Jeffrey Zeldman on Twitter

These big numbers got me thinking about the viability of patron review and comments in library catalogs. Should we be discouraged? After all, how many library websites have 3 million visitors every day? I don’t actually care. It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t be discouraged. I’m not even interested in the metrics. Why? Because library websites should just be as normal as possible. Full stop. Part of this normality is the possibility for interaction. People should have the opportunity to voice their opinion if they feel motivated.

What interests me more than these stats is how most of the discussion I’ve seen surrounding improving the OPAC has stopped with making them social and easy to use. I’ve advocated for these goals and will continue to do so. They’re important and they should be a priority, but in the scheme of things they’re low hanging fruit. Shouldn’t we be aiming to make some deeper, more significant connections? What I haven’t seen, and I just might not be looking in the right spots, is advocacy for going beyond creating OPACs that are imitation amazon.coms. We can do better. I’m not 100% sure what they’d look like, but they’d be more than just inventory systems for book mausoleums.

For one, they could include user generated content. I’m not necessarily talking about YouTube videos created by local people. I’m talking about capturing and making available information produced in library programs. There’s a ton of great stuff happening in our buildings. Not only could we do a better job telling those stories, we could do a better job making the content from those programs and meetings available and useful. Thinking about this end goal might even have an impact on how a library plans and conducts events.

Let’s not exclude stuff created by organizations and enthusiast groups around the community. I know that the Helsinki City Library is exploring this idea. There are probably some great curricular tie-ins too. Local university and high school students could produce reports relevant to the community. Into the OPAC they go. Useful chat transcripts could be findable in the OPAC too. Taking it a step further, why not make scapes created by librarians and others findable in the OPAC.

Again, a deep participation OPAC wouldn’t just keep track of where books are. It would also be a evolving database of things important to the community. Yes, this has everything to do with my thoughts about the unsustainability of libraries relying on content provision as their reasons for being.

I can’t think of a much better way to engage people than to say to them, “We want to know what’s important to you. We want to help you share your expertise.” By doing this librarians can fulfill their role as universal joints, connecting people to information, information to other information, and people to people.

The poster was interactive. It asked readers to list things they’d like to see on library websites and nudged people toward thinking about fun, whimsical things. It wasn’t a surprise that a bunch of IAs had things to say about websites, but I was a bit surprised about how many library enthusiasts we came across.

We’re going to synthesize the suggestions that people gave us, but off the bat I can tell you that the *vast* majority of people we talked with equated library websites with OPACs. I’d like to explore this more formally.

Side note
Librarians seem to be *much better* about agreeing upon and sticking with official conference tags. I saw #ia09, #ia2009, #iasummit09, #iasummit2009, #ias09, #ias2009 on twitter. This from a bunch of people dedicated to labeling information! Fixing this is a small way in which librarians can contribute to the specialized areas of IA and User eXperience.

Hurrah for alternative OPAC interfaces! I’m very pleased to let you know that the DCPL iPhone app went live last night. You can download it from the iTunes app store here. Functionality in this version includes:

• searching for library materials
• seeing an item’s cover and reading a summary
• placing a hold for pickup at the location of your choice
• finding the hours, locations and phone numbers of DC public libraries

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, please download it try it out. We’d love to know what you think and what we can do to make it better. You can leave feedback through this form.

To my knowledge, this is the first iPhone application put out by a library. A big congrats to DCPL CIO Chris Tonjes who assembled a great team, and a big thanks to Brian Farmer for his coding skills, Bill McClendon for his knowledge of the SirsiDynix backend and Gilbert Luwaile for testing. You can read more about all of them at the DCPL Labs Staff page.

What’s even more exciting about this is that it is just the start of our efforts to provide mobile library services to the residents of DC. I have a bunch of notes written about improving the look and behavior of the application, expanding it, and we’re planning a mobile version of the forthcoming DCPL website.

For those interested in taking a look at the code for the iPhone application, we’re going to make it available for download at the DCPL iPhone Application page soon.

I got to talk to the patron about the situation with library catalogs. He seemed to be genuinely interested or perhaps he is just a good actor. We ended up putting a note in his patron record. He can’t access it, but he can call the library, tell someone we were keeping track of something in his record, and we can look it up. Certainly it isn’t an ideal solution but one that should suffice.

