The Fact Pack, a supplement to Advertising Age magazine, explained that the “U.S. Hispanic market eked out 1.9% growth in 2008 to $4 billion in measured media as U.S. ad spending in general fell by 4.1%.”

One of the charts, “Hispanic Social Networking Site Usage,” detailed the percentage of Hispanics who visit a social networking site regularly. The othe, “Hispanic Electronic Media Usage,” detailed the average number of hours Hispanics spend weekly using various forms of electronic media, including cell phones, computers and mobile devices.

The Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication was founded and is directed by Felipe Korzenny, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Communication.

Read the complete report at Hispanic Fact Pack.

The Dewey Dilemma

By Barbara Fister
Copyright Library Journal

Not long ago, a mother blogged about her visit to a newly opened public library in Darien, CT. Though she appreciated its soaring ceilings, the fireplaces and cozy nooks, the presence of a café, and state-of-the-art technology, what really excited her was the way the books were organized. “The books everywhere, but especially in the children’s room, have been shelved, labeled, and organized in a way that makes me feel less like a moron and more empowered to find what I’m looking for on my own.” She went on to say, “the Library, which in my mind used to be a little intimidating and kind of like a disapproving Mother, is reaching out to ME. ‘Library’ is saying to ME that she wants to be like ME and doesn’t expect me to be like her anymore.”

It’s not often that patrons express such strong enthusiasm for shelving systems, but in recent years librarians have been embroiled in a classification struggle. The first skirmish occurred in Maricopa County, AZ, when the new Perry Branch Library, Gilbert, opened in 2007 with nonfiction books shelved using a system adapted from the book industry, BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications). Unlike Dewey, which categorizes related knowledge systematically, BISAC is an alphabetical list of categories ranging from Antiques and Collectibles to True Crime. Many librarians feel BISAC’s relative simplicity and user-friendly language have an advantage over Dewey’s complexity.

The BISAC system is maintained by the Book Industry Study Group, which classifies books into 52 broad categories, each with additional levels of specificity. Categories for a book are typically determined by the publisher (a job that often falls to the editor, who knows the book best) and are used throughout the distribution chain by companies like Amazon, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Bookscan, Bowker, Ingram, and others. In many ways, it fuses the functions of subject headings with classification. Many bookstores work with the categories to organize their shelves, but the categories and subcategories are also used to create a searchable record of a book. Though the bookseller might decide to shelve the book in one category, that book may have multiple BISAC headings assigned to it in the computer system. Unlike library classification systems, BISAC codes are invisible to the end user, enabling browsing but usually requiring customers to turn to a staffer to locate a specific title.

According to Marshall Shore, a consultant who was at the Maricopa County Library District (MCLD) at the time and played a major role in inspiring the Perry Branch Rebellion, the issue isn’t which system is superior; it’s about the user’s experience. When interviewing nonusers, he reports, “I heard over and over ‘those numbers scare me,’ ‘I don’t understand them,’ ‘they make me feel stupid.’ The goal of having a BISAC-based scheme is to put customers at ease and help them become more self-sufficient and comfortable using the library.”

Jennifer Miele, Perry Branch manager, says the change was prompted by annual surveys. “Over 75 percent of our customers stated that they go to the library to ‘browse’ for materials.” Serving the fifth fastest growing community in the country, the new branch has been so popular that MCLD plans to adopt BISAC classification in all new branches and will convert existing branches as funds permit. At the Perry Branch, circulation continues to rise. According to Miele, for FY07/08, “our average circulation was 28,693 and for [FY08/09], our average was 39,693.”

“Ease, comfort, and flexibility were important parts of the planning discussion, with taxonomy being one piece,” says Shore. “The library was designed to be customer-centric.” That emphasis included placing low shelving at the entrance to draw people into the collection, tripling the number of lounge chairs, creating reading nooks, and adding signage to help patrons navigate. Shore recalls, “On opening day, extra staff were called in to handle the presumed customer confusion. I remember approaching a woman to explain the library, when she mouthed ‘gardening’ and made a beeline to the area, browsed, and left with a stack of books.”

Since the Perry Branch opened, four more libraries in the Maricopa system have gone Dewey-less, with a goal of ditching Dewey in all 18 system libraries.

