In my July OneSource column, I mentioned that innovation is necessary and fun, but it can be hard and costly. So I introduced the first three of a “Lucky 7” list of ideas that show you how to pilot new ideas without spending a lot of money. You’ll find the final four ideas in this month’s column.

Lucky 7 Idea Pilot Number 4

Ultimate Goal: To maintain a real and rich dialogue with our communities.

Transparent Goal: To deliver service to the point of need and to move beyond the bricks and destination site mentality of our service strategies.

Long Lasting Legacy: Good relationships and a web of influence.

Sneaky Unintended Consequence: To effectively manage our image, presence, and value proposition within the political context of our communities.

The Plan: This is a simple one. Many of our clients have taken up two new religions this year – RSS and blogging. They are tied together, but they also serve two very different purposes. Blogging by library staff reconnects with the community. Of course, it helps if you keep the comments features (moderated) on and respond in a timely manner. Directors who blog have discovered a whole new dynamic tool to hear from and actively listen to their communities at all levels. Program librarians have found an easy way to promote their program calendars and get feedback. Teen services have been blown away by the engagement of their target patrons with gaming blogs. And the community can subscribe to these blogs and have the postings show up and tell them what they want to know that they’ve asked for. And it’s all at a very low cost to delight our users. 

Adopting RSS (Really Simple Syndication – Google it if you’ve been living in a cave this year – grin) can have amazing consequences for delivering content to your patrons. You can integrate licensed, free Web, and OPAC content in such a way that you can spread your presence throughout people’s personal Web pages, RSS aggregators and email, local community pages, or your own site. The result is that, for a very low cost, you have increased your value and relevance to your entire community and market. If anyone chose to attack the library subsequent to a networked RSS implementation, they would attack more than one community entity, and your power in the community will have increased support. Not bad for a simple pilot.

The Grown-Up Plan: SirsiDynix has added RSS to every one of its portal initiatives. SirsiDynix Enterprise Portal Solution™ (EPS) and Horizon Information Portal (HIP) are designed to provide you with the next-generation platform for success in your entire community. While including the OPAC (online public access catalog), these environments are designed to integrate and present the entire world of information in context to your community and to ensure the long-term relevance and value of the library.

Lucky 7 Idea Pilot Number 5

Ultimate Goal: It’s hard to argue that one of the top issues challenging public libraries is the decline or disappearance of school libraries and teacher-librarians in some communities. While this short-sighted fiscal strategy is causing damage to our schools and our children, many public libraries have tried to step into the breach with homework helper style services. 

Transparent Goal: Fix a problem while knowing that the issue is bigger than all of us. We know school libraries with good programs are proven to increase student performance as measured by standardized tests by 15 to 20 percent and that alliances with public library programs add another 5 percent!

Long Lasting Legacy: Done right, this has the potential to build better learners, build greater love for libraries in the next generation, and build a better society.

Sneaky Unintended Consequence: Public libraries can build stronger connections with school libraries, schools, and learners.

The Pilot Plan: You’re already doing this. You have your collections, reading clubs, kids’ portals, pathfinders on the Web, and homework helper and search and library skills training. Some libraries have teachers in residence after school every day. This is great. Now, how do you get down to the lesson level? How do you make a difference in those test scores? How do you actually get to know the curriculum and its goals? It’s quite the black box to the neophyte, eh?

The Grown-Up Plan: Take a look at SirsiDynix Rooms™ and SirsiDynix SchoolRooms™. SirsiDynix Rooms was developed around the top questions asked in public libraries, and those align very nicely with the kinds of things your student patrons ask. It has now been taken up to the next level with SirsiDynix SchoolRooms. Just take a look, and you’ll be amazed. The entire lesson level curriculum for K-12 is aligned with state and national standards and testing goals. It has to be seen to be believed. Combine this with our advanced usability testing with K-12 learners in partnership with Kent State University, and you’ve got a transformational initiative.

Lucky 7 Idea Pilot Number 6

Ultimate Goal: It’s one thing to get statistics to support reporting for our funders. It’s quite another to develop measurements to drive important decisions. Our goal is to get measurements that provide the foundation for decision making. It’s also a desirable goal to prove the impact of our programs, services, and collections.