Please, please remember that there are all kinds of people that can benefit from our websites and catalogs behaving normally.

I got to talk to the patron about the situation with library catalogs. He seemed to be genuinely interested or perhaps he is just a good actor. We ended up putting a note in his patron record. He can’t access it, but he can call the library, tell someone we were keeping track of something in his record, and we can look it up. Certainly it isn’t an ideal solution but one that should suffice.

Please, please remember that there are all kinds of people that can benefit from our websites and catalogs behaving normally.

Tweets, er plurks, are displayed on a timeline. I like this. I also love the fact that the timeline progresses from right to left. It took me a second to get accustomed to it, but I love that it isn’t what I think of as the typical flow. It makes good sense considering we, at least in the US and many other places, read from left to right. There’s no need to scroll for new content.

[time from right to left - click for big]

 
Another feature that I really like is that Plurk gets better, or at least give more options, as you invest more time in it. Through a reputation system they call karma, plurk rewards users for making connections, starting conversations, updating profile information, inviting friends, etc… It also takes karma points away for spamming, being defriended and the like. Attaining a certain level of karma opens up options to let you customize your profile with different colors and designs.


[you can do more with karma points]

There’s something to this. I had no time or effort invested in Plurk but I instantly wanted to raise my karma. It reminded me of wanting to level up in Game Neverending. There’s no real reason to do it, but it’s still compelling.

Is there a place for this in our OPACs and websites? Would it be wrong to actually reserve some fun options (assuming our web presences have some fun options) to reward use?

I don’t know if I’ll end up using the site much, but for what its worth, you can friend me at http://www.plurk.com/user/walkingpaper. At the very least you’ll get some karma points!

A Problem
Besides all of the small, simple usability enhancements OPACs need (listed way below) a big concern about library websites and OPACs is the distracting transition between the two. You know the routine. Ubiquitous “Click here to search the catalog” links take users from one place to another and create a disjointed experience.

A Solution
One way to provide a seamless experience is to put some OPAC functions into the website, letting people accomplish OPAC tasks without having to leave the library website. In my dream OPAC this go-between is essentially an ecommerce shopping basket but called a backpack or bookshelf in this instance. Just like on amazon.com, when logged in, a patron’s library backpack appears on every library webpage, whether it be the homepage, a book list, or the results list of a search. Any item cover on the website can be dragged and dropped into users’ backpack/bookshelf.

[drag and dropping a book cover - click for big on flickr]

Dragging and dropping triggers a dialog that allows people to get more information, find where an item is located or place a reserve. Here’s a concept of the resulting dialog from dragging an item to a backpack.

[resulting dialog, rest of screen greyed out - - click for big on flickr]

Patrons could be given the chance to customize what happens when they drag an item to their shelf. For instance, the backpack could be set to place reserves automatically. Speaking of customization, patrons should be allowed to choose which metaphor they want to use, a backpack or a bookshelf. The default should be associated with the patron’s age, giving young people backpacks and older people bookshelves.

The library backpack also serves as the basis for user profiles in the OPAC since patrons can choose to share their bookshelves with others. People reading the same book are given access to a dedicated book discussion room that has great content seeded by librarians. (This type of automatic affinity group creation is what happens on 43 Things.) When browsing people’s shared backpacks/shelves (naturally a nice graphical representation with item covers) patrons can drag items into their backpacks to initiate the dialog. User profiles are important because they’re the basis for interactivity. There can be no community without individuals.

Here are some other features that should be part of the interface between our content and our people:

Display
→ A relevant, modern (not looking like a geocities site from 1996) design built using CSS so that users can select from a few themes when logged in.

→ Options for browsing such as:

• Text lists
• Tag clouds
• Item covers

→ Persistent URLs for bibliographic/item records

→ New title lists by title, book covers, genre

→ Display most popular items, highest rated items

→ Bib/Item Record Options

• Favorite it
• Get citation
• Share/email
• Add to book list

User generated content
→ User profiles. This allows people the ability to:

• make comments/reviews
• rate items
• make, display and share book lists
• mark items as favorite, review and display favorites, and see who else has favorite items
• recommend items to others
• record personal checkout history and display it

Finding options
→ single search box, with the option for “advanced” search

→ Ability to search

• just the catalog
• catalog and web
• catalog, web and databases
• web and databases

→ Sort results by relevance, date published, title, author, number of circulations

→ Filtering search options by material type, author, subject, location

→ Summary of book upon mouseover (with the option to turn off) [idea credit: Jenny Levine]

→ Where is this item located? (Display on a map all branches where the book is located, clicking on a branch loads a map of the library)

→ Links to related websites and databases on appropriate bibliographic/item records

→ Movies have a link to imdb.com entry, CDs have a link to allmusic.com entry, books lead to some relevant site or database. Novelist, perhaps?

