Google’s Library Project: Questions, Questions, Questions

Librarians, academicians, journalists, information industry pundits, and real people continue to ring in with comments, concerns, quarrels, and commendations for Google’s new library program. “This is the day the world changes,” said John Wilkin, a University of Michigan librarian working with Google. “It will be disruptive because some people will worry that this is the beginning of the end of libraries. But this is something we have to do to revitalize the profession and make it more meaningful.” Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, told the Free Press: “This project signals an era when the printed record of civilization is accessible to every person in the world with Internet access. It is an initiative with tremendous impact today and endless future possibilities.” When asked whether Google is building the library to replace all other libraries, Google representatives—after saluting the role of librarians—said they had “no such plans at the moment. There was too much work to do.”

Here is a roundup of some of the questions asked and answers posited:

• Will the content Google derives from this library program become part of Google Scholar?
  
  • A Google representative had no answer at this time; however, he did say that it seemed “a natural intersection.”
    
• What will this cost Google?
  
  • Many questioned the technology and techniques it would require to perform the Herculean effort—and the costs entailed. Some observers conjectured that performing the project in a 6-year time frame would require an average scan rate of 3,200 volumes a day (365 days a year) for the University of Michigan’s 7 million volumes alone; others applied the same work schedule and came up with 2.25 books per minute. When asked about feasible costs for digitization (estimated by some at $10 per book), Gordon Macomber, president and CEO of Thomson Gale (which has extensive experience in digitizing its Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Nineteenth Century Collections Online licensed products), indicated that $10 per book was below Gale’s experienced cost. All agreed it was a huge undertaking.
    
• How will Google handle duplicates between the libraries?
  
  • Google staff had no answer. However, Jay Jordan, president and CEO of OCLC, pointed out that OCLC has a digital registry—available for a nominal fee—that lists what has been digitally preserved and what’s in the queue. The University of Michigan is reportedly harvesting catalog records for its content contributions.
    
• Is this project English-language only?
  
  • Michael Keller, Stanford’s library director and director of academic information resources, stated that Stanford planned to contribute non-English texts—in particular, European languages using Roman alphabet characters. But he pointed out that Google can process in other alphabets, e.g., Kanji or Arabic.
    
• What about archiving considerations? How durable will this electronic library be?
  
  • The participating libraries have announced robust efforts to protect the digital collection copies Google will return to them. The University of Michigan will store files on gold CD-ROMs with a stress-test life of 3 centuries. Stanford will keep at least three copies of magnetic tape cartridges that will be continually tested and maintained.
    
  • I did not ask, but I assume Google will protect its bread-and-butter content, especially content as expensive to acquire as this, with due diligence.
    
• What effect will this library-based digitization have on Google’s relationships with publishers? Is it designed to push publishers into joining the Google Print program?
  
  • Google representatives rejected any charges that this project was meant to hammer publishers into joining Google Print. However, they did point out: “[P]articipating in the original Google Print does offer significant benefits, namely by creating a book-selling link, using the publisher log, providing links back to the publisher’s Web site, and additional reporting. It also allows us to show more than just the snippet view, which can lead to greater purchase decisions.” Also, currently, books retrieved from the publisher contributions to Google Print do not have a “Find It in a Library” link as material from the scanned library collections does.
    
  • OCLC’s Jordan didn’t think Google had to “herd anyone” among the publishers. “With the exposure Google Print offers publishers, they can’t afford not to be there, because other publishers are. It’s the Chicken Little syndrome.”
    
  • Patricia Schroeder, executive director of the Association of American Publishers, commented on winners and losers as Google enters this field. She saw it as giving a “huge pump to print-on-demand” and said this development could “solve the returns problem. In fact, it could solve a lot of supply chain problems.” Building acceptance of reading electronic texts, she thought, would encourage book sales by lowering prices for e-books. But overall, Schroeder thought it would not threaten publishers. “At the end of the day, what we can produce is creative, and that’s harder than techies think it is. We will still need publisher staffs.” Schroeder considers reprint houses and libraries to be vulnerable, however.
    
• How might Google’s competitors, such as Yahoo! or Microsoft, respond to this challenge?
  
  • Unless someone can come up with a deal with the Library of Congress and/or The British Library, it’s hard to see how anyone could counter this massive infusion of content. Will large research libraries soon have Microsoft or Yahoo! knocking on their doors? Perhaps. And not just those current competitors. What about Amazon, itself a digitizer of books for its “Search Inside the Book” program? After Google finishes its titanic project, it will have created—at the very least—earth’s largest out-of-print bookstore, a mammoth electronic re-issuance of copyrighted and non-copyrighted publications from publishers around the world. Permissions from publishers could clear the way for Google to enter the electronic bookselling arena in a big way. (Again, Google representatives had nothing to say about future marketing plans in this area.)
    
• What impact could this project have on current digitization projects?
  
