Holding a “Future’s Day” at your library? Or maybe you just want to point staff to items that will make them sit up and think about how libraries need to change?

These two make me sit up and think.

Legacy Media

Mark Scott, Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Commission gave a talk yesterday about Media after Empire . He outlines the changes facing legacy media,  mentions that he has so far not read a workable model for profit making old media companies to continue to make a profit, and talks about what the ABC is doing. It doesn’t take a big leap to apply a lot of what he says to libraries – who traditionally have been the distributors of legacy media objects.

He outlines the changes that the ABC needs to make:

Declaring war on silos and insulated thinking. Being audience, not organisationally-centred. It affects the way we organise ourselves, the way we work together and cooperate, the way we partner with others, the way we need to cede some space, some control to our audiences to remain compelling and relevant. If we are to survive as anything more than a shell – a legacy broadcaster, an empire in decline – this is what we must do.

There is a lot in there about how to change thinking within an organisation that is based on a model that is no longer viable. He suggests that thinking in the same way will not bring any solutions and offers five ideas that approach a solution:

#1: The only media organisations that will survive will be those who know and accept that all the rules have changed….

#2: Successful organisations will be endlessly inquisitive about the new, understanding that no-one knows where the next breakthrough idea or technology will come from…

#3: Successful organisations will be willing to empower their audiences to contribute, to create and to share media. Will cede power to audiences to gain engagement and respect. They will be willing to let other voices to be heard. They will learn how to protect brand integrity whilst entrusting their brand to others…

#4: Part of the protection of media assets will come through diversification, as has been the case with News and The Washington Post. Commercial media have found themselves long in assets greatly threatened by this revolution, like newsprint and free-to-air television, with no other growth story, will remain greatly challenged…

#5: The great challenge on all this is to start within, on areas of culture and behaviours. Recognising your old internal fiefdoms came from another world…

I like his final point:

… the words of John Schaar who said the future is not the place we are going, it is a place we are making. The paths to the future are made not found, and the process of making them changes both us and our final destination.

Social Media

Gary Hayes , Director of LAMP at the Australian Film Television and Radio School has created a Social Media Counter, embedded below. It gives numbers of messages and members of various social networks, and how many have been added since you first started viewing the counter. This would be great to display on one screen during a presentation about social media.