At a meeting I attended today, there was some discussion about some Australian libraries signing up to be early adopters as well.

One thing puzzles me.

With the growth in open source, and in particular with Kuali OLE appearing on the horizon, why would a Library lock themselves into an agreement with any company to be an early adopter of one of these systems, when the potential of a completely new approach to library systems is just around the corner? I know that you shouldn’t wait for timing to be perfect in the technology market or you may never get anything, but is any Library so desparate for a new system right now that they can’t wait a couple of years to see if open source delivers?

 We have seen some significant pronouncements about open source adoption in Australian. As long ago as 2007, NSLA (National and State Libraries of Australasia) produced The Big Bang which stated

NSLA Libraries will encourage collecting institutions in their state or territory to implement open source.

We saw NLA lead by example with the implementation of vufind.

More recently, in a policy approved in December 2010 and circulated  in January 2011, the Australian Government informed agencies of the requirement to consider open source software in all software procurements .

We’ve seen a number of Australian universities moving to Moodle as their Learning Management System, so all the groundwork has been done in terms of developing policies and risk assessments for moving to open source.

So why throw away the option of freeing your library from the constraints imposed by vendors that we have all complained about for decades, and of moving to an environment where we could make our systems client centred? This really smells like a vendor locking in customers before we all jump ship. All I can say is it must have been a really good deal.

 I’d rather put my faith in Brad Wheeler and co. 

So what does innovation mean? Has the meaning changed over the last 20 years? I don’t even remember the term being used 20 years ago in the same way it is now, especially in libraries. I think we felt that our role was clear, that we knew what our customers expected of us and the technology (such as it was). The internet and more importantly, the interactive web, has changed all that.

As it is part of my job title, I thought it was important to identify what innovation means to me. Many people behave and speak as if they think it means finding uses for and implementing social media, or playing with all the new gadgets. I think it includes those things, but I think it is much broader. I like the Wikipedia definition – Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries. I’m particularly interested in looking at how we use what we already have, as so often we only use a fraction of the tools or systems or functionality that we already have available. Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean expense or investment, but perhaps only a new way of thnking or new processes. But sometimes it also means a complete change to a well established way of doing something which requires a whole heap of new technology to underpin it.

There are whole disciplines of study and work around innovation. A few years ago I participated in a leadership training programme, and one of the workshops was on innovation. It taught me a lot, and I found it interesting that it was considered important enough to include along with financial management and sustainability. Gartner has done quite a bit of research into innovation in IT, and they recommend adopting a methodology. Their STREET methodology suggests Scope, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelize and Transfer are essential activities. At least this reminds us that throwing a new gadget, system or process into a workplace isn’t sufficient. At yesterday’s Apple University Consortium presentation at Griffith Uni, we were reminded that adding or changing technology doesn’t of itself change learning outcomes – the pedagogy and curriculum needs to change to take advantage of the technology before that can happen. While that would appear self-evident, it appears to be forgotten far too often.

I think it is equally important to consider innovation as a fit for a specific organisation. Even if an organisation claims to be innovative or want to be innovative, do they actually enable and support innovation, or do the organisational culture and processes work against innovation? A Gartner consultant asked me, when we were discussing innovation, where the organisation I was working for at the time wanted to position itself in relation to the Hype cycle. Specifically, was the organisation prepared to invest in a new technology when it was unproven, with all the associated risks? Or did it want to wait until the technology was low risk? Or were the implementation lead times so lengthy due to rigid governance and excessive processes that by default the technology would be well established before it could be deployed?

If an organisation has a conservative risk-averse culture, a desire to be innovative may be contrary to the existing culture and the organisation may require significant cultural change before innovation is possible. Accepting high levels of risk requires accepting the possibility of failure – and that can be difficult for organisations that depend on their reputation and/or who are under close scrutiny from the public or the media. Many organisations are working hard to satisfy their existing customers and find it hard to see why or how potential disruptive technologies should be investigated. This takes foresight and courage, and a willingness to look to the past to see patterns that can be used as warnings for the future.