  • One observer who runs a digital library project of 175,000 documents in approximately 10 million images commented that his and every other digital library project had now become “small-scale.” He considered that Google and its participating library partners had “broken through mental barriers of scale, technology, and copyright law. This rocks the world.” A representative of a leading research library consortium predicted that the new project could table or even kill current digitization projects at libraries, while the librarians waited tsee if their planned projects were necessary or, assuming their content was unique, if Google might someday digitize that content for free.
    
  • On the other hand, Marjorie Hlava of Access Innovations, a consulting and software house for library automation, considered the new program could only help them. With Google “lowering the bar” and simplifying digitization, she expected more people to get interested in such projects. She expected even more interest in Access’ software offerings to provide the needed precision through taxonomies, source coding, customization, etc.—the precision that Google lacks, according to Hlava.
    
  • Other ways to get online books clearly exist—ways that allow for downloading public domain books, e.g., Project Gutenberg, the Online Books Page from Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania, and even the “Million Book Project” between the Internet Archive, Carnegie Mellon University, the Library of Congress, and other libraries. Libraries can license book collections from fee-based services such as OCLC’s netLibrary, which has a public domain component, or ebrary’s fee-based library service. However, the most any of these projects—fee or free—currently offer is tens of thousands of books, not millions.
    
  • As for digitization projects produced and funded by library vendors, I asked several executives from among the database aggregators what impact they thought Google’s effort would have over time. The general public position seemed to follow the maxim of “a rising tide lifts all boats,” rather than the tsunami image. Macomber of Thomson Gale forecasts that sales would stay robust for the company’s public domain historical collections. “Anything and everything that draws the attention of people interested in scholarly reference content helps our business and that of other publishers of scholarly works. We’ve never had a time where scholarly content was in such a bright light. There’s opportunity there. It’s now a matter of realizing the greater demand and serving the greater market. The fact that it’s a smaller share, but of a much larger market, that’s the important change.” He also expected to win through providing added value, e.g., the Shakespeare Online spinoff of other digitization with multiple imaged versions of the plays, critical essays, biographical material, etc., all collected in one compact online product.
    
• Will librarians be threatened by the new development?
  
  • The Internet doesn’t scare Carol Brey-Casino, current president of the American Library Association. In a Wall Street Journal interview, she said: “We had this conversation when the Internet began to get popular, and what’s happened is that library visits have doubled in the last decade to 1.2 billion.” Consulting firm Outsell did point out (“Google to Digitize Library Book Holdings,” http://now.outsellinc.com/now/2004/12/google_t_digit.html) that, despite the efforts of “consortia and library groups that have been working on digitization issues in libraries for years … it took an outsider third party, Google, to pull this off.” While admitting that the possession of vast financial resources enabled Google to take on such a task, Outsell also attributed the development to the fact that “Google is the only player with the audacity to act on the grand vision … it took an outsider to really go after the content buried in books.” Outsell does not think the development will destroy libraries as we know them. In fact, the company’s leaders think that process is already well under way, and they welcome the change. “This isn’t a death knell for libraries; it’s another shove to get librarians out from behind the stacks and harness their expertise, including subject-matter expertise, and to enhance users’ ability to find, use, and access information in any format. Getting out of the business of simply storing books should be a welcome goal.”
    
  • Google doesn’t scare Michael Gorman, dean of library services at California State University at Fresno and president-elect of the American Library Association. Gorman had almost nothing good to say about the Google library project in an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times (“Google and God’s Mind,” Dec. 17, 2004) and picked up by other newspapers. He starts off his piece referring to “the boogie-woogie Google boys” and goes on from there, concluding “that enormous databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility based on the staggering notion that, for the first time in history, one form of communication (electronic) will supplant and obliterate all previous forms.” Gorman does state his approval of online access to reference material and digitization of unique manuscripts and images, although Google’s library partners do not make the latter material available for the project. (Other remarks in the piece seem to indicate that Gorman has not tested Google Print search results specifically.) Gorman says it is “premature to prepare to mourn the death of libraries and the death of the book…. This latest version of Google hype will no doubt join taking personal commuter helicopters to work and carrying the Library of Congress in a briefcase on microfilm as ‘back to the future’ failures, for the simple reason that they were solutions in search of a problem.” Instead, he suggests people should accustom themselves to a “short wait” for “the active and developed interlibrary lending system that supplies thousands of books daily to scholars, researchers, and dilettantes worldwide.” (I asked OCLC’s Jordan whether OCLC had plans in the works to make ILL delivery nationwide with a quick turnaround. He confirmed OCLC employees were working on the issues, but—at this point—they do not have a way for libraries to verify credit cards, which would seem a necessary, “deposit fund” precondition for any massive transfer of assets by the nation’s libraries.) By the way, a recent Library Journal story indicated that Gorman has “taken LIS education as the theme of his presidency.”
    
  • John Berry of Library Journal viewed the Google library program as “another great leap forward for access to information, a paradigm shift in our time.” As for the future of librarians, Berry said: “Every time anything like this comes even close, the role of librarians is strengthened and made more central. This will happen again. We’ll go back to our basics—evaluation and provision of information sources, helping people authenticate currency, comprehensiveness, accuracy, and so forth.”
    
