Montreal gets a big downtown library, to house the public library collection as well as Quebec’s National Library collection. Not as fancy outside as, say, Seattle Public, but pretty feature-rich nonetheless, lots of nice photos. [thanks aaron]
wikipedia for librarians
Jenny had a frustrating time recently trying to figure out why edits she made to the “anyone can edit it!” Wikipedia were speedily deleted. Since I had been around the Wikipedia block a bit, I understood both sides to the problem: community sites don’t behave like vendor/reference sites, and Wikipedia doesn’t have the most robust feedback loops for explaining their processes. If anyone has been following this specific issue [which was resolved later] or this issue generally, you might be interested in a Wikipedia Project which includes, Introduction to Wikipedia Culture for Librarians. It’s still very much in process, but note the focus on inclusivity and appeal over brute “this is how it is” FAQs.
Main point: we can’t expect anyone to be impressed by an approach that boils down to “stand back, I’m a librarian, I’m trained to handle this”. Our success will depend on our power to persuade, to come up with better ideas and to defend them.
[thanks sammy]
usability in OPACs
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.
outreach + inreach
A lot of librarianship is about meeting the needs of your users and your not-yet-users. Surveys help, acting on surveys helps more and letting users know what your survey results were and how you are acting on them is a very proactive way to interact with your community. Here is an example from the Bank Street College Library’s recent survey.
not just filtering, but reporting too, ick!
Libraries that take federal money already have to have filters. Now the Allegheny Council [PA] is considering a bill to require libraries to report incidents involving “illegal” viewing of pornography on library computers. If libraries fail to report these incidents annually — ostensibly to help improve the filters — the county will not fund the consortium computer network. Thanks to state privacy laws, at least these reports can’t contain personally identifying information. Also included in the resolution are training sessions for librarians with the police and the DA on appropriate internet usage. A local librarian writes up her impressions.
Surely there’s some threshold where libraries can say, “We’ve got filters on the computers. We’re complying with all laws. We have library policies to address this. Get off our backs and let us do our jobs!” Instead, our representatives are meekly letting folks who don’t comprehend the situation sit in judgment.