Today Stefan Lindegaard on his blog 15inno collated a number of interesting readings relating to innovation. All of these contain some pearls of wisdom regarding innovation, as do many of Stefan’s other posts. But it is essential to put innovation into the context and culture of organisations and the belief systems and world views of the people who will need to adopt it, work with it, change to accomodate it, and realise the benefits from it. If the innovation is to achieve the desired outcomes, those people should be involved in planning and driving the innovations, and owning them from initiation.

I believe the major inhibitor of innovation is the difficulty to step back and see the need or opportunities when people feel overwhelmed, stressed and uninspired or are just plain too busy. That is the joy in my new role – I have a mandate to take those steps back and explore, investigate, find the needs, and learn what the community wants to do differently – and find the innovations that can help make that happen. There will be many challenges, but I look forward to them and the opportunity to make a difference.

All the good reasons for centralisation in a corporate environment (development of standard environments, reduction in costs, sharing of scarce and expensive expertise, economies of scale, single point of contact etc) can actively work against the ability of the library to provide the services it has a mandate to provide to its customers. It can certainly limit the ability of the library to experiment and ‘play’ with the emerging technologies to determine if and how they can be of benefit.

The core premise behind the development of an SOE is to reduce variation so as to allow central management of a fleet of computers, either desktop or server. There are some very sound and sensible reasons for doing this

• cost – if everything is the same, deployments and support can be automated to a large degree and less expensive people hours are required.
• equity – in a standard environment, everyone has the same and so no group gets left behind because of insufficient priority given to replacement cycles etc.
• economy of scale – equipment and software can be purchased at discount when quantites are larger.
• staff resources can be deployed more effectively, and with less skill sets required, the available money doesn’t have to be spread as thinly across multiple skill sets and depth of skill can be purchased instead.

But if the adopted server platform is Windows, and the preferred platform for the tools the library wants to develop and use is *NIX (or any other conflict), what choices does the library have? To compromise on the developments and systems it works with, or go outside the IT environment – with or without IT’s blessing. Either way there is a risk. But it should be the library’s decision about the risk, as it is their business. IT is always concerned that they will get blamed if something goes wrong, after all they are the custodians of all things IT for the organisation. So how can we make this work so IT is comfortable, library can move forward, and customers get the services they need.

Libraries have to be careful not to throw away the benefits that centralisation has achieved, in the interests of freedom. Libraries need to realise the savings and other benefits too. So in moving away, we have to find ways to keep the benefits that can and have been realised, while we throw off the shackles and jump for joy at being able to finally put in place some of the systems and tools we think are essential to our business.

Maybe the optimum solution, if it is possible, (and I suspect in many cases it won’t) is partnership. Let IT provide us with the corporate tools we need (after all do we really want to be running email servers?) but take over the management of our unique systems. Will IT let us sit side-by-side with them and build a partnership of equals based on mutual respect? Probably not, at least in our environment, but it is worth talking about. My colleague says that IT wants to get rid of us and others, but at the same time feels that library, because we are such an informed group, could well set a model that the rest of the organisation could follow. That has promise.

Now that some time has gone by, I am again positive, optimistic and creative – and now feel strong enough and distant enough to reflect on the review process and the outcome, at least to the point at which I left.

The plan for the review as set out in my last post was adopted with some slight modifications. An external consultant was appointed (although not the one we wanted), and he did a reasonable job. His main contribution to the process was that he listened well, and he was very familiar with the environment within which we worked. He also wrote the final report – which he did reasonably well.

The project team was representative of all the areas that received services from IT – one from each, regardless of size and use of IT services.

Mistake 1.

This structure established a principle that was to influence the outcome to a significant extent, which was that each organisation or group with an interest should have an equal say, no matter how important IT was to their activities or how big they were.