The rebellion catches on

The innovations at MCLD have inspired other libraries. After attending a presentation about the system’s experience at the Public Library Association national conference in 2008, librarians at the Frankfort Public Library District, IL, immediately began planning a conversion. According to their Freeing Dewey blog, they are “not necessarily saying no to Dewey but, rather, slowly freeing him, something that we, as well as other libraries, had begun to do years ago with our biography and fiction collections.” They chronicled their progress on Twitter, finally posting on September 10 that “our Adults Colls r officially DEWEY FREE.”

Following a visit to the Perry Branch, librarians at the Rangeview Library District, Northglenn, CO, decided to join the revolution and in 2009 became the first library system to adopt a BISAC-based classification for all of its libraries, though with some modifications. Their “WordThink” system shelves books using words—labeling the spine of a book with a broad category such as Art and a narrower term such as Drawing. Within those subsections, books are shelved alphabetically by title. According to Director Pam Sandlian Smith, “Customers often comment that when they visit bookstores, they can find things easily and would like that ease of use in libraries.” Though it took about 1000 hours of staff time, the changeover was well received. “The elegant simplicity of the system becomes evident immediately. People love the idea of simply finding all their favorite books together under a word heading, which is so easy to navigate,” says Smith. “Librarians have visited our library and have immediately fallen in love with this organization.”

When Maricopa made its move, the responses were fast and occasionally furious on library discussion lists and even on Metafilter, where a posting in 2007 about dropping Dewey attracted over 80 comments. One ongoing debate is whether turning to retail for inspiration is a betrayal of core library values. Tom Eland, a librarian at Minneapolis Community and Technical College who teaches courses on the politics of information, thinks that turning to business as a model for libraries shows an uncritical acceptance of market capitalism. “Unlike customer service, which is done by private sector corporations on behalf of the profit motive, public service to library patrons is done on behalf of the civic duty of library workers to serve the interest of citizens and residents of the community who patronize the library.” He’s not surprised that libraries that drop Dewey often display materials using ideas from retailing. “Too bad for the people who are trying to do real research, or who want to explore a specific domain of knowledge by going to the shelves and browsing by classification area.”

Wayne Wiegand, professor of library and information studies and American studies at Florida State University, Tallahassee, says, “In general, bookstores do a better job of identifying newer titles relevant to their customers’ interests, but that doesn’t mean they understand those interests. They are mostly responding toa market demand.” While he thinks libraries should respond to what readers want rather than expecting readers to fit into the library’s way of doing things, he takes a pragmatic view. “Dewey has faults but so does any other classification scheme…. To talk of changing classification systems at this time is unrealistic.”

Joan S. Mitchell, editor in chief of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), is supportive of libraries that want to experiment. “I would never criticize a library for making a decision based on the needs of the population the library serves. If you have a popular collection for whichbroad English-language categories such as those used in bookstores are adequate, then perhaps such labeling works in your local setting.” However, she points out that “if you equate ‘using Dewey’ to a physical shelf location device, you are missing the rich layers of access.” Dewey can sort large collections into more specific groups than BISAC can. Moreover, a system that is entirely based on English words might inadvertently send the message that the public library is for English speakers only. A web site (Dewey.info) is under development that will, among other things, provide linked DDC summaries in nine languages.

Librarians in the field are actively trying to figure out the right balance. In August 2009, an online survey posted to blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Rusa-L was taken by over 100 public librarians. Well over half said patron difficulty in finding nonfiction is related to three factors: having trouble understanding the online catalog, feeling intimidated by a classification system they don’t understand well, and wanting to go straight to the right shelf without having to look anything up. Only half believe patrons find call numbers too complicated, and a third felt shelving categories don’t pull together topics in the way patrons want to browse.

There was more disagreement about the best solution. Ten percent agreed with the statement that their library would be better off if Dewey was scrapped in favor of the browsing categories used in bookstores. Almost 50 percent agreed with the idea of keeping Dewey but adjusting categories and adding words to the call number. Just over a quarter thought enhancing Dewey with better signage would satisfy patrons. Ten percent affirmed the statement, “People who want to drop Dewey don’t understand the nuances of classification and are throwing away something valuable and widely used just to follow a trend.” Three respondents felt there was no compelling reason to change.

Respondents expressed everything from “it’s about time” [we gave up Dewey] to “It’s part of the dumbing down of our society.” Others thought nothing would satisfy patrons completely: “We shelve fiction by the authors’ last names, and sometimes by genre, and people still have trouble finding books.”

A number of respondents wondered if the experiment would scale well. “So far the libraries I’ve seen that have implemented a BISAC-like program have all been small branches,” one respondent wrote. “When you get to the larger collections with a much greater subject range, I’m not sure how well one can divide everything into a smaller group of categories.”

