What I Learned Today…

Web 2.0 and programming tips from a library technology enthusiast, What I Learned Today… covers blogs, rss, wikis and more as they relate to libraries.

The Fear is Worse than the Reality

August 4th, 2007

Richard Wallis has a post at Panlibus about an article found via the BBC regarding the Open Library project.

My favorite quote:

As with the rest of society, the fear of something nasty happening can be far more corrosive that the possibility of it happening.

Maybe I should give you a little bit of background. This was in response to comments by Stephen Bury, head of European and American Collections at the British Library, who voiced a concern of people changing things maliciously.

The fact of the matter is that people expect a bit of freedom. There is always going to be the idiot who thinks it’s funny to use profanity to describe a book, but for the most part the people who choose to participate in adding content are the people who have a respect and love for books and libraries. LibraryThing is the perfect example of this.

It’s about more than converting print to e-formats

April 11th, 2007

After his talk for the PALINET & Library Connect event yesterday, Jonathan Clark of Elsevier came over to me and said, “You were nodding a lot, does that mean you liked the talk?” It was (for me) the best talk of the day!!

Jonathan talked about user-centered design and how it has been used at Elsevier. It’s important to note that most of us can’t afford to do some of the things that Elsevier did – but that doesn’t mean we should be limited in following the principles outlined.

The presentation started with a story. Jonathan used to be a scientist, so he thinks he knows how scientists think – he’s got the inside track and he can design the perfect tools for them. His colleague is married to a scientist – and so she also thinks that she has the inside track. The two of them always get into arguments on what design is best for the user – but when the user is asked – it’s always different from what they thought. The fact of the matter is, that even if you’ve worked with the user, been in the user’s shoes, or are married to the user – you are not the user – and you don’t know what they want or how they think without asking them.

First and foremost, we have to be user-focused in our design of web applications. By starting with the user you can avoid what Jonathan calls opinion wars. Opinion wars are what was defined in the scenario above – everyone thinking they know what’s best for the user. Stop thinking for your user and ask your user – observe your user.

The second principle is that product development should deliver just what’s needed. I know this sounds somewhat slacker-ish – but the fact is, there is no reason wasting time and money on something fancy when the user just wants the simplest tool. This will hopefully help you avoid requirement wars – discussions where everyone thinks they know what features are going to be required to make the new system the best.

User-centered design has three steps:

Understand the user
Design for the user (possibly using personas)
Evaluate the user interface (not the user) – the users aren’t stupid it’s your interface

A tool of user-centered design is stories. Stories are short 1-2 sentence descriptions of the users’ wants. These stories usually look like this:

“As a ____________, I want to ____________, so that I can ______________”

This gives you a clear picture of your user and the goals he/she has.

The other method that Jonathan discussed was Agile development. We went over this a bit in my systems analysis class last term, but Jonathan’s definition was much simpler.

The Agile development methodology is iterative and time-boxed – meaning that there are specific iterations and each iteration has a goal assigned to it. You complete the goal in a set amount of time and at the end you have a working product for that goal (not a wire-frame or a screenshot). With Agile programming you need a dedicated team and you need to be customer-focused. Lastly, you have to intensively test the product – with the user!!

This means you have to show your software to the users – and frequently, don’t worry so much about it not being perfect or looking just right, the goal is to see if the product does what the user wants/needs. This testing with and showing to the user will lead to constant refinement and a better product!

In short, when the product revolves around the user, you get a better product. You also (theoretically) get teams that have a common focus – which leads to better collaboration by all.

Jonathan made me want to go out and pick up a few books on the topic!! A similar presentation can be found here if you’re interested in seeing the slides.

In The Library Of Misshelved Books

January 7th, 2007

I’m still reading The Long Tail – and hoping to finish it today since the next term starts tomorrow – no more reading for fun Last night before bed, I was reading the section that starts on page 156 titled In the Library of Misshelved Books. I was reading so many great things that I had to go get my post-its so I could mark these pages to mention to you all this morning.

