I attended the 2011 Texas Book Festival. The Festival provided two full days of books and authors.  My daughter and I had a plan and between the two of us, we either heard or talked at book signings to about 45 authors!  Several author panels helped make that number possible.

Each author was an experience; different in their own ways, but connected by a love of writing and a passion for their subject.

Molly Shannon of Saturday Night Live fame – “Tilly the Trickster” is just like she is on TV; vivacious, charming and always fun.  She interacted with the crowd and made her long line for signing well worth the wait.

Jeff Guinn – “The Last Gunfight” is an exceptional story teller, both on paper and in person.  He teases out those bits of information that make the story come alive.  Listening to him is like sitting around the table listening to your favorite uncle tell stories from his childhood.  You feel like Jeff was at the OK Corral and knew everyone involved!

Stacy Schiff – “Cleopatra” made you understand the palace intrigue and political scheming that was Cleopatra.  Cleopatra was a beauty who could scheme with the best of Rome.  She was much more than the Hollywood character.

Jordan Kaye – “How to Booze” was energetic and entertaining.  He speaks with the professional knowledge of a mixologist but does it in a way that makes anyone feel they can mix a drink for the most discerning guest.

After Paula Deen, one of the most popular authors was David Eagleman – “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.”  David has an excellent ability to take a staggeringly complex subject; the workings of our brain, and make it understandable.  He is doing groundbreaking research into the subject.

These are five authors I heard and talked to.  They are representative of the quality at the Festival, but are by no means the only ones who brought wonder, laughs and an occasional tear to the eye.

Adding to the wonderful mix of authors were the huge number of volunteers.  They are passionate about making the Book Festival a success. they were unfailingly polite, helpful and did everything they could to make you feel as if the Festival was just for you alone.  Even the most harried, exhausted volunteer took time to stop and answer questions with a smile and a welcome.

The weather was beautiful.  Everything went so well from an attendees perspective, it seemed they had arranged the weather as well.

Because of my interest in the subject, I watched for good and bad experiences during the whole Festival and was consistently amazed at how well they maintained the good experience for the estimated 35,000 attendees.

For any reader, I highly recommend attending a book festival.   They rarely fall short and by my experience, usually exceed my expectations!

While library work isn’t quite the same as medical research; those three components can be applied to our work.

• Colleagues all over the world for collaboration.
• Access to technology not designed for libraries.
• Attitude that we can solve anything.

One aspect of professional associations which I value highly is the networking opportunities.  I am or have been a member of the Kansas Library Association, the Mountain Plains Library Association, the American Library Association, LITA, LLAMA, and ASCLA.

Each provides me a network of trusted friends I can reach out to for help.  I maintain library friends from around the world on Facebook.  What a rich resource!!

I have the privilege to work with many excellent colleagues in my library.  One of them is David Lee King.   For several years, David and I have looked at technology in libraries as well as outside the library world.  We are always searching for something that will make that difference in libraries; even if it was designed for something completely different, for example: water desalinization or micro chip production.  What might it bring to libraries that we never considered before?  We haven’t found much yet, but that doesn’t keep us from looking.  One day…!

Of course, the most important part is the attitude of endless possibilities.  It is so easy to say, “No.  if we can’t solve it–there is just no solution.”  Have we truly explored the possibilities?

This is the most important lesson I take from this breakthrough in research:

We can solve ANYTHING!
We just have to find the person(s) who can do it!  That can be hard.  But as they say in the movie “A League of Their Own,”  “The hard is what makes it worth doing.”

I believe Librarians are natural leaders for this concept.  We have the world at our fingertips, with enormous  networks that truly span everything in the known universe and people who are expert in every field.  We can solve anything!

We just have to believe we can!

Recently, I read, “Beaten, seared and sauced: on becoming a chef at the Culinary Institute of America” by Jonathan Dixon.  He says, “Service is a transaction, hospitality is an experience.”

I find that an interesting distinction.