  • Marjorie Hlava pointed out a practical consideration. “It costs $200 a square foot to maintain a library collection (heating, utilities, building costs, staff, etc.). If I had 132 miles of shelf space and someone offered to digitize half of it, I’d be real interested.” And, after the digitization, Hlava expected people would be tempted to downsize their physical collections. OCLC’s Jordan agreed. He expected the libraries in the program to “re-purpose” their funds, for example by building up their special collections.
    
  • Mary Case, library director at the University of Illinois at Chicago, cut to the chase: “If we dig in our heels, we’ll just look stupid. It’s coming. We must use it.”
    
• What’s next for Google? Are there any other prized content collections in its line of sight?
  
  • I asked Google representatives about other kinds of public domain books, e.g., “copyleft” (author’s permission granted in advance) or government documents, e.g., GPO Access content. They indicated that “all of that is on target. It’s a matter of prioritization.”
    
  • Other collections of material would seem tbe logical extensions to the library program, e.g., ProQuest’s compilation of a century or more of doctoral dissertations and masters’ theses. The Pennsylvania Library Association held an October debate on the relationship between libraries and Google at its annual conference (Brian Kenney, ed. “Googlizers vs. Resistors,” Library Journal, December 2004, pp. 44–46). At that panel session, Googlizer Richard Sweeney, university librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, described a test of putting 3,600 theses and dissertations online and into Google’s hands. In the first 3 years, users went from 50 to 500,000. I asked ProQuest’s Suzanne BeDell, vice president of higher education publishing (and a Resistor on the panel), and Mary Sauer-Games, director of publishing, whether ProQuest would consider opening up its collection to Google Print. Another branch of ProQuest is apparently in conversations with Google Print. BeDell said, “Any opportunity for us at ProQuest to help increase usage of data [that] librarians are already subscribing to—and Google can really help to do that as can any Web-based search tool—is a real opportunity.” She also reported that ProQuest has purchased and installed a new high-speed scanner for digitizing microform content. “Yes,” said BeDell, “Google is a disruptive technology. This Google project will fundamentally change what we do in our business, but, that being said, it’s a great opportunity. It’s bringing so much to the table in one fell swoop; the opportunities are outstanding.”
    

What Is FRBR?

Catalogers, catalog managers, and others in library technical services have become increasingly interested in, worried over, and excited about FRBR (the acronym for Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records). Staff outside of the management of the library's bibliographic database may wonder what the fuss is about (FERBER? FURBUR?), assuming that FRBR is just another addition to the stable of acronyms that catalogers bandy about, a mate or sibling to MARC and AACR2. FRBR, however, has the potential to inspire dramatic changes in library catalogs, and those changes will greatly impact how reference and resource sharing staff and patrons use this core tool.

FRBR is a conceptual model for how bibliographic databases might be structured, considering what functions bibliographic records should fulfill in an era when card catalogs are databases with unique possibilities. In some ways FRBR clarifies certain cataloging practices that librarians have been using for over 160 years, since Sir Anthony Panizzi, Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, introduced a set of 91 rules to catalog the print collections of the museum. Sir Anthony believed that patrons should be able to find a particular work by looking in the catalog, that all of an author's works should be retrievable, and that all editions of a work should be assembled together.

In other ways, FRBR extends upon past practice to take advantage fully of the capabilities of digital technology to associate bibliographic records in ways a card catalog cannot. FRBR was prepared by a study group assembled by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) that included staff of the Library of Congress (LC). The final report of the group, "Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records," is available online. The group began by asking how an online library catalog might better meet users' needs to find, identify, select, and obtain the resources they want.

Better navigation

FRBR is a way of explaining the bibliographic world, in a library context, to allow for a better arrangement and collocation of records in a bibliographic database and, consequently, better navigation. FRBR could make possible a catalog that would group all the bibliographic records for all the filmed versions of Romeo and Juliet in sets organized by the language of the production, for example.

Within each language's set would be separate subsets for those on DVD and those on videocassette. This would eliminate the screen after screen of displays of bibliographic headings, each of which a user has to investigate to determine if the record is really for the resource he or she needs ("Where's the movie version on DVD?") The larger the size of the database, the more such organization promises cleaner, more navigable displays to searchers. This is why FRBR is especially important in resource sharing environments—where databases seem to grow exponentially.

From items to works

One of the bases for that organization is FRBR's conception of bibliographic resources, which fall into four "entities": item, manifestation, expression, and work.

An "item" is familiar to us: the object that sits on a shelf, which gets checked out, damaged, repaired, then eventually discarded. In the current era, it may not be physical but instead virtual, like an ebook.

The "item," an individual copy, is a single example of a "manifestation," the publication by a certain publisher of a text, or of a sound or video recording. Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, published in hardback by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1999, is one manifestation. Heaney's translation of Beowulf published in paperback by W.W. Norton in 2000 is another. Heaney's Beowulf as it appears in the collection Wizards: Stories of Magic, Mischief and Mayhem (Thunder's Mouth, 2001) is yet another manifestation. Manifestations are generally what catalogers catalog.