While reading these pages I kept thinking back to David Weinberger’s keynote from KMWorld & Intranets 2006. Anderson talks a lot about the limitations of physical space when it comes to the long tail.

One of the most vexing problems with physical goods is that they force us into crude categorization and static taxonomies … That means that the windbreaker can be in the “Jackets” section or the “Sports” section, but not in the “Blue” or “Nylon” sections. Generally, this isn’t seen as a big problem, since most of those categories would be silly for most people … With the evolution of online retail, however, has come the revelation that being able to recategorize and rearrange products on the fly unlocks their real value.

Anderson goes on to show the limits of the Dewey Decimal System “which divides the world of knowledge into ten top-level categories” – only 10?? What were we thinking? This is where it reminded me of my summary of Weinberger’s keynote:

It's as if libraries were invented to keep ideas apart. Where do you put a book about the history of military cooking? You can't put it in all 3 places because of the rules of matter, books can only be in one place at one time.

Anderson talks about the Seattle Public Library re-construction and how architect Rem Koolhaas “faced the challenge of making stacks of books fit into a search-engine culture. There were a few pictures I found in the library’s photo slideshow that helped me see what Anderson was talking about (one, two, three). The only thing I noticed in these pictures that was different from other libraries I had been in was that the Dewey numbers are on the floor beside the shelves. The fact of the matter is:

Yet even within this commendably flexible system, [Koolhaas] obviously need to arrange the books in some order. Since it takes more than the turn of a century or two to change library culture, that order was our friend the Dewey Decimal System.

I’m not sure that library culture is 100% to blame for the limitations of our physical spaces, but I do see where Anderson is coming from. As a consumer, it’s important for us to be able to find what we’re looking for without having to ask for help. This brings us back to my post last week about the usability of our public libraries. Something has to change if we want people to find what they’re looking for.

It’s be belief that that something is going to have to be our catalogs. We can’t help that the laws of physics say that one book can only take up one space on a shelf – but we can help that our catalogs are only searchable by a few main categories – and even those aren’t helpful. Until I worked in a library I didn’t realize (and this may not be true of all systems) that a title search only searches for titles that start with the words you’re typing it!! So if I want to find books with HTML in the title I have to do a keyword search and sort through all of the garbage to find what I’m looking for. Why is there so much garbage? Because HTML could be in a link in the description of the book (ex: page.html) – not very helpful if I want a book on learning HTML.

When I develop a new database for work I always make it clear to my users that they can search anything they want – in any combination – and I do my absolute best to provide them with the tools to do just that. The same should be true for our catalogs – even though I already knew this – this book as really brought this truth home. It’s time for librarians to stand up and demand more – and if we’re not getting it we need to be out there making it – or helping those who are already making it.

Why should it take the “turn of a century or two” for us to change our culture? Why, when there are so many of us out there with the skills to make the change ourselves? I make this promise to you all – I’m not all talk – when I finish my MLIS I’m going to take the time to learn everything I can about the way we catalog and the way people want to use our catalogs – and then I’m going to find someone who wants my help. We can’t just all sit around and complain over and over – we need to be out there doing something about it – and that’s my goal – I’m going to DO something!

Intranet != Design

January 1st, 2007

I just read this great quote on the Intranet Blog:

An intranet is about 20% technology, 80% people and process. To change or redesign the intranet has in fact little to do with design, and everything to do with change management.

This is very very important for library web managers to understand. You can copy all of the neat little things I did for our intranet – but it won’t matter without the support for your management and staff – without them there is no intranet.

More on Millennials

November 7th, 2006

When I was at Internet Librarian I had a chance to have a very interesting conversation about the newest generation (GenY, Millenials, whatever you call them) with Stephen Abram.

