Overheard in a hospital

Nurse to Aide: "It doesn't matter what we want. What's important is what the patient wants."
Nurse to me: "Everyone around here complains."
Me to Nurse: "That's true wherever you work."
Hmmmm

Negotiating Skills

Last week I attended a workshop sponsored by the Long Island Association on negotiating skills. I thought the program would be about labor negotiations, what the presenter would call a "forced action" negotiation that must end in some achievement or plan. But this was not the case. The workshop was about sales negotiations,where there is no forced action. Someone can try to sell a product, but the buyer may or may not end up buying. At first, I thought the program wouldn't be applicable to me as a librarian. But then as I listened more carefully, I thought about the uses of negotiating skills as a "seller" of library services.

The presenter said that people buy benefits, not features. A feature is what things are; a benefit is what they do. A library has all types of information, a feature. The information can be used to help people answer questions or find something to read, watch a video, gather for a book discussion, all benefits.

People also buy relationships and value. As librarians, we know the "value" and the "benefits" of building relationships with our customers. We know that the values of a library are both tangible and intangible. If we build a library building, they may not come. But if we build relationships through our reference interviews, programs, and ability to give patrons what they want when they want it as opposed to what we think they need, they probably will come again and again.

Blogs and Wikis: What's the Difference?

Yesterday, Samantha and I conducted a workshop for librarians in Suffolk County on blogs and wikis. We discussed the differences between blogs and wikis as well as the differences they can make for both staff and patrons. It was a true collaborative effort, first between Samantha and me, and then between the audience and the presenters. We created the slides on Google documents so that we could share and edit simultaneously. We then uploaded the presentation in both Google Documents and SlideShare, so that it is readily available. The presentation was videotaped and should be available shortly via streaming video or DVD from SCLS.

About Books! ...Kinda

Librarian in Black blogged about this cool new board game called Bookchase check it out.

Impagination

Check out this blog entry on the Impagnination blog:

Are Public Libraries Criminalizing Poor People?

Social Networking

Friends:Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services blog post, Data: Students + Facebook + Library Outreach discusses an interesting study by Suzanne Chapman, Mike Creech, Susan Hollar, Ken Varnum of the University of Michigan (Report Date: January 9, 2008). The study found that 23% of respondents said yes or maybe to contacting librarians via Facebook or Myspace. This number went up when looking only at undergraduates.

Check out the study
or Suzanne Chapman's Blog.

So Sue (at NBAB) and I were talking yesterday about Mashups and how they always seem to incorporate maps…and how we don’t necessarily need to see everything connected to maps. SO here are some examples of Mashups that don’t necessarily involve Maps:

Songza- cool music site that Sue says her teenagers use all the time.

50 Matches- which searches for sites that have been tagged in del.icio.us, digg or reddit.

Quintura - a search engine designed specifically for children

All of these have been highlighted by the Mashup Awards.

:) Sam