All of these are manifestations of an "expression," a more abstract and intangible entity. Heaney's translation of Beowulf, independent of who is publishing it and when, is one "expression" of that work. The translation by Barry Tharaud is another.

What are these two Beowulf translations "expressions" of? I used the term work above, an even more abstract concept in the FRBR model. In this case, the "work" is Beowulf, that ancient intellectual creation or effort that over time has been expressed in multiple ways, each manifested in several different ways itself, with one or more items in each manifestation.

This is a pretty gross oversimplification of FRBR, which also details other relationships: among these entities; between these entities and various persons (such as creators, publishers, and owners); and between these entities and their subjects. It also specifies characteristics, or "attributes," of the different types of entities (such as title, physical media, date, availability, and more.). But it should be enough to grasp the possibilities.

Now apply it

Imagine that you have a patron who needs a copy of Heaney's translation of Beowulf. She doesn't care who published it or when, only that it's Heaney's translation. What if you (or your patron) could place an interlibrary loan call on that expression, instead of looking through multiple bibliographic records (as of March, OCLC's WorldCat had nine regular print editions) for multiple manifestations and then judging which record is the best bet on which to place a request? Combine that with functionality that lets you specify "not Braille, not large print," and it could save you time. Now imagine a patron in want of a copy, any copy, in English, of Romeo and Juliet. Saving staff time means saving money.

Whether or not this actually happens depends upon what the library community decides to do with FRBR. It is not a set of cataloging rules or a system design, but it can influence both. Several library system vendors are working with FRBR ideas; VTLS's current integrated library system product Virtua incorporates FRBR concepts in its design. More vendors may follow. How the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules develops the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR) to incorporate FRBR will necessarily be a strong determinant of how records work in a "FRBR-ized" bibliographic database.

National FRBR experiments

The larger the bibliographic database, the greater the effect of "FRBR-like" design in reducing the appearance of duplicate records. LC, RLG, and OCLC, all influenced by FRBR, are experimenting with the redesign of their databases.

LC's Network Development and MARC Standards Office has posted at its web site the results of some of its investigations into FRBR and MARC, including possible display options for bibliographic information. The design of RLG's public catalog, RedLightGreen, has been described as "FRBR-ish" by Merrilee Proffitt, RLG's program officer. If you try a search for a prolific author or much-published title in RedLightGreen, you'll probably find that the display of search results is much different than what you would expect. OCLC Research has developed a prototype "frbrized" database for fiction, OCLC FictionFinder. Try a title search for a classic title like Romeo and Juliet and observe that OCLC includes, in the initial display of results (described as "works"), a graphic indicator (stars, ranging from one to five). These show in rough terms how many libraries own the work—Romeo and Juliet clearly gets a five. Indicators like this are something resource sharing staff can consider an "ILL quality rating."

If you're intrigued by FRBR's possibilities and what they could mean to resource sharing workflow, start talking. Now is the time to connect with colleagues, your local and/or consortial system vendor, RLG, OCLC, and your professional organizations. Have input into how systems develop in the FRBR world.

For a forgettable memory

[Forwarding from SPARC Open Access Forum.]
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Dr T B Rajashekar - A Tribute
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Dr Tarikere Basappa Rajashekar, who was the Associate Chairman of the National entre for Science Information (NCSI) at the Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore, was killed in a road accident near Bangalore on 3 June 2005.