Transparent Goal: To understand what is happening in our enterprises and communicate that to our bosses, boards, and funders.

Long Lasting Legacy: Stronger, more competitive libraries. Smarter decisions.

Sneaky Unintended Consequence: One hopes that these measured results and impact statements will result in more sustainable financing of libraries and increased use, as well as improvements in the perceptions of libraries among key groups.

The Pilot Plan: Do simple sampling surveys and polls of our circulation, satisfaction, and programs. Analyze your OPAC and ILS reports and statistics. Collect your Web site stats and delve into what they mean over time. There are many free and low cost tools on the Web to support these efforts.

The Grown-Up Plan: All of the above were what we could do in the past. Doing it and communicating our insights is seriously vital to our library’s health. But, it is also time consuming, hard, and has often created reams of impenetrable tables and numbers. There had to be a better way to ask the questions and get the answers we needed in a usable fashion that was quick, accurate, and resulted in visualizations that supported communicating successfully with senior management and funders. This is the thinking behind the key SirsiDynix reporting and analytical products. Whether you’re talking traditional Unicorn or Horizon reports or advanced tools like SirsiDynix Web Reporter and SirsiDynix Director’s Station,™ things in the measuring-our-libraries world are changing.

If you are a library executive who always looks for better ways to analyze the what, when, where, and why of your institution – whether involving one location, 50 libraries, or an entire consortium – Director's Station will open up a whole new world for you. This exciting new product will provide the knowledge you need to help shape the future of your institution.

Director's Station uses leading business intelligence technologies to enable libraries and consortia to maximize the value of data already available on their institutions and to make informed, data-driven decisions by providing a unique, customized view of your institution's activities and operations. In a colorful and easy-to-read format, you will analyze trends, pinpoint problem areas, and identify opportunities. And all this powerful knowledge is just a mouse-click away on your Web browser. 

With unique insights that come from using Director's Station, you and your staff will make the most of the data available on your collection, your users, and much more.  And you will be more effective than ever before in developing strategies for carrying out your institution's mission.

A great companion product for Director's Station is the Normative Data Project for Libraries (NDP), whose goal is to compile transaction-level data from libraries throughout North America; to link library data with geographic, demographic, and other key types of data; and, thereby, to empower library decision-makers to compare and contrast their institutions with real-world industry norms on circulation, collections, finances, and other parameters.

So if you're interested in seeing your institution in the context of libraries like yours nationally or in accessing specialized reports based on real-world national data, the NDP offers you significant benefits.

Lucky 7 Idea Pilot Number 7

Ultimate Goal: This one is more than fun. It’s about getting comfortable with podcasts and Video on Demand or VOD. So much of our circulation is now in the non-print areas (some libraries more than 40 percent) that we must focus on getting better at dealing with streaming media.

Transparent Goal: To offer a wider range of services to our users and meet their needs for information in all formats or containers.

Long Lasting Legacy: You and your colleagues delve into newer technologies and move up the learning curve to prepare for the next phase!

Sneaky Unintended Consequence: Coolness (but it is temporary).

The Pilot Plan: Buy or borrow a couple of iPods and MP3 players (ask your kids or teen club). Download the major video viewers to your laptop or PC. Discover the major podcast search engines like Podscope or Podzinger and search for interesting podcasts. Do this with your colleagues and learn to use these devices. It is very difficult for your staff to support e-books, audio books, and streaming media if they’ve never played with it themselves!

You can start with the free SirsiDynix Institute podcasts and webcasts. These are also available thorough iTunes.

The Grown-Up Plan: Subscribe to a suite of interesting audio books through something like Overdrive. Start a commuter marketing strategy or adapt the ListenIllinois program of “One State One Listen.” Add these books to your big discovery engine – the OPAC. Make sure you use the format field and allow it to be searched through a special search box in the promotion. Add this content to your enhancements for OPAC displays and records.

So there you have it. A Summertime Lucky 7 of ideas that you can pilot and still know that you can ultimately grow into a sustainable solution for your community’s needs. It can be fun. It will be great. Let’s learn.

Stephen Abram, MLS is Vice President, Innovation, for SirsiDynix and the President–elect of SLA.  He is an SLA Fellow and the past president of the Ontario Library Association and the immediate past president of the Canadian Library Association.  Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@sirsidynix.com.