Need a cake pan, augur, fishing pole, or a piece of artwork? All of these items are available for checkout at libraries around Michigan, according to an article in the Sunday, November 25, edition of the Detroit Free Press.

The Grosse Pointe Public Library, where you can borrow tools, started its collection during World War II, when men were off at war, so boys could help out around the house. User-centered? You bet, all the way back in the 1940s. There’s a similar collection in one of the small neighborhood libraries in a low-income neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where I used to live.

Annette Lamb, in her presentation to the Michigan Association for Media in Education in March 2007, suggested that we acquire things like fancy-edged scrapbooking scissors for loan. She encouraged us to think about the practical but non-traditional things that teachers spend their own money on but would love not to. When I did my practicum in the Livonia Public Schools, they sold poster board for projects out of the library storeroom. Some college libraries have vending machines stocked with CDs or inexpensive flash drives.

Now, I love a challenge, so it got me thinking … if Library 2.0 is truly user-centered, what unusual but useful items should I be adding to my collection?

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What unusual objects do you circulate?

What cool things could be be circulating that we currently aren’t?

I highly recommend that you read Michael Casey’s blog posting on Library 2.0.  He points out that a successful L2 experience starts when we think of the user experience.

From his posting:

What does Library 2.0 mean to you and your organization? What is it that you want Library 2.0 to do for your users? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, you must figure them out before you begin implementing new services and programs …

Energy focused on implementing new tools and programs is wasted if we don’t know what our users really want. Without knowing that, we create more work for ourselves with hit or miss initiatives.

In the past two years much of the discussion of Library 2.0 has been focused on little things we can do to better serve our users. We try to “get them where they are” by implementing IM reference and creating a presence on social networks such as Flickr, MySpace and Facebook. We attempt to lure them in with gaming nights and rock concerts. These can all be great tools to better serve our users. It is inspiring to see so many libraries creating new ways to reach their users.

However, we have to be careful to not flood ourselves with new projects until we have a clear understanding of what it is we’re trying to do and where we want to go. And in the spirit of Library 2.0, that means first figuring out what our users want and need.

Maybe it is time we all take a step back and have a mini re-evaluation of Library 2.0, what it is, and how it can help us better serve our users.

Library 2.0 is user-centric … constant change and evaluation … not just about technology … political …

As has been said from the beginning, the spirit and driving force of Library 2.0 is the same tenant that has been a fundamental part of library service for decades – providing our users with access to information. Library 2.0 strives to reach this goal in part through customer-driven services … If we focus too much on the details and specific programs before we can explain what it is our users want, then our communities, administrators, library boards, and staff may well rebel against Library 2.0 without ever truly understanding what it is about.

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What are your users yearning for?

Image: Blog Action Day

Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day. According to their Web site,

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

Learn more by watching this YouTube video.

I’ve been thinking about how we can make media centers more earth-friendly, from small to larger things. Here are some things we do in our school library media center:

1. Recycle paper, cardboard, and outdated magazines.
2. Take discarded books to the county recycling center.
3. Collect used batteries and take them to the county recycling center.
4. Buy more packages of rechargeable batteries each year, in the hopes that we will eventually get to stop buying the throw-away kinds.
5. Use our new printers, which double-side, let us print at reduced ink quality, and print multiple pages per side.
6. Collect used printer cartridges from school printers and from family donations (raises money, too).
7. Turn off computer lab, production room, media office, and head end room lights when the rooms are not being used.
8. Have overhead media center lights that turn off after a selected period of time in which the lights sense no movement in the room.
9. Turn off data projectors after initial demonstration in the computer lab has been completed.
10. Keep the blinds closed on the top tier of media center windows (about 10′ up in the air) in warm months to reduce the amount of heat entering the room, which reduces the need for air-conditioning.
11. Post many reference documents (school calendars, bus route maps, instructions, etc.) online instead of printing a copy for every family.

School library media centers are, of course, a natural part of the “reduce/reuse/recycle” equation.  When we buy a book, we anticipate that it will be used over and over.  A school’s newspaper subscription may be read multiple times in a single day, then recycled into an art project.  An outdated magazine finds new purpose when its pages are cut up for a class project.

Join the Conversation
What do you do to make the media center more earth-friendly?
Are there earth-friendly initiatives that you have begun in your library media center that have been both cost-effective and good for the environment?
Do you have special days to encourage students to walk or ride their bikes to school? How do you motivate them?