Libraries conduct many transactions every day: checking out materials, looking up phone numbers, finding something in the catalog, etc.  If done with our typical methods of customer service, these transactions will be done efficiently and with a smile.  Does that smile elevate this to an experience?  Is a smile hospitality?  I’m inclined to say, “no.”  Certainly, that is what typically happens in most libraries and would be considered OK.

Those routine tasks can be rote transactions for the staff and public.  Think about everyday things that happen in your life.  Consider what you thought or felt at the time.  Think about situations that you enjoyed.  What actions could we take from those memories that would transform a regular action into an experience? How would thinking about hospitality help make that shift from transaction to experience?

This is what I’m thinking about.  I want to hear from you.

Our members use the library in so many ways that will not be effected by this process, I can’t see providing them no experience when even reduced services might not impact their use.

I think we will try to be like this construction worker.  We will try to find a way to make a bad situation tolerable.

Show tunes might just be the ticket at the checkout desk!!

What have you done to make a bad situation better?

Our building was designed by Michael Graves.  If you know his style you can see it as soon as you enter the Rotunda.

We made a decision when designing the building to put our non-library functions: meeting rooms, cafe, gallery, etc. at the front of the building.  This allows access to them before and after library hours.  It works great!  However, one trade-off is the collections are not visible from the front.  We often get questions from new members, “where are the books?”  We’ll talk about that in another post.

The space is impressive and full of light but is not necessarily welcoming.  It has great acoustics and provides a performance space over the holidays.  Groups from the local schools and others love to perform with lots of doting family in attendance.  We’ve had 2 flash mobs in the space!  All of this is fine for those special occasions, but day-to-day it is not welcoming.

Three things we tried to cozy up the space have worked well:

• Art collections.  We have a significant art collection.  Display cases are placed around the rotunda to showcase smaller items.  People stop an look at the exhibits and will bring friends and family back to see the art.
• Banners eight feet long create eye catching advertising for up-coming programs.  We create these in-house. They add color and visual interest to the space.
• We had a few wooden benches which were used for people waiting on rides, but nothing comfortable.  We pulled some chairs from storage and placed them in the rotunda with small side tables.  People are in them all the time.
  About 3,000 people a day go past this spot.  The acoustics are great for music but they also amplify children s voices and squeaky shoes.   But people will spend long periods just reading!  Which is wonderful!
• We also have our events monitor in the space to display meetings for that day.

is your library cozy and welcoming?  What have you done to make it that way?  Any ideas for us?  Let me hear from you.

I was so excited.  What a great phrase! I fashioned it after the phrase, “you are what you eat.”  It gets at my thinking about what libraries should be about – The experiences of the members and the staff combine to make us what we are.

I just knew Barlett’s Quotations would be hounding me to include my brilliance in a special edition.  I was sure no one had used this before but to be positive I Googled the phrase and found this:

Smart guy!  So while his message is slightly different, the title of the clip is the same.  I have to give him credit by about 8 months! Darn! So much for my brilliance!

I still like this phrase.  Not only does it put experiences front and center, but it takes into account the learning that happens as a result of our experiences.  We teach our members, through their experiences, what we want them to do and not do.  They train us through experiences what they want and need from us.  This mobius strip of experiences constantly improves and makes libraries what we are and what we will become.

We studied learning styles at our library to help us understand how each person learns.  Many of us, as adults, learn in a variety of ways: listening, reading, etc.  However, I believe that the most basic style of learning is kinesthetic or tactile.  It is what we use as children and as a basic style for most things.  We read about how to drive, what the rules are, etc.  But, we don’t really learn to drive until we actually do it.  Learning a musical instrument is the same.  You can read recipes or watch cooking shows on TV, but until you actually bake a cake or chop an onion you don’t really “learn” it.

I think much of the user experience in libraries is the same.  We can read signs or look it up on the computer, but until we actually walk to where the book is on the shelf we don’t really know where to find it. After that, we can return to that same spot with less effort.

I want to explore the experience process and how we make it easy and hard for the public to use our libraries and how they communicate what they want through the way they use the library.

I want to hear from you.  Share your experiences with me.  As I explore ideas give me your thoughts.  I want to learn from you.