Procrastinating and Pareto's Principle

We all do it.  I'm doing it right now.  You see, I have an assignment to do - the final assignment for my current course.  It - a journal on a one-day placement at the State Library of South Australia - was going along quite nicely.  Because during my one-day placement, I noticed that the types of enquiries received at the enquiry desk divided very neatly into an 80/20 split - 80% directional queries and 20% reference queries.

Some of you will have seen immediately the same thing I did, that this is an example of Pareto's Principle.  So since my one-day placement, that was what I had been thinking about - the implications of Pareto's Principle for the funding and staffing of libraries.  And that's what I had planned to write about in my assignment.

Then a clarification about the assignment was posted and I realised that I had to throw out what I had done and rethink the entire assignment.  That was last Thursday.  I am still rethinking my assignment, hence the procrastinating.

But back to Pareto.  One immediate implication for libraries is this - funding bodies will look at the statistics and think, well, why staff the enquiry desk with highly-qualified expensive librarians if 80% of the enquires are directional queries (such as "Where do I book a PC?" "How do I use the catalogue?"  "Where're the photocopiers?" etc)?  Why not staff them with less well-qualified, cheaper customer service staff instead?  And when someone comes along with a question that needs a librarian to answer it, then the librarian can come out and answer it.

It's a reasonable question - and the staffing of enquiry desks in public libraries with customer service staff instead of librarians is already happening.  For example, earlier this year, I saw a recruitment ad from the City of Port Adelaide Enfield for five trainee positions - one for each of its libraries.  But although the trainees would be sponsored by the council to go to TAFE and study, it would not for library studies - it would be for a Certificate in Business Studies.

However, I think that fails to take into account customer expectations.  I know that when I go into a library and have a question, which might be directional and might not, I expect that the person I speak to will be able to deal with any question I raise.  That is simply good customer service.  If I have a question that needs a librarian, I don't want to have to wait whilst the librarian is fetched from the back office.  If only for time management reasons, I don't want to have to wait around.  Each day when I go out, I have a plan for my day and a timetable to stick to (and yes, I do allow time for queuing in supermarkets, etc).  If my question is not dealt with reasonably quickly, then I will have to go.  And as David, one of my fellow students, points out: if someone has to "come back later", generally speaking, they won't.  They'll find another, easier, way to get what they need/want.

But, by the same token, it does free up librarians for the more "library" aspects of their work.

What do you think?

Cheers!

Catherine

Books not a major part of libraries?

Interesting article in today's Advertiser (in the SA Weekend supplement).  Titled "Battle Royal", it describes the ongoing dispute between the State Library of South Australia and the Royal Geographic Society of South Australia over the disposition of the RGS's York Gate Library.  Unfortunately, the article is not yet available online but I will post it for you when it is.

What caught my interest though is this statement in the article:

"Similarly, the collection had been dismissed by (Arts Minister John) Hill as 'a collection of books... not a major part of the library's services these days'."

I think this is a contentious point of view, to say the least.  Only last night, I was looking at a report from the OCLC - Perceptions of libraries and information resources - on the "library" brand and it said:

"Roughly 70 percent of respondents, across all geographic regions and U.S. age groups, associate library first and foremost with books.  There was no runner-up." (Their italics)

Now I would be one of the first to say that libraries are not in the "books" business but the "information" business.  Nonetheless, I am astounded by Minister Hill's statement.  The York Gate Library is not just a "collection of books" - it was amassed by William Silver, a London tea merchant, and focuses on books and documents on geography, exploration and colonisation.  It was purchased by the RGS in 1905 and has considerable historical and cultural value.  And the assertion that books are not a major part of the library's business, well, Minister Hill, I suspect that the 1,064,842 visitors to the State Library* would beg to differ.

As do I.

On a separate note, the City of Mitcham in Adelaide has advertised for a Customer Services Librarian if anyone is interested in applying.

Cheers!

Catherine

* Libraries Board of South Australia, Annual Report 2008-2009

An invitation

So day 2 of my Web 2.0 learning experience and I would like to extend an invitation to my fellow students to join me on this journey.  As many of us are external and/or part-time, we don't really get to spend a lot of time together.  Even with discussion boards available to us, our posts tend to be answers to the review questions rather than discussions.  Which is why I enjoy and value those occasions when I can get together with fellow students for a coffee before (and sometimes after) class to bounce around ideas and sometimes just have a general moan.  Knowing I'm not the only one feeling overwhelmed or confused is comforting.

So come on in.  Post, comment, ask a question - any question.  I'll be cross-posting on this occasion with our uni discussion boards.

After all, if libraries, where we all hope to work eventually, are going to take advantage of Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis and tagging, we need to start using these tools.  Particularly as we need to start getting ready for Web 3.0, the semantic web.

Cheers!

Catherine 

Greetings and felicitations

Hello. My name is Catherine, and I am a smart rat.

It was David Gerrold, of The Trouble with Tribbles fame, who dubbed me a smart rat in the mid-80s when I attended one of his writing workshops. Being a smart rat is something I have been thinking about a great deal recently.

You see, late last year, having been made redundant (yes, I'm a victim of the global financial recession) and having returned to Australia after nearly 16 years in the UK, it occurred to me that I had considerable skills that would transfer quite nicely to librarianship. So this year I started studying for a graduate diploma in said field (at the rate of one subject a semester so it's going to take a while). And having started my studies, I have become keenly aware of my "smart rat" status - whilst uni has been teaching me and my fellow students stuff like search strategies, information sources, customer service skills, and how do to reference interviews, I realised that I already knew all of this stuff. There's not actually been much new stuff for me to learn.

So whilst my fellow students are at the beginning of the information maze, exploring all the possible routes, I've taken not so much a short-cut as (to use a gaming term) the golden path to the end of the maze. Whilst they're still thinking about the reference interview, I'm exploring issues of neutrality of information, the statistics of reference and other queries at public libraries with Pareto's Principle, the Long Tail and the 98% Rule banging away in my head with all the implications they carry for libraries and librarians (both positive and negative), and the symbolism and mythology of libraries.

As a result, I now find myself struggling with meeting the academic requirements of the subject, of proving to the examiners that yes, I do know this stuff and yes, I'll actually make a good librarian. And I've realised that I need to step back, back-track and unpack all the experience and skills that I've gained during the course of my education and working life and demonstrate how they tie into the library setting.

But word counts for assignments limit how much of that I can do, hence this blog - a place where I can cogitate on libraries and librarianship both practically and - romantically, for want of a better word.

Perhaps you'd care to join me.

Cheers!


Catherine