Raja, as he was known to his close friends, was an achiever. When many others were talking about digital libraries, he started working on building one. He was clear in what he wanted to do and he went about it with dedication and commitment and what is more he knew his limitations and never attempted to do anything in which he did not have the required expertise. He was serious about his work and never would waste his time or energy in fruitless pursuits.
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When new technologies came in quick succession and transformed the way we handle information, Raja was quick to learn those technologies and apply them intelligently in the areas of database management and information dissemination.
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Raja's role in the creation of the Nation's first computerized current awareness service in the early 1980s at NCSI is commendable. He was one of the earliest in India to use COBOL and database, in both of which he had a rich experience and knowledge, in library applications. He had an exemplary skill in programming and an innate ability to understand, apply and disseminate newer programming paradigms to stay current all the time.
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Right from the early days of NCSI, Raja not only led the young team from the front with his insistence on discipline and timely delivery of quality services but also played a key role in capacity building. He was largely responsible for the content and curriculum of the 18-month training programme on information and knowledge management at NCSI, which is unlike any other programme taught anywhere else in India. The curriculum always reflected the most recent developments. Not only did he teach the key courses (information and knowledge organization, digital library and information services in enterprises,internet information resources and services) but also helped his younger colleagues to acquire the skills to teach state-of-the-art courses. Many of the professionals trained by him occupy important positions across the country and elsewhere and have been contributing immensely to the growth of
information science. The fact that they stayed in touch with him and continue to hold him in reverence, vindicates the fact that Raja was not only a great and
inspiring guru but also a fine gentleman. Raja had become synonymous with NCSI.
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Raja set up India's first interoperable institutional open access archive, but was dismayed at the rather slow pace at which it was filling. When it was pointed out that he should be more proactive and meet with faculty and talk to them about the archive, he took the suggestion in the right spirit and at the time of his tragic death there were more than 2,000 papers in the archive. He had conducted many training programmes on setting up open access archives. Raja was also largely responsible for marrying the Greenstone digital library software with an earlier version of the Eprints software (when the latter did not support full-text earching), and a few months before his death he and his colleague Francis Jayakanth, in collaboration with researchers at the Old Dominican University, developed two approaches to make CDS-ISIS databases OAI compliant. Raja was also the first in
India to set up an e-mail based electronic discussion forum for the library and information science (LIS) professionals. Since its inception in 1994, he moderated the LIS-Forum democratically.
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Born on 2 November 1954, Raja took his bachelor's degree in library science from the Mysore University and the postgraduate Associateship in documentation and information science from the Documentation Research and Training Centre, Bangalore. After a few years at the National Informatics Centre, New Delhi, he had a brief stint at the British Council Library in New Delhi, where he impressed everyone with his technical savvy. It is then he moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and worked quietly and earned a reputation as a performer. Along the way
he also took a doctoral degree from the Poona University.
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A very shy person, Raja would keep himself away from the limelight. Deeply committed to his family, when he took a sabbatical in 2000 he did not move out of
Bangalore. He worked for Informatics (India) Ltd, a Bangalore-based company, and developed an excellent multidisciplinary current awareness tool, an e-journal
portal and gateway called J-Gate, to aggregate thousands of journals. He also wrote a series of essays on digital libraries.
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Raja was on many committees, including the CODATA, and had contributed to the development of INFLIBNET and INDEST. He was also elected Fellow of the Society of
Information Science (India).
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When he was on course to achieve much more, fate has snatched him away from us. The large number of condolence messages received from within the country and elsewhere is an indication of the regard he had earned. Once he remarked to his students, what
mattered in life was what one left behind for others to remember and continue. By that yardstick he has done extremely well. The best tribute the LIS professionals in this country could pay to Raja is to set up institutional open access archives as soon as possible and fill them with papers, modernize their curricula and teach their students the values practiced by him.
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Subbiah Arunachalam & N Balakrishnan

