demonstrate online resources as well as the physical ones.
2. Introductions to online resources are best done during research units themselves—when students actually need the information they contain.
3. Any bibliography or webquest prepared for a unit should reference electronic tools as well as those in print.
4. During inservices, at teacher meetings and in newsletters, teachers need to be informed about and trained in using these digital resources.
5. Library webpages should clearly mark links to their digital resources, either on the homepage or on a separate page that has a clear link from the home page. A note by the link that tells the user any special instructions for accessing the resource not only helps the user but also cuts down on questions. The library’s webpage with links to its digital resources should be the default page when any web browser is launched on every library computer.
6. Students and teachers can be subtly reminded of the schools’ online resources if guides in the form of posters are visible near workstations. Bookmarks with this information may yet have a few years of viability left.
7. Contests, including scavenger hunts, can raise the visibility of commercial online resources. Tie your contests to a single database at a time, doing smaller contests, more often. We have Battle of the Books. How about Battle of the 'bases?

Just because it doesn’t fit in a display case, doesn’t mean you can’t make it visible.

I am very interested in effective methods librarians have found to lead students to good online resources.

Readers, help me out with this one! Thanks.

Image source