Despite this, the work started in a positive way, and the first workshop was held to establish a vision. Quite a lot of work was done to establish was a vision was, and how to arrive at one. Eventually, consensus was reached, and the vision was put up on a wiki and discussion from all staff was invited.

Mistake 2.

The review sponsor(who has no experience with online communication) made an early comment on the wiki suggesting that a particular outcome would be the only one accepted, which effectively shut down an open exploration of options.

Regardless, we moved ahead and the proposed vision was accepted by the project team with some slight modifications, and accepted by the Steering Committee with some further modifications.

Some work was done to gather information from groups already working with a shared service model – what worked, what didn’t. We also conducted a literature review, and found a lot of material on shared services, including IT services, from various government bodies in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia.

There wre a number of important points I got from this material.

1. You need to be totally clear on your reasons for entering into a shared services arrangement – if it is to save money, forget it because you won’t. Or if you do, it will only at such a high cost to services that your organisations will suffer. So identify the other benefits to be gained, and make sure they stay clearly in focus throughout the processes of implementing a shared service.
2. Without appropriate governance of the shared service body, including appropriate input from the organisations receiving the services, it is likely that the required services will not be delivered.
3. The IT organisation must be service oriented. They must fully understand the services that their clients are required to provide, and work closely with them to develop suitable and required services. 
4. The IT organisation must be appropriately funded.

The next step was a workshop to develop a model. All staff were invited, and representation from all parts of the organisation were required. The model was divided up to assist with understanding what was meant by a model – the divisions included

• services to be provided (eg server management, communications, project management, desktop management etc)
• structure
• funding
• governance
• and some others that I can’t remember (but can find out if anyone wants to know)

After much discussion, this was again put up on the wiki (with all the lit review material) and comment invited. By this stage not everyone was playing nice, and there was some tension among the project team members. The period of time allowed for comment closed, and the project team tried to reach agreement on the model to recommend. This proved impossible.

The model that most wanted was a hub-and-spoke model, with an IT person allocated to be the contact for each organisation participating. All IT staff in organisations would go to the IT unit. Funding was to be on the basis of size of organisation, with a multiplier for importance of IT to that organisation. Governance was eventually set at 3 tier.

• Each organisation would send their CEO to the Steering Committee level, making high level strategic decisions.
• There would be a planning and operational level group, consisting of senior staff with responsibility for IT management from each organisation, with operation IT staff from each organisation to be co-opted as required.
• Each organisation would have an internal IT planning group, which would include the IT representative for that area.

The stumbling block for the library was that it didn’t look much different to what was promised a number of years ago, and has never worked. The model required the library ( the largest organisation with by far the most mature use of IT services) to pay by far the greatest contribution, but only had the same voice at each level ofthe governance structure as tiny organisations who had very immature demands for IT. This couldn’t be supported by the Library. In one particularly heated project team meeting, I was accused of behaving as if all organisations were not equal. In terms of need, contribution and maturity, I make no apology for believing that not all the organisations were equal, and that therefore they should not all have equal control.

At this stage, I moved on to another position and another state, voluntarily and with great regret. But it was timely for me to leave, to allow whatever happened next to progress cleanly without the leftover baggage that  I carried.  I don’t know what has happened since, but I wish the fabulous people that I worked with in the Library all the very best.

Now that I have had some time to reflect, I genuinely believe that in that context, and in many others, libraries have to take hold of their own IT destiny, and manage it themselves. Kathryn has recently said in the context of the need for expertise to tweak open source products “it is a new skillset we need to add to our staff, just like a Systems Librarian or a Web Librarian”. In principle I agree – finally, having exhausted every ounce of energy and creativity I had to try to find another way to work with a shared service model.

But it isn’t that simple. If we bring the IT skills into the library, they still have to work within a greater IT context that is managed by the parent IT unit, according to standards they set and the rules they control – unless the library goes completely on their own. That option brings with it a whole range of risks and management skills that libraries rarely have, or have been allowed to develop. In some cases, I think it is the only solution.

