Category: ‘puters

usability in OPACs

Posted on by jessamyn

Meredith of ALA Wiki fame has two good posts this week on the usability of library catalogs and access to library information generally. One comments on the In Defense of Stupid Users article — which I mentioned here a while ago but bears re-linking — talks about taking responsibility for our difficult to use catalogs. The second post discusses Lorcan Dempsey’s post about user interfaces and why people enjoy sites like Amazon and Google, and why they don’t enjoy searching at the library. Meredith pulls out the “how does this affect libraries?” parts of this article and wonders, as I often do, how do we fix systemic problems that aren’t going to be addressed by buying better middleware?

So, unlike the major online presences, our systems have low gravitational pull, they do not put the user in control, they do not adapt reflexively based on user behavior, they do not participate fully in the network experience of their users….The more I think about these isues, the more I think that a major question for us moving forward is organizational. What are the organizational frameworks through which we can mobilize collective resources to meet the challenges of the current environment? How do we overcome fragmentation; streamline supply; reduce the cost of the system and service development which is incurred redundantly across many institutions.

Anyone who continues to think that this problem is all about “being like Google” or “dumbing down the interface” is missing the point. Our interfaces have been so difficult for so long, we have a great opportunity to make great strides simply by not making it hard for people to find what we have, that’s a good start.

lipstick on a pig, more wisdom from Roy Tennant

Posted on by jessamyn

I’ll be on the road for a few days at the New Hampshire Library Association conference. I wanted to add one link before I left, just so I’d know what was at the top of the page if I decided to show off this blog. Roy Tennant’s article Lipstick on a Pig, about the sorry state of OPAC interfaces, was just what I was looking for.

Recently I viewed a library catalog redesign before it went public. This was the first major change in many years, and it turned out to be quite an improvement to the look and feel of the system. But despite this, it still sucks. Badly.

I don’t know how much time was spent on this cosmetic facelift, but until the deeper problems that plague this system are addressed, users will remain poorly served. Librarians appear to be afflicted with a type of myopia. We see only minor, easy-to-make corrections instead of changes that will truly affect the user experience. We ask our vendors to tweak this or that to make our lives easier, while the users are left to founder on an interface that only a librarian could love.

some great DRM examples

Posted on by jessamyn

Two examples of how smart people who are good with technology have gotten setbacks from doing perfectly legal things with digital media saddled with DRM. Read: Jenny the Shifted Librarian tries to watch a movie and Hilary, Rosen, former head of the RIAA tries to listen to music.

You can’t have it both ways Miss Rosen. If you want DRM, someone is going to have to control that DRM. And if you don’t think they won’t use that control to their ultimate advantage, you obviously didn’t learn anything from your association with the music industry.

[thanks alan]

best practices, children and the Internet

Posted on by jessamyn

Okay, so the Rhode Island ACLU isn’t going to take their evidence of overblocking in libraries to the Supreme Court and try an “as applied” challenge. Scott from Information Overlord discusses the ACLU findings and also talks about some conclusions of a two year study done in the UK about kids & the online world. Called UK Children Go Online the report has many recommendations for people who are involved with children and/or their Internet access. One of the more interesting stats from a library perspective is that a very small percentage of kids and teens surveyed even use the Internet access in libraries.

Most users accessed the internet from home (89%) but also at work (28%), school or college (13%), a friend’s house (10%), via mobile access (6%), at libraries (5%) and internet cafés (3%).

More often than not, if a child is accessing the Internet elsewhere, according to another part of this survey, it’s at another child’s house. Add to this the gap in understanding between parents and children [or any adults and children, librarians and children perhaps?] and you have a complicated situation where erratic enforcement does nothing to solve the real problems.

This research has consistently identified gaps in understanding between parents and children – in internet expertise, in awareness of risks encountered and in acknowledgement of domestic regulation implemented. These findings suggest a rather low level of understanding between parents and children, impeding an effective regulation of children’s internet use within the home. It would be impractical to hope for complete understanding between parents and children, of course, but it is important not only to seek ways of closing the gap where possible but also to recognise the existence of the gap insofar as it persists – in designing research, safety guidance and other policy initiatives.

One of the major conclusions of this study is that policy makers must “mind the gap” between younger and older users when they think about how to best serve younger users.