Danish and Norwegian visitor statistics tell the same story.
The number of public library visits per capita is going down - and the decline is strongest in large municipalities. Since new social trends tend to start in cities, we must be prepared for further reductions in the future.
Public library in Kolding, Denmark.
Innovative services, exciting design and purple marketing is part of the answer. But we should also collect more data.
When I travel, I read The Economist - taking the pulse of our new old world.
Last week they had a nice article about US libraries - Why cowboys read. Lorcan Dempsey wrote a comment - citing Eleanor Jo Rodger:
Creating value for our host systems always involves three things:
People want to understand what’s happening around them.
Clay Shirky (by liabulaong)
I am struck by the number of popular books that try to interpret the impact of digital technology on our social and economic structure. The growing demand reflects the depth of change. We are leaving late industrial society behind - and tiptoeing into the early stages of a knowledge based global economy.
Book sales follow a power law distribution.
In The long tail Chris Anderson reports on the US book market (chapter 7). Most books are flops. 1.2 million titles were published In 2004. Only ninety thousand titles - less than ten percent - sold more than a thousand copies.
Long-tailed mangabey (photo: Keven Law)
Publishing is very much a lottery.
Many library services are moving to the web.
We need to know how popular and effective these services are. Denmark is a pioneer in this area.The new Danish web index - which started in April - currently measures the web traffic to sixty-four public libraries and to six national services (web portals).
In our public libraries the demand for computer access, skills and services continues to grow.
Night games at Drammen public library.
Norway is one of the most “wired” countries in the world. But this deepens the gap between digital “haves” and “have-nots”.
Governments, employers, schools, friends and families expect us to master the web. Those that don’t, feel more and more excluded.
Lorcan Dempsey is the world’s best library blogger.
Constantly inventive, challenging, connecting and clarifying. Like having an extra brain.
His concept of the amplified conference is a case in point.
Like planets, meetings have atmospheres. Most library conferences are now surrounded by a steady stream of blog posts, pictures, presentations and videos on the open social web.
IFLA 2007 in South Africa looms ah
ead - and I look forward to go.
The organizers of the 7th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services , which will be an IFLA satellite conference in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, have accepted my paper. This means I can apply for a travel grant from Oslo University College.
The theme
The paper deals with the productivity (output versus input) of public libraries and is based on Norwegian library statistics.
BOBCATSSS is blogged in German - on Bibliotan - by the Chinese blogger Jintan.
Ein Chinese schreibt über Bibliothek auf Deutsch
There is hope for the world. Enjoy!
Jintan also took the picture below:
Resources
I first met professor (emeritus) Tom D. Wilson in the mid-nineties, when there was close contact between British library schools and the library school in Oslo. He was and is one of the central figueres in our field - and I share many of his concerns about the way library (and information) research (or studies or science) is conceptualized.