I think it is time for the library community to develop a whole set of standards for IT in libraries – those that the IT community have developed don’t work for us, and probably don’t work for anything except corporate IT. Maybe we need a companion standard to ISO 20000, which is specifically for us.

 Stage 1. Vision

This stage involves getting all key stakeholders together with an external facilitator to brainstorm what we want from our ICT environment. This is much wider than a list of services, and at a much higher level than a Service Catalogue. When I think of this stage, I think of words like 

• flexible
• responsive
• agile
• standards-based
• customer focused
• consultative
• transparent
• accountable
• efficient
• well resourced

I’m sure I’ll think of many more. If possible, the group would also attempt to develop a vision and mission statement, or at least some alternatives. These will then be made available online for a defined short period of time for discussion by any member of staff. Once time’s up, the Project Team will incorporate that feedback and develop a final vision and mission statement for submission to the Steering Committee.

Stage 2. Model development

Literature review/environmental scan for best practice. Okay, I’m a librarian, I can’t help it. We need to do some research to find examples of models that work and why. I’m particularly interested in federated models, and there is a great reference that I can’t locate right now but will add later.

Then we get the group together again to brainstorm possible models – no judgements, no analysis at this stage. Anything goes. Then we go through the list and consider the possibilities of each one. The result of that should be some alternatives that could work for our environment. Then we need to consider those and develop pros and cons of each. Hopefully we have a small list of possibilities, and they would then go online for more discussion by all staff (for a short time). The Project Team then puts together a final proposed model, and again invites short feedback. Once feedback is incorporated, the proposed model goes to the Steering Committee.  One of the factors during the deliberations would be funding options as this would be integral to the model.

Sounds easy doesn’t it? I’m not that silly – this will be really tough. But it seems a simple process, which involves full consultation with everyone who wants to have a say. It doesn’t try to deal with implementation issues, as they involve a whole different set of people, and that would follow on with a new plan. I am now waiting to see if this will be accepted, and who is going to lead the review.

I didn’t expect to enjoy Michael Geist’saddress on public policy and legislation which relates to the internet. But I was fascinated by his example of mustering public support to challenge copyright law by using Facebook, although a bit unsettled. While it is easy for a librarian like me to support this use of facebook and other social networking tools, the power of the people that this demonstrates has enormous implications for social change.

I have certainly experienced the power for connecting people, but I hadn’t seen such a clear demonstration of manipulation of public action before. I am a member of the Perth People Who HATE Daylight Savinggroup on facebook, but hasn’t generated the sort of impact that Michael’s has – maybe that is a reflection of our Australian laid back attitude to political issues. My family would say it is because daylight saving is just fine……but I digress.

Twelve months ago I came to my current position with the belief that this frustration wasn’t necessary, that with enough good will and communication (and some plain old common sense), ICT and Library could co-exist in such a way as to enhance the ability to provide ICT based services to the clients. Ever the optimist, I still believe this should be possible. I’m just running out of ideas and energy to try and make it happen that way. And the conversations I have had today lead me to believe that I am not alone.

I am in the government sector, but I hear that many public libraries find the same problems in dealing with local council ICT departments. I also heard from a vendor who said that one corporate library couldn’t

consider purchasing a product that required a streaming server, as their ICT support people were so difficult to deal with that they didn’t request anything new. I spoke to another librarian from a university who said that as the library was combined with ICT in their org structure with an ICT person as the director, they had no champion to fight for their ICT needs, and they were left to the bottom of the heap in terms of priorities. There was a sense that library staff have given up in trying to achieve good ICT based outcomes, as so much energy was spent in arguing for support or services, they had nothing left to focus on their ‘real’ work.