Target Your Brand

Library Journal

Target Your Brand

By Beth Dempsey -- 8/15/2004

Build an identity that works in the age of the superstore

As bookstores and the Internet march forward, the library community continues to question and forecast its role in society. Innovative libraries nationwide have seized the opportunity to reinvent themselves, bringing a new level of excitement to the industry. Yet puzzlement remains on what strategies, what roles will work in communities where alternatives are so readily available. A cue from corporate America is to deal with a changing competitive structure by more effectively managing the brand the library holds in the community. A slippery concept that's often confused and misused, a brand is the definition of your institution that exists in the mind of the customer, says Chris Pulleyn, chief executive officer of Buck & Pulleyn, a Rochester, NY–based agency specializing in brand strategy. Your library's brand is the space you've captured in the minds of customers—it's all the things that come to mind, all the expectations they have, when they hear the word library. The Borders lesson "There's home, office, and a third place," says Jenie Dahlmann, the Borders' corporate communications manager. Borders wants to be that third place. "It's a place where you can relax and explore…where you can stay in a comfortable, community atmosphere. Everything we do in the store fosters that." Borders excels in creating what could be anyone's third place; everything about the environment says, "Stay awhile." The light is flattering, the colors are warm and modern, and the merchandise mix is interesting and stimulating, without being overwhelming. Customers are invited to sit on benches in the store's wide aisles, examining media of all types, with no pressure to buy…like a library. Lines are blurring as alternatives appear for what has traditionally been the sole domain of the library. Indeed, Dahlmann says, elements of Borders' "Stay and explore" strategy have been inspired by libraries. Informal lectures on a variety of topical issues round out a monthly programming schedule that includes book signings, poetry readings, and book discussion groups. Cafés include wireless connections for businesspeople in transit. But these bookstores are certainly not the only competitor to traditional library service: the Internet has become so firmly ingrained as America's default research tool that the New York Times proclaimed, "Google has become a verb, a way of life, and a new add-on for the brain." Brand promises Is a brand that exists in the mind of the customer out of our reach? The entire discipline of brand management has sprung up around this concept, providing a methodology for shaping that mental image and leveraging it to gain a competitive edge. Good brand management is the crux of the business model, driving the strategy behind the experience you provide the customer. It begins with understanding what your institution currently means to customers (brand identity) and what you want it to mean (brand aspiration). While plenty of organizations know how they want to be viewed, what mental space they want to capture, staying true to the brand aspiration in every aspect of the customer experience—from graphics to service to collection—is what separates those that succeed from those that are merely ambitious. The brand aspiration is the benchmark against which all outreach is measured. Most libraries have a mission statement. If they're brand driven, the mission statement puts into words how the brand aspiration will be delivered. It makes what Pulleyn calls a "brand promise" to the customer. Web presence, programming, policies, services, collection, and expectations of staff are the ways in which the promise is either kept or broken. Think Target To see the power of an effective strategy, consider the outrageously successful Target brand. Target stepped out of the pack of retail also-rans when it spotted an opportunity in the market to make discount shopping better than it was. It could capture a segment of customers who had found discounters lacking. Target made a promise to customers to make discount shopping more stylish, more efficient, more pleasant…cool. That brand—captured in its slogan "Expect more, pay less" and now firmly embedded in the minds of customers—is driven through all aspects of the Target retail experience. The merchandise mix is consistently stylish, with low-rent products from high-rent designers displayed within a traditional discount store structure. The appeal is decidedly youthful (a nod to the market that's the ultimate arbiter of what's cool and what's not), yet, more traditional styles and products are also available to ensure that a wide variety of needs are met. Keeping the aim at youth also allows Target a continuing source of fresh customers and freedom from the threat of an aging customer base—a particularly pertinent issue in the library world. The service at Target is structured like a discount store—primarily self-serve—but it is exceptionally efficient, with processes that make returns and checkout faster. Again, the customer can "expect more" in a "pay less" framework. Target has defied what had been the natural laws of discounters: it has infiltrated the world of high style, with magazine coverage that places Target merchandise in the seasonal "must-haves" columns, and expanded its customer base to include those who had never before set foot in a discount store. Target has made discount shopping cool. But is it "branded"? Brand management is often narrowly and inappropriately defined as the development of a consistent look and logo, but that definition misses the power of a real brand strategy. Would Target have the dominance it enjoys in the marketplace if it relied solely upon its signature red and white bull's-eye? American corporate history is littered with good-looking failures. Three elements make Target an effective brand—careful selection of the market niche, the promise to the customer, and the delivery on the promise in every customer interaction. At Buck & Pulleyn, they avoid using brand as a verb. Pulleyn says, "Branding is done to a cow. We try to always refer to a brand strategy or to brand management to keep the whole process top of mind." Pulleyn refers to libraries as "experience brands," meaning the brand is experienced by all the senses. As at a Starbucks or Target, the customer is immersed in the brand, making it easy to break the promise to the customer if a single element provides a conflicting message. The moral of the story then is to view every interaction with the customer as an opportunity to seal the brand. Conversely, if bobbled or inconsistent, every interaction can be a threat to the brand. A signature design But, what about the visuals? We are a people who judge books by their covers, which makes graphic design a powerful tool for your brand. The elements of a good design strategy are fairly simple. Choose a scheme that fits your brand aspiration and use it consistently. Over time, this will marry one look to the brand image. More importantly, it sends a single message; it tells your customers that all elements of the library are aiming at the same goal. Consistency of design comes in developing a palette that includes a small variety of typefaces, layouts, and colors. Starbucks' design strategy is a model of consistency in action. Store interiors, packaging, and advertising are variations on a theme—a coffee-driven theme. Customers have been taught to spot Starbucks' packaging and Starbucks' stores at a distance because of their consistent design. More important, of course, is the consistency of the coffee experience that will follow. Translated to a library environment that means signs, handouts, brochures, newsletters, library cards, web sites—everything that can carry a physical imprint of the brand, should. The lure of continually refreshing yourself and your staff with a new look is powerful, but it is also a threat to the brand image you're building. Establish the palette and stick with it. When assigning the creation of a graphic, whether with an outside firm, through a freelancer, or internally, make sure the designer understands the rules—what elements can be varied, what must always be the same. A good place for design variation is when particular customers are being targeted. When you develop the design palette consider variations within the scheme that allow you to subbrand its departments. For example, a