As a new mother, I spend a a lot of time awake with Reed when most sensible people are asleep. Consequently, I’ve seen plenty of infomercials and commercials that are rarely if ever on television when sensible people are awake (my personal favorite is the Lee Majors Bionic Ear — “it won’t cost six million, but you’ll think it’s worth it”). The first time I saw a kgb commercial, though, I assumed that I was so sleepy I hadn’t heard it right. It took seeing a second one another night to make me realize that they’re offering for money what we’ve been offering for free forever.
Get this — kgb (short for Knowledge Generation Bureau) a “unique” service where people can get answers to their questions via text message:
Users who text 542542 (kgbkgb) receive real-time responses to questions any time, day or night, from any cell phone, for a cost of ninety-nine cents.
In one commercial I saw, a man was trying to remember the name of the Red Sox player who lost the Word Series for them in 1986 (Bill Buckner) and kgb gave him the answer. Users pay $.99, plus any fees they normally pay to send and receive text messages. Their questions are answered by “agents”, regular folks who are paid 10 cents per answer they give.
Now, what if there was a service where people could ask questions via text message, IM, phone and email for free, only their questions would be answered by individuals with specialized training in finding the most accurate and authoritative answers? If only such a thing existed! 😉
What does this tell us? People don’t think of librarians when they want answers? Librarians aren’t available when people want answers? Librarians don’t get answers to people quickly enough? Many people would rather get answers via text than phone/IM/email? Or all of the above?
What can we learn from the service kgb provides?
I really take issue with people blaming Buckner for ’86. First of all, it was game 6. The Sox didn’t lose until game 7. Second of all, McNamara should have put in Stapleton as a defensive replacement like he had been doing that series. Third, don’t forget the wild pitch by Bob Stanley that tied the game in the first place setting the stage for the nutmeg. No, when the Red Sox fail, they fail as a team. Leave Billy alone.
All of which would fit in about three text messages.
There is plenty of research that already shows that people don’t think of libraries as a place to go to get information, nevermind to ask questions.
KGB and ChaCha benefit from the idea that people know you can look stuff up on the internet but you don’t always have the internet. They cannot provide the rich information experience that libraries can. I’m not convinced that libraries can provide that rich experience by SMS, either, but that’s no reason not to try.
But then, what is a rich experience for one person is boring or tedious for another. OCLC’s recent report about library advocacy and funding (http://www.oclc.org/reports/funding/default.htm) suggests that libraries provide that rich experience because they are quiet and very organized, which isn’t the perfect setting for every information query. If you’re hanging out in a library and you are having a discussion about Red Sox history, you might as well leave and go get a beer.
On the other hand, we’re certain that social media, text messaging and the intertron in general provides a rich experience for some people, including when they are asking questions, getting answers, or otherwise seeking information.
So what we learn from KGB is that we aren’t the only ones out here, but we are still the only ones who pay at least $13/hour for it (http://www.ala-apa.org/news/news.html#LivingWage), and who try to provide a rich experience for everyone, not just folks with unlimited text messaging plans.
It doesn’t matter if KGB fails or succeeds – they do not do what we do.
Is this the moment where “The library brand is books!” suddenly loses a little of its allure?
Libraries used to be where people went for information. I had a boss who’d done telephone reference in the evening at a big city library years ago. He had all sorts of stories about people calling from bars or drunken parties asking for information to settle bets.
I think “the library brand is books” idea lost it’s allure a long time ago, and we have yet to successfully re-brand ourselves. As much as I’d like it, “the library brand is information” just isn’t going to sell in the internet age. But maybe “the library brand is personalized, accurate information from an information expert” might.
And I think we do have to find better ways to be available 24/7
However redundant the service might be, you’ve gotta give these guys credit for acquiring the kgb.com domain and giving a new meaning to the term “KGB agent”. I’m not sure why they don’t play that up in the site design or the ads.
Perhaps it’s also BECAUSE we offer it for free that people don’t come to us for information. If it’s free, it can’t be good.
Actually, I think the big problem is what buddhabrarian said: “we have yet to successfully re-brand ourselves”. Honestly, I don’t think we ever branded ourselves in the first place. We were branded by time and society. “We” had nothing to do with it. “We” don’t tend to market ourselves well if at all. In fact, there is very often too little “we” working together. Think of all the librarians and libraries in North American, if not the entire world, that could easily be working together (at least easier than almost all other organizations), bringing much more force behind our acquisitions, our technological efforts and of course our marketing schemes. But no, we work virtually alone, and the occasional librarian or library that makes an effort does not have the money or the resources or the time to compete will all the others vying for attention. Can’t we even have an infomercial on at 2:30 in the morning?