I have always worked with a foot in each camp, so I can really understand why the ICT people are implementing standards and all those good things that ITIL processes and the things that flow from them bring – they (we) are required to be efficient and effective and provide increasing levels of services, often without increasing resources. But have we (they) missed the point? If ICT forgets that the library is also providing services to the clients of the same organisation, and must be permitted to do that in ways that allow them (us) to also function effectively, then they (we) have failed. The fundamental core of any ICT standard must be that they (we) keep in mind the business of the organisation – ICT does not have a mission of its own – it is there to enable the mission of the organisation. The library is there to do the same thing, and must have ICT support to do it.

Why is this failing so consistently? Is this unique to Australia? Are libraries forgetting to engage with their ICT support and leaving them out of the planning/development of ICT based services? Is the rapid growth in ICT based library services overwhelming the resources of ICT sections? Is the funding model wrong? Or are ICT staff forgetting some critical points – they (we) are a service organisation. I think we need to do some work to try to find some resolution to these questions, and find out if there are places where it still works – and if so why.

My organisation is in the process of a major review of the model of ‘shared services’ that are provided. This review was prompted by increasing frustration in the library by the lack of service provision by the shared services IT section, and their refusal to allow the Library to do it for ourselves. As an example, we have been trying to set up a new server to host an open source Content Management System for 8 months. Our shared services IT section refused to do it for us as it as a ‘Library specific application’, and they only handle shared services. But our Library IT staff were not permitted to build the server and locate it in the DMZ, as that would create unacceptable risk for other servers belonging to other agencies also located in the DMZ. There are other solutions to this ridiculous situation, but none of them were permitted. As a result of this and many other similar situations, we wrote a paper requesting a review of the model, and submitted this to the group with responsibility for oversight of ICT in this organisation. The key point of that paper is that in an organisation with hugely varied needs for ICT, a single model of ICT support which tries to work to a ‘one size fits all’ model is not appropriate. The core ITIL principle is that ICT must be aligned with the business needs – but if they are trying to support 7 different organisations with very different needs with a single environment, how is that possible?

So we have a review. So far, we haven’t even agreed on the shape of that review.

Also of interest to me was the presentation from Joann Ransom on Kete Horwhenua , which is described as “a knowledge basket of images, audio, video and documents which are collected and catalogued by the community”. I am so interested in this open source software which enables a truly community engagement with their own information, that I will be downloading and attempting to set up a sampler to show to the staff in my library when I get back – so I hope it is as easy as Joann says it is!

As usual it has been great to catch up with old friends, and make new ones, during the breaks and refreshment periods (and the food has been great I might add). Many of the conversations have revolved around the problems caused by IT services which simply don’t understand or recognise what libraries need from their IT environment. As a consequence I have decided that it is time to write up some of the work we have done to try and redress this situation in our own library. Some research is needed, and I will work out how to start when I get home.I wonder if this is only an Australian problem.  I will begin discussing what may be required in a new post.

When I first heard about ITIL and how it was the foundation for service management standards, I couldn’t help wondering how it might be relevant in library service management. As I found out more, I realised that many of the processes are completely relevant because ITIL isn’t specifically about IT, it is about service management. If you read or hear about ITIL with a librarian’s language filter on and translate on the fly, you will soon see why many of our quaint little practices need a serious overhaul.

The main principle of ITIL requires that the IT organisation must be aligned with the purpose/mission of the parent organisation it serves. Let’s think about that in the library context. Suppose the library in question is an academic library, serving a university community. Now let’s take a simplistic view of the university’s mission and say that it is teaching and research. Following the ITIL principle, it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to say that the mission of the university’s IT section should simply be to enable and support teaching and research (sometimes oversimplifying can be enlightening). How is that different to the library’s mission? We might make it all fancy with big words and adding in other bits to keep politicians and administrators happy, but isn’t it fundamentally to enable and support teaching and research?  I’m not trying to undervalue the librarians’ professional responsibilities in the area of preservation and cultural development,  but if the library loses sight of its core role in relation to its parent organisation, they might lose sight of the funding to keep its doors open. So the core ITIL principle applies to libraries as well, in most cases. 