Of course, there are those librarians who think libraries already do it better than bookstores. “Dewey allows for a level of ‘granulation’ in topic areas that general subject areas such as those in bookstores cannot duplicate,” one wrote. “I find it harder to find materials in bookstores than in the library.” But others feel it’s time for a change. “It’s not about what I think, it’s about what the patrons think,” wrote one. “And these days, I don’t think Dewey translates well for many of our patrons—the majority wouldn’t miss it at all as long as they could still find books on the subject they’re looking for, especially if they could find it quickly and easily without assistance.”

At the new Darien Library, the staff decided to work with Dewey rather than abandon it. According to Kate Sheehan, knowledge and learning services librarian, “adult nonfiction has been rearranged in what I like to call a Dewey/bookstore mashup. We wanted to retain the findability of Dewey while encouraging and enabling browsing. We clumped similar areas of Dewey together in eight broad categories, which we call glades,” a concept similar to the innovative “neighborhoods” created in Hennepin County’s, MN, Brookdale Branch. “Dewey does a decent job of organizing, for example, travel books. They get broken down by region and then country, and it’s pretty easy to browse and find,” says Sheehan. “However, Dewey leaves languages on the other side of the library, which doesn’t help travelers who want to browse for materials for their trip. So, we put them in one section and call it Places. It’s a flexible system that we’re still tweaking based on patron feedback.”

How exactly does this work? “In terms of process,” Sheehan explains, “we made each glade a location in our ILS, and we bought stickers the same width as our spine labels, with the glade names. We went through the stacks in the old library and marked off ranges of Dewey by glade. Every book got a glade sticker above the call number. We changed the locations by call number.” The outliers, she adds, were problematic. “The 300s [social sciences] end up everywhere. And in every range of Dewey numbers, there were exceptions.”

In the children’s section, changes were even more radical. Gretchen Hams-Caserotti, head of Darien’s children’s services, used the questions parents asked to drive her redesign. “The most common request we hear in a children’s library is ‘My son is three, and he really loves trains. Can you show us where those books are?’” she says. “The common thread is always a declaration of the child’s age (or reading level) and intent or interest.” So she planned around that need, using open source software to map visually color-coded categories—such as colors, nature, or transportation—making it easier to find books by the categories that interested different age groups. Even prereading children know that books about trucks can be found in the red section, but the location of a particular book can be pinpointed through the catalog.

“If you spend an afternoon at a large bookstore,” Sheehan says, “you’ll see people using it in a couple of ways. The bookstore-as-destination people come in, wander around, get a stack of books, a cup of coffee, and settle in. The grab-and-go folks take a quick look around and usually hop on a computer or ask an employee, find the item they’re looking for, and leave. Dewey is great for the grab-and-goers, and we didn’t want to lose that. Dewey is not so great for the destination users. Cooking is in technology. Gardening is in arts and recreation. Don’t those two make more sense with each other?”

With six weeks to make the switch, it wasn’t easy. In spite of the challenges, Hams-Caserotti would do it again in a heartbeat. “Since we opened in January 2009, the children’s book circulation has been up about 30 percent each month and still growing as we fine-tune the collection and the room.”

The urge to find new ways to make it easier to discover books has spread to many libraries, including the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, KS, and Anna Porter Public Library (APPL), Gatlinburg, TN, which organized a preconference for the Association for Rural & Small Libraries in September, “Dewey or Not?” As APPL director Kenton Temple explains, “We did not drop Dewey. Rather, we split up and moved Dewey catalog numbers to suit an overall shelf location design. I visited ‘bookstore’ libraries and many bookstores to see what subjects were usually placed together since I assumed that some market research had been conducted in the book industry to place subjects where they would sell better. If necessary, Dewey numbers were reassigned to get books shelved where they would ’sell’ better but not drop Dewey altogether.” Librarians wanted to retain Dewey’s precision and its ability to identify a specific shelf location.

The San José Public Library, CA, has also embraced a bookstore approach, in part to handle soaring circulation and increased funding for materials but no increase in staff. One of its timesaving innovations is a “direct shelving method” that eliminates steps in getting books back to the stacks. Books are roughly sorted from book drops right onto trucks. Lorraine Oback, director of marketing communications for the library, estimates that more than half of the books checked in are never placed in precise Dewey order because they’re shelved in a “Marketplace” near the library’s entrance, which features new and popular materials in general categories.