whimsical version of your design scheme can be developed for children's programs. Calling on the cavalry A distinctive and consistent look adds the polish that reminds customers they're in the hands of pros, an important consideration in a competitive environment. One look inside a Barnes & Noble shows the kind of design sophistication libraries are up against. Good design comes from good design firms—an investment that can establish both the look and a structure that carries the brand image forward. Keeping a professional firm on call for all the library's design needs rarely sits well with boards and budgets. If that is out of reach, consider bringing in the pros to develop design templates (for multiple media and multiple uses) that will be used by internal graphics staff or freelancers. Buoy that strategy with an annual design "checkup" to be sure the tone and execution are not straying or substandard. If that's still too rich, Pulleyn suggests contacting a local design school and running a contest to establish the library's design scheme. Establish contest rules that support the library's needs and be sure the students understand the brand aspiration. Where to start? Pulleyn says brand strategy starts with a comprehensive analysis of the environment, including the competition; the library's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and vulnerabilities; and, most important, an understanding of the library's current brand—what customers think now. This analysis is the foundation for a successful plan and where to invest if you have limited dollars. With about $20,000, a library can expect an experienced outside firm to handle this kind of market analysis and deliver the guts of an effective brand strategy: recommendations for brand positioning, key messages, personality, tone and feel (the elements that will drive the design scheme), and a broad-strokes marketing plan. Handled with care, this one-time investment will guide the development of a new identity or secure one that's already working. Why bother? Few libraries beg for business. In an industry where institutions are chronically understaffed, why invest in a strategy that will likely bring in more business? Brand is about identity, about clearly defining value and contribution to the community. Good brand management provides the answers before the questions are raised—whether those questions come from staff or taxpayers or board members. It aligns staff and aims the organization toward a single goal. More poignant, consider what's lost without a careful cultivation of a brand that's relevant to the community. The associations with the word library are powerful and emotional—equal access to information as a fundamental democratic value, civic pride in having a solid resource, an intelligent and economical choice. The ability to secure those feelings for at least another generation is within reach. Author Information Beth Dempsey (beth@bethdempsey.com) is principal of Dempsey Communications Group, a firm specializing in strategic communications for knowledge organizations How To Make a Strong Brand Life used to be so simple: A brand was a name, like Coke or IBM. But the science of brand management simply defines a process for owning a space in the psyche of the customer. FIND YOUR BRAND. What is the space you want and are able to own in your community? Don't hang your hat on a service or a product—they're easy to replace. Think big but maintain credibility. Also, it has to be unique and valuable. That requires understanding the community you serve. DEFINE IT. What does your identity look and feel like? What does it do? Consider the Borders brand of the "Third Place." If Borders wants to be the place its customers go when they aren't at home or work, then they must encourage them to stay and explore. What needs to happen in the store to foster that? GIVE IT A LOOK. Look at your library's logo, its printed pieces, and signage. What about its display cases? Is there a consistent look and what does it say about the library's identity? The simple, modern lines of the Salt Lake Public Library logo, inspired by books on a shelf, blend traditional library service in a modern context. The lines are repeated in all the library's printed pieces, with a consistent layout and typeface. Customers can quickly identify a mailing from the library by its look. Your library's look is its signature—make it compelling and make it consistent. (For inspiration, take a stroll through Starbucks. Look at the packaging and signage and count the number of times you see the company's logo.) EXECUTE IT. To build ownership of an identity, the brand messages need to be consistent in the collection, staff, programming, service, web site, advertising and PR, and even buildings. In both Salt Lake and San José, the public libraries' brands of "community gathering place" are translated through the structures, with comfortable areas for gathering and access to food and drink. But before you undertake structural changes, realize that the collection and staff are the primary carriers of the brand. If your library aspires to be a community place but the collection caters to a small core of users, then it's not a community place. (In San José, use of the library tripled over a decade just through changes to the collection in language and media and greater emphasis on youth and children.) Likewise, staff need to be included in brand translation. Talk with them, train them, allow staff to help define the service that makes the brand alive in human interaction. LIVE IT. Building a brand identity takes discipline and a commitment over time. Don't let your library's focus on its identity fade. David Aaker, author of Managing Brand Equity and Building Strong Brands (Free Pr.), recommends charging someone with brand oversight, to ensure it drives the entire organization. When the Brand Leaves the Building Publications, library programs held offsite, brochures, all are opportunities to leverage the brand beyond the walls of the library. Good examples of how to do it abound, but the ultimate traveling brand translation is perhaps the New York Public Library Desk Reference. Now in its fourth edition, the book has introduced the NYPL to millions worldwide. It's a model of effective brand strategy. It married the prestige of its name to the convenience of a desk reference to address an opening in the market for an NYPL reference service "to go." The product reinforces the library's service to two groups of users: researchers and leisure users. Reviews consistently point to the ability of the book to address quickly virtually any reference question succinctly and accurately while providing a nearly endless amount of fascinating trivia that can be perused for pleasure. The packaging carries NYPL's signature lions, making it impossible to mistake the ownership of content. Gardiner's List Most library publications and programs can be used to elevate or secure the institution's brand. Consider Gardiner Public Library, a one-building system serving an inland-Maine community. The library positions itself as the community resource for reading and has gained worldwide attention for a small publication it produces called Who Reads What?It was begun by now-retired director Glenna Nowell as a way to spread reading interest throughout the stacks, with less dependence on the best sellers table. Nowell noticed that when celebrity interviews happened to include a book recommendation, there was demand. There was obvious interest in the information, yet no one was collecting it. She began to write to celebrities, asking them to recommend a favorite book to her patrons. They wrote back, and she began publishing the recommendations annually. When the Associated Press caught on, Who Reads What? became an annual press opportunity, with the Gardiner list written about worldwide. This innovation supports and spreads the Gardiner brand of "community reading resource"—what greater evidence of being the center of the reading universe than having celebrities answer your query about their favorite books? Though design changes have occurred throughout the nearly 20 years it's been published, the list continues to carry the library's design signature—a pencil drawing of the library itself—a beautiful, vintage building. Rules of thumb for letting the brand out of the building: be sure the program or publication takes the brand message with it in both purpose and execution; stamp it with the library's design signature.