<soapbox>
Wait a minute, what’s wrong with books? The brand has lost its allure to who? If your library doesn’t have books, you’re doing it wrong. And if you do have books and you don’t call it a library, you’re even further off course. Do you know what they call an academic institution without a library full of books? The University of Phoenix.
The point of OCLC’s report on the library brand wasn’t that the brand needs to change, but that we need to use what we’ve got to get what we want. Leverage what we have to serve our communities.
True, books represent “the old way of doing things”, your parents generation and the bourgeois cultural elite. But they also symbolize literacy, education, and self-achievement. Books are awesome.
So even if you, like me, recognize that the role of books in academia and in world culture at large is changing rapidly, you have got to come up with a better plan than settling bar bets. Meredith is on the right track – lets get together and do something cool. But please, don’t let it involve sending text messages to drunk people.
<soapbox/>
Congratulation you become a mother. I am simliar with you,however most of my reading books from internet.
Hi Meredith – we are trying to start something like that with InfoQuest – http://myinfoquest.info. We have over 40 libraries participating now and are hoping for more so eventually we will have 24/7. 🙂
i have my MLS, & i’ve been working for chacha for about 9 months. it’s fun. it’s not all bar bets, although it is a lot times. but sometimes it is helping people with actual information needs. it can be sex ed-type questions from teens. sometimes it is “if my computer is doing x does it mean i have a virus.” sometimes it is directions or phone numbers or “what does poison ivy look like?”
anyway, i think that chacha has done a really good job of building an audience & getting people’s trust even though there are occasionally some reeeally bad answers. people use it for any question that can be answered in 140 characters. or just to kill time (chacha is free, ad-supported).
i don’t see it as having that much overlap with what a library does, or what people look for from a library. absolutely, you can call a library & ask them sports trivia. but i think that most people choose not to bug librarians for stuff like that. i think they save the serious stuff for libraries. which, is that really such a bad thing? obviously at a reference desk you don’t distinguish between which questions are worth your time or not, so isn’t it good that patrons decide on their own?
i have told chacha info-seekers to go to a library for certain questions. like legal information, for example, that depends on their location, and it’s complex & better answered in person & without a character limit.
i think the main reason it’s not feasible for libraries to provide a similar service is that kgb & chacha are nationwide. libraries are local, and even a state-wide effort might not get enough questions to keep people busy 24/7.
I’m not sure that kgb and ChaCha can teach us anything new, but they definitely remind us that today’s patrons want near-instant assistance.
Some libraries enhance their reference availability by participating in shared reference with other libraries. I’ve never worked in a library that participated in such an arrangement, but we should all do our best to be responsive to our patrons.
When I worked at Norwich, I was really proud of how quickly we responded to virtual reference questions. We checked email and Meebo every day (including weekends). I liked seeing that our colleagues would even reply to lengthy or complicated questions with a quick note saying “Got your message, I’ll look for some information and be in touch.” Responding promptly to our patrons’ questions is a pretty simple way to keep our them happy and coming back for more.
(I’ll admit: once I knew I wasn’t going to return to work after kiddo was born, I toyed with the idea of becoming a ChaCha Guide or kgb Agent during my extended leave from librarianship. While I’m home with Jacey, why not help settle bar bets, send driving directions, and relay weather reports in 140 characters or less? Earn Mama some spending money one dime at a time.)
Books are wonderful.
Books are a terrible brand for libraries.
These two positions are not incompatible.
Dorothea can you say what you mean by “books are a terrible brand for libraries”? I’m not disagreeing, I’m just interested in the reasoning. Perhaps there is a conversation or article I’m missing?
Otherwise, we at least make a haiku out of that:
books are wonderful
and a poor library brand
no contradiction
Partly, I think you could say what I said above, that the role of books is changing. But you could also say it’s a poor brand because if people think of books when they think of libraries, it doesn’t go the other way that they think of libraries when they think of books. Does *anything* make people think of libraries? Not trivia questions.
So, like I said, I’m interested to know what you mean.
Maybe we need to pool our resources and create a series of commericals that we can run nationally that would rival companies like kgb.
Yeah, I know, but I figured I would throw the idea out there anyway.