Any Driveway Moment-worthy Libraries?

There's a public radio phenomenon called the Driveway Moment, which refers to a story that's so compelling that even though you've reached your destination, you stay in your driveway (or parking lot) to listen until the end.  I had a driveway moment this morning as I pulled into work listening to a story about how a Lawrence, KS media outlet, the Lawrence Journal-World is leading the way in their practice of media convergence.  A search on Wikipedia for "media convergence" redirects you to an article on "concentration of media ownership," but that's not what I got from the story.  The story was about how the Journal-World has discarded the standard model of media, whereby print, broadcast and online media are seen as competitive with each other.  Rather, they all work together to get news to a particular audience in the most appropriate way possible.  The TV news reporters are working alongside the print reporters who work alongside geeks and bloggers.  This organization gets that in order to stay vital, they need to change their model.

I'm friends with a columnist at our local paper who has talked about how the higher ups are sort of freaking out because circulation is down.  But, it's a stodgy, old-fart paper, with a copy-cat, watery website. In Lawrence, they developed a separate website, Lawrence.com, aimed at younger audience who is much less likely to pick up the daily. Rather than diluting readership, the website has spawned a weekly print paper.  These folks get it.

Putting aside the media conglomeration angle, I couldn't help but think of libraries while I was listening to this story.  We are still, in a big way, a stodgy, old-fart institution.  And while I have nothing personal against stodgy, old farts (some of my best friends...), we're missing or downright alienating the other classes of farts.  I was thinking about what to write when I found it pre-written for me, courtesy of George at OCLC's It's All Good.  George was presenting at a preconference called "Information Services in the Larger Context" where he was asked by a library director, "Does the non-dynamic library have a future."  George's short answer was "maybe not," but after he thought about it, came up with the "why" part of his answer (emphasis mine):

It seems to me that libraries have a responsibility, not just an opportunity, to change.

Determining the nature of that change, though, is a combination of marketing and leadership. The type of marketing I'm referring to here is not about sales, but rather it's about knowing your clients thoroughly, what they need and want.

I'm not sure I can add anything to this summation. All we need now is an instruction manual.  George?

UPDATE 4/12: Meredith at Information Wants to Be Free has followed of George's post with her own observations.  Good stuff.

Comments

[rochelle]

"but they have less encrusted legacy that needs to be scraped off in order to move."

I love that sentence! It reminds me of the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz. "Oil can." Squirt and Scrape: A New Model of Dynamic Librarianship.

[George]

Thanks for the kind words. It's all I can do to write blog entries---I don't think I'm up for the long form yet!

I also heard the NPR story this morning and was amazed at the way this small newspaper understands what's happening for its readers/listeners/viewers/participants in a way the big papers and media centers don't.

It's akin to an idea I'm forming about the future of libraries. It seems to me that the directions for our profession are going to come from medium sized institutions, from liberal arts colleges and suburban and small city public libraries. They have enough money and staff to try a few new things, but they have less encrusted legacy that needs to be scraped off in order to move. It's not a truism---there are creative and progressive large libraries, and there are some medium libraries that haven't changed since they added LPs to the collection. But I keep hearing about and seeing exciting change coming from unexpected places, and it's an idea I'm hoping to explore further.