8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is the new technology on the block and is taking the Internet by storm as Internet marketers are hurrying to incorporate this new form of communication and technology into there existing online businesses to Maximize there exposure online with NEW and/or Existing customers.

I recently received a post on my Blog from a fellow that inspired me to write this article since I found the nature of the topic important to ALL who are serious about getting the most out of there RSS feed and this new technology.

I'm pretty sure you can guess what he asked from reading the headline of this article.

Well... I did some research on what he had asked of me and came up with...

"8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure"

So, with that said, let's dive into the first and MOST important step to Maximizing your RSS feed for the exposure it deserves.

Step #1. Build a dedicated webpage for your RSS feed.

This is probably the most important part of getting the most out of your RSS feed: building your own dedicated webpage for your RSS feed subscription.

The KEY here is to give your potential readers many options to adding your RSS feed.

The best way for me to illustrate this to you is by clicking on the link below that leads to my dedicated RSS feed subscription page so you can see first hand what you need to do to get yours started.

Click here: http://www.internetwondersezine.com/rss_feed.html

Did you notice all the different options I give?

That's what you need to do.

Now, for those of you who aren't so web savvy, don't worry, I have something for you that will auto-generate a RSS feed webpage for you within minutes if you already have a Blog or RSS feed.

The service I'm talking about is called FeedBurner.com -- http://www.feedburner.com -- and is a free service for you to sign up for.

Here's what my webpage through FeedBurner.com looks like so you'll have an idea of what yours will look like. http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheInternetWondersBlog

Do you see all the options they give your potential readers to add your RSS feed to there RSS readers?

Once you've accomplished one of the two options above your all set to start promoting your RSS feed for MAXIMUM exposure.

Step #2. Add links to your RSS feed webpage on your website.

This is yet just another way to pull your visitors towards your RSS feed webpage by simply adding Text or Graphic links to your existing webpages.

Make sure you put them in Highly visible area's where your visitors will see your links.

I would would put one at the top, middle and bottom of your website.

This really depends on what kind of website you have so you'll have to use your own dicression.

Here's what I have done on my website to give you an example. Click here: http://www.internetwondersezine.com/

Step #3. Add this HTML tag to your RSS feed webpage.

Here's something you can add to all your websites webpages that will get the attention of Search Engines spiders to come on over and check out your RSS feed further.

Simple add the following HTML tag to the of your document:

link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="YOUR SITE TITLE RSS Feed" href="URL TO RSS FILE"/

(note: add this <> to the end after the forward slash /)

Step #4. Some idea's if you have your own newsletter.

If you have your own newsletter like I do, here's a couple ways to get your visitors to visit your RSS feed webpage.

Add a link on your "Thank You" page that leads to your RSS feed webpage. Whether its a Text or Graphic link.

The key here is to get your RSS feed link in front of your readers as much as possible to get them to add your RSS feed to there readers.

The next one is, add a link inside your "Welcome" email that's sent out to your New newsletter subscriber after they've subscribed.

This again, will give you another chance of getting them to add your RSS feed to there readers.

Step #5. Put together a "Signature File".

Here's another couple great ways to get your RSS feed webpage more exposure every time you send out an email or post to any online forums is by simply putting together a "Signature File".

Now, every time you sent out an email to your list and/or business contact you can attached your "Signature File" at the end of every email you send.

The same goes for online forums, every time you make a post or answer someone else's, your "Signature File" will be automatically attached.

Your "Signature File" doesn't have to be a huge, a few enticing lines will do fine with your RSS feed URL.

Step #6. Submit your RSS feed to RSS Directories and SE's.

Another great way to give your RSS feed more exposure is by submitting it or them to RSS Directories and Search Engines.

I've listed a few resources for you below to get you started with.

- Feed Shark http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/

- Ping-O-Matic http://pingomatic.com/

- RSS Top 55 http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Step #7. Write an article, if you write articles.

This is a great way to get your RSS feed webpage in front of thousands of targeted readers absolutely FREE!

Simply write an article on a HOT topic within your niche, and at the end of your article add an enticing, attention grabbing "Resource Box" that points to your RSS feed webpage URL.

Step #8. Set-Up a PPC(Pay-Per-Click) campaign.

For the last step to getting your RSS feed webpage Maximum exposure is to set-up a PPC campaign.

By doing this you will be able to send HIGHLY targeted traffic to your RSS feed webpage that are hungry for the information you have to offer.

The only downside to doing the PPC tactic is that it will cost you.

And, this tactic solely depends on whether or not you chose to set-up an RSS feed webpage of your own.

Now, I'm sure there are many others ways out there that could draw in more visitors to your RSS feed, but, these ones I just outlined in this article are the Best ones in my mind and are the ones I use.

Well, this concludes the, "8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure", so, the only thing I have left to say to you is... Get Started!