What do you do when you want to demonstrate 2.0 technologies without necessarily making them for public consumption? The answer is, you can’t.
For my Tantalizing Technology workshop, I created a demo webpage to show all the different 2.0 technologies that can be used by libraries. In this I included a short video, “How to get to the Reference Desk.” A couple of months ago, another librarian mentioned to me that she found it on YouTube. To be honest, I was more amused than anything else that someone found it amidst the ocean of YouTube videos.
Then this morning, while catching up on my news, I read the LiB’s post about the video. And I agree, it should be easy to find the Reference Desk. Our Reference Desk is on the same floor as the north entrance, and up the stairs from the south entrance (we’re built on a slight hill). Before the library addition was created a few years ago (increasing the library to three times its previous size), the Reference Desk was next to the Circulation Desk, at the one entrance. Now with two entrances, it is roughly in the center of the library, with the Circulation Desks at each entrance.
This raises excellent questions for me:
- When patrons are physically present in a library, where do they want services located (and of course, the answer is all services everywhere)?
- How do you maintain communication between remote service desks (Phone? IM? Wikis?)?
- How many desks will patrons be sent to before they finally find what they’re looking for? How long before they just give up? How do we reduce these complications?
- How do we design a library that gives the patrons all their services where they want them?
- When that library grows, how do we add too/redesign that library so that the location of services is not confusing?
Thanks to the Librarian in Black for the commentary! I’m always stimulated into new thought by the stuff I read on the librarian blogosphere–now it looks like I need to create more videos and make disclaimers for the demo webpage/video!
