Comments on: Technology Implementation: My Brilliant Failures

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 02:18:39 +0000

I think that the postive response you received from the Gradulate Program staff was genuine. But although value was perceived, what was not perceived is how it would improve the staff’s way of working in the real world. When a person is used to a set of tools that works well it is hard to introduce a new one. It takes valuable time to learn it and try it out, time that may be better used working through one’s to-do list.

I tried a Wiki to solicit comment about a document I was going to load into student resources. I put up the skeleton, I informed my “community”, and 3 people out of 20 used the wiki. When I emailed the document around (I really did need buy-in) everyone responded.

Long-used tools, like old habits, are ingrained. The way to get a new tool off the ground (as one would a new application) is to launch a project which is (moderately?) important and which requires people to use the new tool enough to see its opportunities.

By: Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Patience and staff buy-in

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:03:21 +0000

[...] I’m trying to sell a reference wiki at my library. After my first failure with wikis at work, I was really hesitant about doing this. In fact, the wiki wasn’t even my idea. Before I went to the effort to create categories and add info, I asked staff members, “are you really going to use this?” and they all said yes. Well, since then nothing has happened. Not a thing. I sent out instructions, I talked to people, and no one has touched the wiki. Sigh. So tomorrow I’m giving a talk through OPAL about Wikis. I’ve told all of the staff about it, and I hope they show up. I was ready to give up on the reference wiki idea, but I think I’m going to try being more persistent and to hope that at some point the staff will decide to buy into the idea. [...]

By: 图林中文译站 » 图书馆2.0：我们如何共享？

图林中文译站 » 图书馆2.0：我们如何共享？ — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 06:11:56 +0000

[...] 那么？我并不确定。我认为网志流行的一个基础就在于它使得人们可以很简便的将自己的观点放到网上，并与他人分享。如果我们在从事那些不允许自由探究自己的想法，或者在某些情况下，自己的想法和所处机构的学习和共享机制不一致，面对这种情况，这一点将显得尤其困难。我喜欢自己成为一名哲学化的图书馆员，但是我也认为和那些接收你的思想的人进行沟通是非常重要的，了解他们是如何以及为何作出这样那样的反应，以及如何或者为何某一观点能够适用或行不通。我们的读者时刻都在和我们分享他们的希望、梦想、缺点以及雄心壮志，也许现在是时候作出回报了。更多的交互与协作，让沟通的渠道双向畅通，对于我而言，这就是图书馆2.0的真意所在。 [...]

By: Sumedh Mungee » Blog Archive » Learning from failures

Sumedh Mungee » Blog Archive » Learning from failures — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:22:16 +0000

[...] After discussing the idea with the Library Director, I created a staff wiki and then spent many hours taking all of the existing content from the Web site and plugging it into the wiki, organized in the new Web page hierarchy I’d developed for the redesign. I then explained to the staff that they could go into the wiki and update and edit the content for the sections. I gave detailed instructions on how to use the wiki and told them that I’d be happy to give any of them a one-on-one explanation. This was almost 2 months ago, and so far one other person has gone into the wiki. No one else has even bothered to look at it, including people who had told me it was a good idea. Yes, wikis are easy to use, but many of the people I work with are averse to new technologies, especially those they don’t absolutely have to learn for their job. I learned something important from this: the tool may be the right one for the job, but if the staff isn’t ready for it, no one will use it. [Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Technology Implementation: My Brilliant Failures] [...]

By: Leigh Blackall

Leigh Blackall — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:28:32 +0000

Nice one Meredith, I can certainly relate to your experiences. Interesting to note the success you have had in helping smaller teams use wikis. I’m sure that if wikis work for those involved in policy writing, that they would also be able to see where else it could work after a bit of time playing around… also, perhaps there are a few staff (and patrons) you know who are about to go on an extended holiday, or are working on a family tree project… are they blogging their travel photos…?

I think using smaller projects, personalised to your colleagues one to one, that you would slowly build an awareness of 2.0 and prepare people for those big ideas you tried earlier… 1 in every 5 would start to get as excited about it as you and will probably start trying to impliment big ideas as well…

By: Andrea

Andrea — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 03:36:37 +0000

Sounds like you are really boring the hell out of everyone there with your great ideas! Eye rolling all around.

By: mona

mona — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:47:13 +0000

Hi Meredith. Thanks for this entry. Very recently, classmates and I completed an assessment for a medical school library on web-based communications tools. (It was an assignment for a course on technology for libraries/library automation ). We evaluated blogs, forums, and wikis, and found great uses for each. It doesn’t really matter though, because we also conducted a small set of student interviews and surveyed the staff and they all pretty much said the same thing: while they think it’s a great idea no one thinks they’ll actually have time to use it. I’ve also noticed that if no one uses it, it’s harder to get others to use it. Catch-22. Anyhow, thanks for supplementing our findings.

By: Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » A clear vision for the future of your library

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:27:17 +0000

[...] I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about Library 2.0 that I’m not comfortable with. And again, it was thinking back to my former career that gave me my lightbulb moment. In my second job as a therapist, I was part of a large-scale grant-funded program which required that we provide therapy based on a particular model. This model was one I was quite fond of and believed would help people to focus on solutions rather than problems, which is important when you only have 10 sessions to work with a family. However, I do not subscribe to the one-size-fits-all approach. Like I said last week, you have to start from where the client is, rather than trying to make your clients fit into a particular model. What works for one person may not work for another, even if s/he is in a similar life situation. Prior to this, I had always taken an eclectic approach to therapy, borrowing from a variety of models to do what worked in that situation. For this job, there was a very specific roadmap I had to follow; a roadmap that didn’t work for all of my clients. [...]

By: bibliotecaria

bibliotecaria — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:54:04 +0000

I would add one more point — once again, depending on the level of knowledge of your population, they may not even realize that there is technology out there that can answer their need. I consider myself fairly tech savvy, but wikis are still new to me, and I don’t yet have a totally clear grasp of how they work. Not an in-the-gut understanding, although the concept is quite clear. But as I start to use Wikipedia more (even thinking of contributing) and look at our internal wiki, I am seeing the shape of what it can do. Maybe what you need more of is publicity. More presentations that demonstrate the possibilities so that others can get excited about the social software you already know about.

By: Nancy Weichert

Nancy Weichert — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:24:04 +0000

There seems to be a great difference between what works within an Academic library setting and what works within a Public library setting. Steven Bell has some great ideas about Academic library blogs. I think if you were to get the patrons on your side, the library staff would be forced to keep up.