All in

I'm a rookie Texas Hold 'em player but I love, love, love the game.  One strategy that I have learned over the years: if you have the nuts (poker slang for an unbeatable hand), go all in.  All the chips go into the center of the table.  If people want to stay in the game, it's going to cost them.  If they want to fold and walk away, leaving me with the win, fine.  I'll take it.

Either way, when you're sitting on the nuts that is not the time to hold anything back.

Poker to library/business reference transition...

In terms of the information world, the library has the nuts in terms of the best model out there to deliver high-quality content to our communities.  It's time we started acting like it.  It's time we started looking around at the best business libraries out there (http://businesslibrary.uflib.ufl.edu/businesslibraries and http://businesslibrary.uflib.ufl.edu/bestdatabases seem to be good places to start) and figuring out how our public libraries can get the same line-up of resources.  If we're sitting on a straight flush, why not reach for the royal flush?

Prezi for the WLA-ers

Hey WLAers!

Thanks for being such a rocking, inquisitive audience.  Here's the link to the Prezi portion of the presentation: http://prezi.com/ks65tb54zgrb/wla-presentation/

Stay in touch and let me know how your business outreach efforts go!

WLA

At the WLA conference.  Gonna be preachin' it to the choir tomorrow. 

Competion

Here's a word of warning about doing library outreach to the business community.  Well, not so much a warning but rather a tip.  Something to be aware of.

Here it is: After a certain period of doing outreach to the business community (about five years in my case), you might start wondering why, if the library's business resources are met with such universal appeal and acclaim, why are there still large swaths of the business community that don't know about the power and versatility of our resources?  I think I have an answer, or at least a partial answer.  Competition.

If I show the commercial lenders at one bank in town our market research database, allowing them to save time and money when it comes time to performing due diligence in making a business loan, that information spreads like wildfire... right up to the doors of that particular bank.  Once the news makes its rounds within an single institution, there is no incentive for Bank ABC to share their newfound competitive edge with Bank XYZ.  In fact, there is a distinct disincentive working against the sharing of this information.

I say this just as a matter of encouragement.  If you put out a blog post explaining how to gain access to some fabulous resource, don't be surprised if it isn't shared widely.  Sometimes that's the sign that you're putting out really, really valuable information.

You gotta show up

At the risk of coming across as a Seth Godin lackey, I do have to share a recent video of his.  He's not specifically talking about libraries but the connections are too strong to be ignored.

The way forward. And the way backward.

In library land (as well as many other lands, most likely) we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the one big thing that will blow things wide open.  We'll make that perfect presentation to just the right person and adequate library funding will be secured indefinitely.  We'll roll out the perfect service or resource and the City Council and Mayor will be lining up outside our doors to offer us additional revenue.

And when we aren't thinking these grand thoughts, we're thinking just the opposite: the sky is going to fall.  The apocalypse is nigh.  We're cutting the budget to the point where we just won't be a viable organization.  We're underfunded.  We're overworked.  We aren't appreciated.

But here's the thing: neither of those two scenarios are likely.  Instead, it is one small step at a time.  If we satisfy one library member with one interaction then we are one step closer to remaining and/or becoming a valued asset in our community.  If we disappoint... well, we then lose one potential voice of support.  These things come in baby steps.  It's a creeping thing.

While a gradual creep (name for my next band: The Gradual Creeps) isn't nearly as dramatic as a big bang, it is somewhat comforting that the solution ultimately lies in small actions rather than some large, nebulous ideal.

Thanks to Seth Godin for the spark for these thoughts:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/11/preparing-for-the-breakthroughcalamity.html 

Keepin' it real...

When I give a presentation to a group of business folks I usually have about 30 - 45 minutes for my spiel. Here are the points/resources I try to cover:

• Local human librarians vs. Google
• ReferenceUSA
• DemographicsNow
• General OneFile

Often the presentation is at some sort of a networking event so try to pay attention to the make up of the audience before your presentation.  I just spoke today to a group that included a man who is at the beginning stages of putting together a business plan for an indoor shooting range.  Interesting.  When it was my turn with the microphone I used ReferenceUSA and showed the group how he could pull together a list of all the shooting ranges in Washington State so he can instantly know who his competition -- and potential collaborators -- might be.  That's a good thing to know when it comes to guns.  Using DemographicsNow I then showed how to round up the demographics around other successful shooting rangers and compare them against his potential site.  Also in the crowd was a woman who is thinking about starting up her own wedding planning business.  Using General OneFile I showed the 21,000+ articles on the wedding industry that she could sift through and showed how to jump immediately to articles focused on "forecasts and trends."  Oohs and ahhhs all around.

The end result is that by using actual real-life, present-in-the-room types of examples the content of the presentation is moved from the yeah-that's-neat-in-a-theoretical-sense sentiment to holy-crap-I-need-access-to-these-resources-right-now mentality.  You can see the shift in the room as people go from uninterested nonbelievers to converts.  And that's the power of keeping it real.  Yo.

Side note: today I had the luxury of sitting in the back of the room and running the previously mentioned searches on my laptop before I got up to do the search live in front of the group.  I generally don't shy away from doing searches on the fly but if you can squeeze in a few sample searches in private it's a good idea.  That's keeping it kinda semi-real, albeit rehearsed.