We want to share information. Really, we do.

At SLS, we have something called "The Weekly Reader." It's a folder full of announcements, program flyers, and newsletters from other libraries and Library Systems - all on paper. There's a list of 15 people on the front, and it gets routed from one person to the next. Right now, I'm reading the WR from the week of March 16, which is actually pretty good. It takes me a long time to get around to reading WRs when I get them specifically because I have to find time to integrate it into my daily routine. I received this edition on June 3, and I'll pass it on to the next person today, June 12. That's a great turnaround time for me, but the whole process is way too slow for sharing information. Most of the stuff in it is from January and February, which means I'm now six months behind the information curve. Monthly newsletters just aren't cutting it anymore.

And apparently I'm not the only one that's having trouble reading the WR in a timely fashion because I'm second-to-last on the list, so it's taken three months to get to me. What's the solution? Ideally, news aggregators. Half of the paper in the folders tends to be newsletters from the other 11 Library Systems in Illinois. If they were blogging the news on a daily basis, I would have seen the news items THAT DAY, rather than months later. I know it will be even longer before I can get my member libraries into my aggregator, but we as System agencies really need to examine how to use RSS and news aggregation for information exchange, archiving information (once the WR pages go to the next person, I'll never know where to find them), and knowledge management.

My goal is to have SLS on the forefront of such a movement using Radio by the end of the summer. I want to be the proof-of-concept that illustrates the benefits and advantages of this approach. We can no longer afford to remain months behind in sharing information!

P.S. Illinois State Library, you're next on my list!

So I'm reading through the above-mentioned March 16 Weekly Reader, when I come across the February newsletter from the DuPage Library System (one of our sister Systems). It includes some wonderful statistics about libraries (from Quotable Facts about America's Libraries, 2001-2002) that I feel compelled to share here. Read on, and then pick your jaw up off the floor. (All emphasis is mine.)

• Federal spending on libraries annually is only 54 cents per person.
• Reference librarians in the nation's public and academic libraries answer more than 7,000,000 questions weekly. Standing single file, the line of questioners would stretch from Boston to San Francisco.
• Americans go to school, public, and academic libraries more than twice as often as they go to the movies. [Jenny says: Take that, Mr. Valenti!]
• Americans spend seven times as much money on home video games ($7 billion) as they do on school library materials for their children ($1 billion).
• Students visit school library media centers almost 1.5 billion times during the school year - about one-and-a-half times the number of visits to state and national parks.
• There are more public libraries than McDonald's - a total of 16,090 including branches. [Jenny says: This has always been my favorite library statistic!]
• Americans spend more than three times as much on salty snacks as they do on public libraries.
• Public libraries are the number one point of online access for people without Internet connections at home, school, or work.
• 95% of public libraries provide access to the Internet.
• Academic libraries answer 97 million reference questions each year - almost three times the attendance at college football games.
• College libraries receive less than three cents of every dollar spent on higher education.
• If the cost of gas had risen as fast as the cost of academic library periodicals since 1990, it would cost $3.00 a gallon to put fuel in your car.

GPS for Sport

"It's funny Jenny mentions this. I had a similar thought when I saw a feature on geochaching on the Home & Liesure Channel (name?). I was thinking more in terms of tying the 'sport' into local history possibly myself.

You could easily do this with a spare PC and some creative thinking in terms of peripherals. Like IR ports for beaming info to and from customer handhelds, a printer for output and why'll were at it - why not loan a few GPS units to as well.

After more coinsidertation, the idea seemed geared more toward visitors to our community as opposed to local library customers, but I suppose that there is plenty of room for overlap here." [LibTech Weblog]

Eric riffs on yesterday's post about geocaching. Some great ideas there, especially the local history angle....

Find It, Read It, Write It

"Albert points to John Robb points to McGee on Google and personal knowledge management. Robb rifs that the "key to making Google work even better is to have each customer service representative add detail information they acquired using Google on an Intranet K-Log.  That way, a Google search (using the Google appliance) would provide higher yields of relevant links/data for customer service inquiries." Which leads to these lowly k-12 education variations on the theme and some first musings on the practical, student-tested, product-observable uses of Manila at mlk middle school's library this year. Somebody's got to barge into the room on behalf of librarians and public education.

A key piece in the 'Googling of knowledge' described above is the filtering of Google (or whatever search engine is used) through caring and smart humans. Robb mentions a customer service rep. I offer, from behind the checkout counter of a school library, teachers, service reps of a sort, and most importantly, nearby." [homoLudens III, via John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Wow. Want to read about a working example of collaboration between teachers and librarians using blogs? Here it is. Be sure to read this entire post for yourself. Let your neurons fire through it, as I'm doing, and then let's talk about how to start implementing this type of collaboration within SLS this fall!