Right next to MCLD, the much larger Phoenix Public Library (PPL) has taken another approach to integrating BISAC into the library. According to Ross McLachlan, deputy director of technical services, “We didn’t go the route of ‘let’s abandon Dewey.’” Not only would it be too costly, but Dewey is useful. “It is a living thing. There are constant changes, always attempting to be relevant to the development of human knowledge.” To complement the traditional “shelf location with a system behind it,” PPL decided to use BISAC to enrich the catalog with additional metadata and faceted browsing.

In 2005, PPL was the second in the nation after North Carolina State University, Raleigh, to choose Endeca as a replacement for its OPAC. By working with OCLC and vendors, BISAC headings were imported into MARC records. BISAC levels of specificity complement Library of Congress Subject Headings, allowing patrons to drill down into a topic in an intuitive system of guided navigation.

Though adding BISAC headings to the catalog was labor-intensive, it should be easier for libraries in future. According to DDC’s Mitchell, “We have a mapping under way between BISAC and Dewey to support the association of Dewey numbers with metadata early in the publication stream.”

On the far end of the innovation spectrum, an experiment has begun at LibraryThing to build a new system from the ground up. The Open Shelves Classification project aims to create “a free, ‘humble,’ modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System.” (Both Dewey and BISAC are licensed proprietary products.) As of this writing, the project seems to have hit the pause button, but the online discussion demonstrates the conceptual and practical difficulties involved in designing a classification system.

There is no doubt the library world is in a dilemma about Dewey, but the system is hardly dead. In his 2007 book, Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger said bluntly, “It can’t be fixed.” In spite of that, Dewey is currently the most widely used classification system in the world, employed in 138 countries by over 200,000 libraries. But the Perry Branch Rebellion and experiments in serving both browsers and “grab-and-go” patrons have spurred a spirited discussion of how to make a singular knowledge system work in a world full of miscellany.

Read the article on the Library Journal Web site:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=talkbackCommentsFull&talk_back_header_id=6626668&articleid=CA6698264

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Experiencing a conference as if for the first time:
A chat with students about their view of the industry