He stated that I was a Millennial – but that my husband was a GenXer (even though we were born in the same year) – based on a few details I provided for him. At first, I was a little annoyed – because this meant I was lumped in with the younger generation – and I’m tired of being the young one, but I just started reading Abram’s article for the Texas Library Journal entitled “Millennials: Deal With Them!” in which he states:

First, we must discard the idea that this is somehow a damaged generation. It is largely a myth that they are performing more poorly in their education. As a matter of fact, their performance is ahead of previous generations. They may be underperforming on some fronts internationally, but they are not the lesser of the older peers. Secondly, there is a growing body of research that their IQ’s, their raw ability to access and use their intelligence has grown markedly and at a level of statistical significance. MRI studies of their brains show that they use a greater degree and balance of their brains and have greater physical capacity through increased ganglia and folds of their brains. The majority of their education has been reinvented and shows great promise. They have, among others, better team skills, speaking and articulation skills, problem-solving and process management skills. Alternatively, they have weak general knowledge and fact skills. This is not necessarily bad. Actual facts decay rapidly in today’s world. The Periodic Table is not the same as it was when we went to school. Indeed, the number of planets has changed; the maps of nations mutate on a seemingly daily basis; most knowledge is quite malleable in context today. Indeed, many Boomers believe strongly that water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit and all humans’ internal body temperature is 98.6oF. Since this isn’t true most of the time, it seems that building a generation to access facts and information on demand is a better solution n a complex world.

I don’t feel so bad anymore – you can all think I’m a young’un if it means I get to be lumped in with a group that has “better team skills, speaking and articulation skills, problem-solving and process management skills.” I’m off to finish the article – but so far, it seems like a worthwhile read.

Oh – and on a last note – Abram was also right about my husband – even though we were born the same year (me before him), we are part of different generations – and it’s probably due to the households we grew up in and the locations we went to school – or whatever, but he’d be the first to tell you that he does not quite fit in this mold the way I do. How very confusing it all is!

The User is Not Broken

June 4th, 2006

I want to quote the entire post found over at Free Range Librarian here, but it’s probably better that I just tell you to go read it!

Snippets to wet your pallet:

That vendor who just sold you the million-dollar system because “librarians need to help people” doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and his system is broken, too.
….
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to find a library website that is usable and friendly and provides services rather than talking about them in weird library jargon.
….
The user is not “remote.” You, the librarian, are remote, and it is your job to close that gap.

The average library decision about implementing new technologies takes longer than the average life cycle for new technologies.

If you are reading about it in Time and Newsweek and your library isn’t adapted for it or offering it, you’re behind.

Stop moaning about the good old days. The card catalog sucked, and you thought so at the time, too.

If we continue fetishizing the format and ignoring the user, we will be tomorrow’s cobblers.

So I repeat – go read it – and then forward to everyone at your library – I’m going to.

No need for search engines?

January 6th, 2006

I just read this article on UIE Brain Sparks that states:

[I]t's pretty clear that users choose to use on-site Search when the page they're on fails them. They scan the page for trigger words. Only when they can't find them, do they turn to Search. It's their trigger words they type into the search box. (In essence, they are creating their own links to the content, primarily due to absence of the necessary links on the page.) … Usage of Search is a predictor that the scent on your pages isn't working. Fix the scent and the demand for Search goes way down.

and I can’t help but say – WHAT?

If you didn’t figure it out – I disagree with this idea. Although I do understand the point they’re trying to make – design navigation that is logical and full of “trigger words” so that you’re users can find what they need without having to depend on a search engine – I don’t agree that my users are using the search engine on my site because I have failed to give them an effective navigation system. When I know what I’m looking for I go straight to the search box on a page – when the site doesn’t have one I got to Google or Yahoo! and point their engines at the site.

Some people are searchers and some are browsers – I’m a searcher – and so are probably 1/2 of my users – so why not cater to any possible audience?

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

Internet Usage

November 20th, 2005

When I started at Jenkins almost 5 years ago I sat in on one of our Internet CLE (continuing legal education) classes, Internet Basics. The instructor talked about how email is the reason most peope use the Internet … well today I found an updated report on the uses of the Internet and it looks like although email is still the main use, search engines are catching up.

Unfortunately, blogs are at the bottom of the chart … which is hard to believe when you belong to a community that talks about and uses blogs on a daily basis.

Read the full report here.