I’ve been picking away at Small is the New Big, which is sort of a printed and bound blog (oh, isn’t there some neologism for these? Blook? Ew- can’t say I’m a fan of that word). It’s good for lunchtime reading, in that short short short story way. So far, my favorite bit is a letter from a music director in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It seems that the Bowling Green orchestra is a powerhouse, increasing it’s budget from $15,000 to $500,000 over six years and ending with surpluses in the thousands. They’ve done this by mixing “serious” music with “light” stuff and adding visual elements. Seth Godin responds:

Most orchestras are run by people who are focused on the “truth” of what they do. They are performing the canon, doing it with skill and passion. They offer their community the best of what they are able to produce, and hope that those who are intelligent and genteel enough will appreciate what they have to offer. If people don’t come, it’s some sort of commentary on the declining state of our culture, not, in their view, a reflection of the story they’re telling…

There is certainly a tiny population in Bowling Green that walks around with the worldview, “I love traditional classical music and will pay to see it live.” These people would be an easy sale, but there are very few of them.

There’s a much larger group that has a worldview that says “I’m interested in live music and enjoy an evening out. I want to do something fun and something that doesn’t make me feel bored or stupid.” These are the same people who read movie reviews and movie ads not because they have to, but because they want to. These are the people don’t skip over the entertainment section of their local paper.

Oh. Mah. Gawd. Can we get Jeff, the music director to be Jeff, the library promotion director?

Okay, we’re not in the entertainment business like an orchestra. But this is great advice for libraries. We’re super excited about the research tools we have, but people are already assuming that we’re snotty intellectuals. It’s way too easy for us to scare people away.

As an undergraduate, I worked with some of the IT folks at my school. The tech folks were really good, but some of them alienated students, but one person in particular never did. He was soft-spoken and sweet almost to a fault. At a FPOW, I was helping someone with a frustrating email problem that was *all* Outlook’s fault. At one point, I said (to the computer) “argh! stupid email!” and my coworker started apologizing. That’s when I realized why the tech from my undergrad days never expressed frustration in front of students, no matter how gnarly the problem. People expect the person helping with their computer to be a jerk. Plenty of people expect the library to make them feel dumb.

I’m not suggesting we be all things to all people. Also, plenty of people want the old-school, quiet place of research an contemplation. How many of us work in buildings that don’t have enough quiet study rooms because the libraries were built on the assumption that everyone would be reading and researching quietly? How many complaints a day do we field about that lack of quiet areas? A zillion? Does that sound right? We’re trying to mix classical (that old book smell, quiet desks, intense study) and pops (craft hour, DDR tournaments, group work space, coffee houses) and lots of libraries are doing it well. We may be hamstrung by our buildings a bit, but we get it, right?

Okay, some folks are hold outs on this front. I’d remind them of rule five: the library is a growing organism. I’ve been told that a lot of the 2.0 efforts (like LibraryThing for Libraries) will lead to the death of libraries, or at least the death of librarian jobs. But the only way the library grows is if we grow with it. Our jobs are changing, but that’s pretty much how work works.

What we’re not getting is how to get that message out. I worry that we freak out whenever there’s a pejorative pop culture reference to the library. It’s not great, but pop culture still shows banks as keeping stacks of money in the back (I’m pretty sure my local branch doesn’t have a giant vault with a ship’s wheel style door lock on it in the back). Pop culture isn’t nuanced and it isn’t absorbed mindlessly (hey, that’s what a lot of this 2.0 stuff is about- everyone’s talking back). We should be trying to change our image, but I think this is a fight won locally. The Bowling Green Orchestra looks like it’s still thriving and they don’t seem to be worried when someone in Walla Walla thinks badly of orchestras in general.

Godin offers this last bit of advice:

The thing to remember here is: If your target audience isn’t listening, it’s not their fault, it’s yours. If one story isn’t working, change what you do, not how loudly you yell (or whine).