By Rochelle Newman-Carrasco
Copyright © Advertising Age
Published Sept. 30, 2009

As Hispanic Heritage Month kicked into full gear a few weeks ago, I joined the Cable Advertising Bureau and Broadcasting & Cable as a panelist at their event titled Hispanic Cable 2010: Tomorrow Is Today. Keynote Speakers included Edward Gold, advertising director of State Farm, and Mark K. Stewart, VP-global media services of Kraft Food. Both speakers provided vivid evidence of how their brands are reaping the benefits of having truly committed to being part of Hispanic consumer’s lives.
In State Farm’s case, these commitments included everything from “tried and true” (and nostalgically old-school) sponsorships of “Sabado Gigante” to the creation of a reality show following the trials and tribulations of a musical group the State Farm brand helped to launch.
For Kraft, it was clearly stated that this house of brands was using its aggregated power to create those media vehicles that would best serve their business units and the Kraft name as a whole. The size and scope of its Comida y Familia magazine and ComidaKraft.com reveals a marketer that is not willing to be restricted by media availability, but is dedicated to communicating and connecting with relevance on their own terms.
Other speakers, including those representing Subway and Toyota, also confirmed that on the eve of 2010, U.S. Hispanic marketing is experiencing a period of great creativity, innovative use of media, and compelling metrics in an age when ROI is king.
The event concluded with a presentation by Jeff Passel, senior demographer of the Pew Hispanic Center that reinforced the continued importance of this young, vibrant consumer segment as it emphasized the recent shift from the dominance of the foreign-born to the emergence of the U.S-born as a growth driver.
I left New York and headed to Miami, where the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies’ conference offered what would prove to be an inspiring agenda. What struck me about both the New York and the Miami events was the multidimensional layering that those presenting their work were able to embrace. Their work was the cumulative effect of speaking to different U.S. Hispanic segments in a variety of different ways — online, off-line, in-store, at home, in English, in Spanish and in a combination of the two.
Not that this hasn’t been the norm for some time now, but for some reason that I can only guess is confidence and maturity, those who are leading the evolution of U.S. Hispanic marketing as we flirt with 2010 are simply more comfortable and confident and feel little need to defend or over-explain why strategies and tactics for staying connected to this consumer are both simple and complex, both monolingual and bilingual, both old school and new school.
As I contemplated this shift in “conference” energy and attitude, I ran into a group of students from Florida State University’s Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication. Founded by Felipe Korzenny, the center is the first of its kind in the U.S. These graduate students are primed to affect the future of our industry in a way that few before them ever were. I was moved to ask them if they would share their perceptions of the conference with me. After all, here I was, jaded to some degree and also so invested that perhaps I lacked objectivity. What did this room of industry leaders look like and sound like to the next generation? To those who had not yet fought the battles that are part and parcel of winning new business and getting budget’s approved and doing breakthrough creative? To those who had never been to an industry conference of this nature before?
Overall, the students took a great deal from the entire experience. The stories shared by Dan Wieden, the conference keynote, were particularly powerful. As Antonieta Reyes, a Ph.D. student from the group, stated the Wieden speech “was like being at a rock star concert. I thoroughly enjoyed his stories and insight.”
Natalie Kates, a self-defined “Jewban” who was raised bilingually in Miami, went on to praise Wieden’s speech for his message about failure. “He emphasized to learn from when you fail and not consider it a failure, but rather a learning experience that will lead you in life to another direction.” Natalie is a program assistant at FSU and an online mentor for the Hispanic marketing course, in addition to being Dr. Korzenny’s assistant director.
Julian Seepersaud, who traces his heritage back to Guyana, “wishes Guyana was not the only English-speaking country in South America,” but still feels that “it is because of my roots that I am in tune with Hispanic ideals of family centeredness and cultural history.” Julian’s favorite experience at the conference came “in between seminars and speakers. This was really the first time I was able to step out from underneath my academic umbrella, and really be exposed to real people doing real things, for real reasons.”
Laselve Harrison was also impressed with the networking and with “the desires some companies expressed in locating young talent. I thought they would be looking for paper pushers or just interns to file papers and get coffee, but they genuinely wanted ideas from a younger brain trust.”
Julio Valeriano, a teaching and program assistant at the FSU center, observed an interesting pattern when it came to the speakers and attendees at the conference. He commented that they “came from different educational and cultural backgrounds. More specifically, I identified two groups: professionals with education and experience in Latin America and those rooted in the United States. In my opinion, the differences are worth mentioning. While the former group tended to present more Argentinian-like advertising pieces that looked really ‘creative’ and sometimes were even hard to follow, the latter presented simple messages in a very plain and simple context.” Mr. Valeriano is a native of Peru.
Michelle Orrick, the group’s self-proclaimed “gringa” was “admittedly nervous about being surrounded by bilinguals for two whole days. … But I felt totally at home. In a very strange, yet reassuring way the conference solidified in my mind that I am in the right industry.”
In one way or the other, all of the students expressed optimism about the future of U.S. Hispanic marketing, albeit acknowledging that it would undergo continued change. As Julian Seepersaud summed it up, “I think that as young Latinos continue the process of ‘biculturation,’ the arena for US Hispanic advertising will get bigger. To what extent, I’m not sure, but I think that as things are right now, there is a huge potential for growth and industry change. … Not only that, but I think the attention to the Hispanic market is causing an awareness of other cultural segments, as well. Segments such as the Gay/Lesbian Market and Asian/Indian markets have been vastly overlooked and untapped, simply because the numbers have previously indicated them as having a ‘minority’ status. As one of the speakers said, it is all about ‘looking for the people that want to play and playing with them.’”
My thanks to the students of FSU for being willing to “play” and explore these themes with me. May you be a reminder to all conference organizers and industry veterans to reach out to those who see everything through fresh eyes and for whom everything still remains possible.
Let’s invite more students into the conversation today as they will be leading the conversation tomorrow. �
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Copyright © 1992-2009 Crain Communications

Read the article on the Advertising Age Web site:

http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=139357

 An article published by Tallahassee.com on September 11 highlighted Allan’s achievements:

Allan Stamm is the founder and CEO of Go Beyond LLC, an innovative technology-based consulting and development organization that specializes in maternal-child and family health information tools and processes in Florida and across the nation.

Go Beyond and Stamm have received many awards for dedication in working to improve birth outcomes, creating innovative technology solutions that in many cases have been ahead of their time, and for helping to make Florida MomCare a flagship program. He also founded the Go Beyond Foundation, an organization that works to improve access to advanced technology and technical education for groups that are in the “digital divide.”

He serves as vice chair of ITFlorida and is a member of the Florida State University College of Communication and Information Leadership Board. His leadership is seen through his involvement with Nims Middle School “Digital Harmony” project. He also serves as a board member of the Tallahassee Technology Alliance and was a founding member of The Southwest Florida Leadership Foundation.