MediaSnackers Alumni
(GBR) The MediaSnackers Alumni are a growing number of past clients that could just disappear into the ether if we didn’t catch up with them. We decided to hunt down and grill them to find out what difference their training had made in the way they work professionally and personally.
This months thoughts and insights are from Leith Haarhoff from Palmerston North City Library:
What’s your role, who you work for, and what sort of things do you do?
I’m Head of Information Services which means I get to sharpen pencils all day while others do the real work at our hectically busy public library. Really, I mean it. All the good stuff that happens is down to a big team of creative, committed professional people who make this place sing!
I’m responsible for managing a team who work on information desks, the website and our on-line activities and IT. It’s all about helping customers, physical and virtual, to get access to the information they want and need.
Its been a month or so since you have been drenched in the MediaSnackers ‘way’, what did you learn from the experience?
After DK’s talk, we decided to launch ‘Relax, Play & Create’ month, so that staff could try out social media. We’ve learned that we should never underestimate the power of setting staff free to experiment and have fun—they are incredibly creative!—as well as professional and dedicated of course.
We’ve tried out tons of social media goodness and I have too many personal favourites to mention, but the place to see it all brought together is the Palmerston North City Library blog. Don’t forget to look at the older posts as there are some real gems there too!
The other main ones are Twitter—some awesome tweets promoting our new titles and Facebook: 170 fans in three weeks is not bad going and customers are actually talking to us on-line which is the whole idea!
How have other members of the team/organisation, that didn’t attend the course, received your new techniques?
Well, most of the staff attended DK’s talk, and they certainly got the idea straight away. Even some who didn’t attend have embraced social media. No-one has been forced to try out Web 2.0 platforms, but many more than expected have jumped in to give it a whirl. Some have expressed doubts about the validity of social media as a valid activity for our library, but that’s fine because they may be right. We’ll be evaluating the experiment at the end of November and then we can decide as a team which activities work and which don’t
What has been the biggest and easiest change to make in the way that you work?
Letting go of trying to micro-manage staff’s activities has perhaps been the biggest change. It’s been hard and easy at the same time—hard because we’re used to a fairly top-down approach and easy because the staff have just got on with it and done amazing and surprising things for the library on-line.
Has there been any difficulty in implementing these new approaches?
Yes, we have a somewhat draconian approach to controlling what staff may or may not do with IT and on-line. City Council IM have policies they are required to implement, but they have been supportive of the experiment.
What future projects do you have planned which utilise social media?
Well, that’s all to be decided after we’ve evaluated ‘Relax, Play & Create’ month’s activities, but I’m confident that our view of the on-line scene and how we interact with customers on-line has been totally changed for the better.
Thank you for your time, Leith Haarhoff.
See all MS Alumni interviews here
