Who are these people - and why aren't they using my library?

In Session 1025, we heard about what the Mississauga Library System is doing to attract non-users using a new social marketing tool (PRIZM).
PRIZM uses Census and other data to profile the predominant lifestyles, hobbies, consumer habits, attitudes and beliefs of people living in a given neighbourhood or postal code area. Mississauga has examined who lives around each of its branch locations, and who uses and doesn't use their library. With this tool, marketing plans have been developed to reach out to wider usage by the local population based on their profile. For example, one group of non-users is characterized as looking for emotional experiences, trusting their intuition, and seeking to connect with others. Based on this profile, a marketing plan has been developed that positions the library as a place to make social connections.
This kind of data would be very useful to MPL, helping us to better understand non-users and what kind of message will bring them into our library branches.
http://environicsanalytics.ca/prizmc2.aspx

A related source of information on social values is the Fire and Ice survey - what tribe do you belong to? Status & Security? Authenticity & Responsibility? Exclusion & Intensity? Idealism & Autonomy? Take the survey and find out.
http://fireandice.environics.net/surveys/fireandice/main/fireandice.asp?surveyID=1

Session materials have been posted at http://www.accessola2.com/superconference2009/fri/1025/mills_seoni.pdf

2009 Conference Theme - Learning

From Sam Coghlan, the President of OLA - on the 2009 Conference theme:
Learning is a passion. Learning is a human drive. Learning belongs on the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs along with breathing, food, sex, sleep, warmth and water.
Many of our human institutions have usurped our sense of learning in a manner similar to how sexual repression led to the need for a sexual revolution. Libraries command the capacity to lead the learning revolution!
However, in order to do so: You must learn.
Your library must learn. You must transform your library into a nimble–almost alive–organism that can dance with the dragons of accelerating change. our communities must learn to learn.
Together, our libraries can be the base from which we address the future, whatever it may be; a base supported by three legs; school, academic and public libraries that encompass three vital stages of learning: learning to learn, deepening and broadening learning and self-directed learning.