Walking Paper

After dinner the other night*, Michael, David, Greg and I visited a nice cafe called Tryst. Our time there and the “Delighting the User” keynote of 3/18 make for some interesting thinking. As we enjoyed our beverages we noted all of the people using the (free) wireless network and how different their preferred information gathering techniques are from what libraries are providing. Many of the customers were multi-tasking, balancing surfing on the web, IMing, reading books/magazines, and talking with their friends in the cafe. As if this isn’t different enough from our libraries, there was moderately loud music playing as well. The reading and information gathering that the people were doing certainly wasn’t traditional, but rather can be described by a term I heard in the keynote: “PC Literature Behavior” in which snippets of info are gathered and processed repeatedly, often, and perhaps not entirely randomly.

I mention this last bit because of an observation made the other day by a friend of mine. A number of us were hanging out and talking when a topic that needed some augmentation arose. There was a computer nearby, so we gathered ‘round. I found a relevant page, clicked, and found the info we needed. I highlighted the segment of the page we were interested and my friend remarked, “You’re good at looking at webpages.” He hadn’t yet found the needed information on the page while I somehow saw it straightaway. For someone observing us (like we were observing the people in the cafe) this info gathering session might have seemed random because of the speed with which it took place. Certainly there can be nondirected browsing, but there is tons of “specific gathering and leaving” behavior going on. The transmission of information clearly is no longer a unidirectional process. It seems to be more of a multidirectional, multifaceted, swirling process of gathering, processing, sharing, and responding that is all about people.

So. What does this mean for libraries? I don’t have many specific answers yet, but I do think all of this illustrates the framework with which libraries need to be thinking about their users. So far we’ve been trying to figure out what they need, giving them what we have (and trying to trick them to believe we’re giving them what we want. What we need to do is stop “trying to turn our patrons into little librarians” but rather really embrace them for what they are and giving them what they want. Abram suggested doing this by looking at users preferences, desires, goals, aspirations, and values. That’s an entirely new level of being user-centered.

*best meal of the conference, by the way, the Ethiopian place Fasikas in Adams Morgan.