→ New item RSS feeds galore:

• entire collection
• genre
• material type
• author
• OPAC searches

The feeds should be modular in that the limiting factors should be combinable giving the ability to produce a feed for, say, new audiobooks from author John Steinbeck.

From Theory to Practice
All of this stuff could come together to make a modern, functional OPAC. Some would be easy to do (and in fact has been done) and some slightly more difficult. None of it comes even close to being impossible or too much to accomplish. What’s stopping us?

There is a good chance that an interface approaching this is going to exist within the next 6-12 months, one way or an other. That’s all I can really say except for that I’m pretty thrilled about it.

Please leave further suggestions in a comment. How would you like your OPAC to behave?

[In this post I used images from vufind, brooklyn public library, DC public library, and crumpler bags. I made up that totally lame logo all by myself.]

They’ve rolled out III’s RSS product, and have 15 feeds coming out of the catalog:

• Audiobooks,
• Children’s fiction
• Cookbooks
• DVDs
• Fiction
• Gardening books
• Graphic novels
• Music
• Mysteries
• Non fiction
• Science fiction
• Teen fiction
• Teen graphic novels
• Travel books
• Picture books/ easy readers

I subscribed to a half-dozen feeds in Bloglines to see how many subscribers are listed (not that this figure is the be all, end all) and found that DVDs is the most popular feed with 34 subscribers. Other feeds have 4-10 subscribers.

I like that they are promoting their RSS feeds in a prominent place. I also like the nice What is RSS? page they’ve put together.

Gripes? Ideally patrons would be able to create their own feeds for specific searches (like aadl.org) but, to my knowledge, this isn’t a feature available from III. I’m guessing that most “2.0″ solutions coming from vendors will be watered down like this. I’d be more than willing to eat my words though!

Having the feeds available is a great first step, and I hope to see MCL take further action integrating the library into the community by helping other organizations get feeds displayed on their websites.

RBW is a small company that makes high end bicycle frames that has a strong (read: cult) following. “High end”, you say? Their flagship bicycle frame, the custom made Rivendell, costs $2750 and takes two years to get to your house (…don’t worry, the production frames are only about $1400 and come much quicker). Their frames are beautiful, practical, and well made. Grant Petersen, the personality behind the company puts out a journal-esque catalog called the Rivendell Reader that is infused with his voice and character. Our library newsletters and websites should be more like it. For a sampling, there are some good bits in their online catalog. Here’s part of a description of the kickstands they sell:

When Barbara Torres ordered her Rivendell with a kickstand plate and couldn’t be talked out of it, I said fine, and that was that. Two others followed, and I’ve since put one on one of my bikes (see the cover of RR30), and my daughters insist on them and my wife wants one. I don’t think every bike should have a kickstand, just lots of them. They weigh as little as 9.5 ounces, are simple to use, keep your bike from falling over, and are cheap. Most of the bikes in the world have kickstands, because they’re shopping and commuting bikes. That’s not dorky, just smart.

Everyone should be authentic when writing on library websites/weblogs, but the writing should strive to highlight the humans of the institution. This sure does.

On to the interview. Most of the questions at the Push Button For interview are cycling and fly fishing related, but read this one in relation to our OPACs and services.

In your catalogs, web site, and in The Rivendell Reader, you write a lot about simplicity. Why is simplicity important?
Simple things make people feel smart, or at least competent, and complication has the opposite effect. If people feel smart and competent, they’re happy, and happy people are nice to other people, and it all starts or stops with how hard it is to use something.

Regarding running a transparent organization, it seems to come so naturally that he doesn’t quite grok the question.