Let’s consider the Service Desk function in ITIL. The justification for a single point of customer contact is that the customer shouldn’t need to know anything about our organisation, but should get a very high percentage of their queries answered at the first point of contact. Why is that? Because they don’t care about how we are structured, or whether their query needs a professionally qualified librarian to answer it, or whether the subject specialist for their area only works 3 days a week – they just want the information. But they don’t just want any old information – they want it delivered in a way that is of most use to them, and it must be accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. And they want it now.

Of course that isn’t always true – sometimes the person asking the question actually wants to have some social contact, and would really enjoy passing the time of day and the question is just an excuse. Or they have actually asked the question in such a way that the real information need is heavily disguised – thank goodness for the reference question interview!

But generally, the customer wants to get on with whatever they are doing, and getting their question answered is just a part in that process and not the purpose of their visit. Going back to my university example above, we often talk about how a student just wants the information. But at a higher level, many students don’t even care about getting the information,  they just want to pass their course. Getting the information to write their essay is just a means to the end. Yes there are some students for whom the information itself is the motivation, and getting it is just a chore. And a few for whom the gathering process itself is the reward. But I suspect not many.

A single central service desk for a library isn’t the only way of providing this type of service, or maybe not even the most desirable way for some libraries.

 The Botany Library, one of the Manukau City libraries in New Zealand, require their staff to approach customers entering within 90 seconds. They have adopted the retail service model, and ask if they can be of assistance rather than sit or stand behind a desk. I was fortunate enough this week to hear Mirla Edmundson, the Manager Manukau Libraries, speak about their implementation of RFID. She said something like “If you aren’t in the customer service business, get out of libraries”. I agree completely.

The new Brisbane Square Library in Queensland is another very exciting example of a service model where the staff go to the patrons rather than sitting behind a desk.

But what if the customer wants to email or phone? Why should they know if their question is a circulation query, or a reference query, or which person is going to be at work today who will be able to answer their question? Why should they get passed from person to person and maybe end up at a voicemail box and have to hang up hoping their call will be returned sometime?

At MPOW, I get calls because my number is listed on the website as having something to do with IT. Most of those people don’t know who can answer their query, so take a stab in the dark and get me, and then have to wait while I transfer their call - if the expert in the area happens to be at their desk.

I had a conversation with a senior member of staff recently on this topic. I was suggesting that having personal email addresses listed as contact points was providing a failure point for service, and her response was it was better to leave a message for the right person to get back to them, rather than getting an immediate response from someone who can’t answer the question. I acknowledge that if a customer can only get the information they need from one person, that may be true, but I suggest that if that is the case, there is a problem with the service model. If that staff member is on 3 months leave, do we wait for them to return to provide the information? Of course not.

Unfortunately, when we think of the IT Service Desk model, we may be familiar with a bad example, and swear that we wouldn’t want to lower our service levels to that standard. But there are various models, and some of them suit libraries very well. And the payoff is huge, providing it is done correctly.

One of the benefits of using software to support the Service Desk model is that trends can be quickly identified, and rolled into Problem Management. Then the underlying causes can be identified and proactive solutions put in place. This is as necessary in libraries as it is for IT organisations, but in my experience is rarely tackled effectively. When desk shifts change regularly, or where multiple staff are answering queries, it isn’t possible for individuals to get a complete picture of the issues or questions, and so trend analysis is almost impossible. Similarly, it is very difficult to develop knowledge bases, to provide assistance to new or inexperienced staff.

The other ITIL processes of Configuration Management, Change Management, Release Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Level Management, Capacity Management, Financial Management, Availability Management and Service Continuity Management all equally have something to offer libraries. And perhaps most importantly, an understanding of ITIL by librarians will give you a common language with which to communicate with your IT staff, and common expectations of IT best practice.

If you want to know more, have a look at ITIL or the ISO 20000 standard which has evolved from it, and think about how some of the processes described could help your library improve its service management.