You run Rivendell as openly as any company I’ve ever seen. Is there a conscious philosophy behind that?
Well, I wouldn’t call it a philosophy, but I don’t distinguish between “me” and “my company” when it comes to things like keeping secrets and telling the truth. It’s hard to keep secrets, so it’s best not to have any, but beyond that, I’m not exactly sure of what you mean by “open.” Is that it? If it isn’t, just clarify it and I’ll try to answer it.

Other social OPACs include Hennepin County Library’s catalog which allows for patron reviews, having reviews from Amazon.com load in the record, and RSS feeds for the reviews. Towards the beginning of the year John Blyberg showed everyone the AADL’s virtual card catalog. There’s also PennTags, which allows students to bookmark records in the Penn Library catalog, as well as PDFs, and websites. Am I missing any others?

I’m happy to see the project from MIT Libraries and hope more projects pop up. Due to ILS limitations it takes some serious coding to make anything like this happen, and since coding isn’t part of LIS programs, only libraries with enough resources to have coders on staff can approach these projects.

I think only 15 minutes had passed from when I got my Multnomah County Library card to when I placed a hold online. A few days later, I received my first ever hold notification via email, and now my limit of 15 holds at a time has been nearly met.

It’s like I’ve passed some sort of milestone.

The library had a slew of 6th grade classes come in to hear about the summer reading program today. Their eyes popped when we told them about the library’s efforts with books on iPod, IM, video games and MySpace. Some of them were so shocked you’d have thought we showed them a married bachelor or a three sided square. I didn’t know our image issue was *that* bad.

Highlights include Richard Ackerman’s comment:

Of course we let our patrons use staplers! We just require they take training in the use of advanced stapler features first

and Jenny’s response. As usual, she’s spot on:

And we call it a collation tool that you have to reserve in advance and show a library card to use. Then we make you use it in the designated collating area, where no more than two people can be at any one time. Removing the collation tool from the collating area will result in an immediate suspension of all collating privileges.

Users are allowed to collate up to 30 pages or 10 sets before they must surrender the tool to the next patron in line. If no one else is waiting, the patron may continue to use it for an additional 15 pages or 5 sets. Patrons may not exceed 60 pages or 20 sets in any one 24-hour period. Failure to observe these rules will result in the immediate suspension of all collation privileges. Staff will refill staples in collation tool within 24 hours of the first written report of an empty cartridge.

Collation tool hours are 9:16 a.m. – 8:44 p.m., Tuesday – Thursday. Classes in basic and advanced stapling are offered in January, June, and October.

JanieH links to a post on “Library Garden” which asks the great question, “Have you considered the price you are paying by punishing the majority of your good customers to deal with a few of the bad?” It also links to an amazingly titled bit from “Pop Goes the Library:” Red Tape = Patron Kryptonite

All of this is feeding into what I decided was going to be my theme for this year: Let’s Make Libraries Easy. I’m not a big fan of when people throw their arms up in the air and proclaim, “Libraries can’t be everything to everyone” because, duh, it’s a totally obvious statement. What I really dislike about the phrase is that it seems to discourage innovation and prevents us from striving to do the best we can. Right? “We can’t be everything to everyone so we probably shouldn’t try this new service.” “It might be nice to have IM clients installed our our PACs, but we can’t do everything.” Concentrating on the fact that we can’t be everything to everyone will lead us to become nothing for nobody. So instead, let’s think locally. We can be, and often are a heck of a lot to our communities. And I don’t mean communities in just the geographical sense.

We can’t maximize what we can do for our communities unless we stop with the passive-aggressiveness and make nice library signage, reduce barriers to service and think about our libraries from a non-librarian perspective.

Here are five things you can do this week to make your library a better place:

• Let people bring drinks into your building. Let that group of high schoolers studying together eat the cupcakes they brought in. They might even offer you one. If they do, take it. It’ll make you seem human.
• Communicate with your users who IM.
• Let patrons plug their digital cameras into your computers.
• By your DVD collection, have hold slips filled out with the info for popular films. They’ll just need to write in their name and hand it to you.
• Allow kids to bring their skateboards in the library

The next time you’re involved with making a decision in your library, please consider the needs of your users. My thanks go out to all of the library workers – shelvers, administrators, IT geeks, janitors, catalogers and everyone else – who are working to make their libraries easier to use.