I’m working with PLA on a project exploring the future of summer reading programs. As part of our research we created a summer reading programs survey.
Getting a lot of responses will help make the project a success so if you’re not the expert about your library’s summer reading program I hope you’ll pass on the survey’s URL to the person in your library that does.
Thanks!
This is the graphic from the Portland Mercury encouraging readers to not make books sad and vote yes on 26-143.
Be sure to check out Libraries Yes, a good site with a great URL explaining what the Multnomah County Library does and providing info about establishing a library district.
There are lots of ways to make life easier for the members of your library, but the simplest might be to step back and rethink your website.
In “The Benefits of Less,” I advocated for reducing the size of library websites. Doing so makes them easier for libraries to manage and, more important, easier for library members to use. I’m not the first to advocate content restraint, and I’m not the only one preaching this. Recently, Matthew Reidsma, web services librarian at Grand Valley State University, MI, wrote about cutting some 70 percent of the content from his library’s site and how no one noticed (matthew.reidsrow.com/articles/19). Writing about the fold on web pages—the parts of the screen users see when a page opens without scrolling down—Reidsma suggests an aggressive method for cutting content:
For now, here are some rules for dealing with content below the fold.
1. Get rid of it.
2. Go to rule 1.
This might be slightly simplistic, but it certainly has the right sentiment. Actually, wrangling content doesn’t have to be much more complicated than Reidsma’s suggestion. As always, the needs of library members should guide us as we make these decisions. Since library members the world over have similar library website needs, it’s possible to make some generalizations about what content library websites should have and how the sites should be designed.
To be sure, libraries must be responsive to their communities and offer individualized services, but typical web UX and design are not generally an area where libraries are going to innovate. Instead, better to benefit from the collective experience of other designers and focus limited resources on customization elsewhere. There are great efficiencies to be had if libraries were to join forces for website development efforts. It seems silly that libraries across the country are working alone, trying to solve the same problems.
Collaborating on library website development doesn’t be complicated. As a proof of concept, my UX colleagues Nate Hill and Amanda Etches and I created a sample library website template to illustrate this. It solves numerous common library website problems, and the result is a site that’s simple but better than most.
Our example features plain writing, highly legible typography, the basic content people want on a library site, and nothing more. Additionally, the site is responsive, meaning that it adapts gracefully to all desktop and mobile browsers. This gives mobile users the most appropriate experience without requiring any extra work for librarians. This One-Pager template is free for libraries to use under a Creative Commons license so you can download the code and fill in your own content. For more details, visit influx.us/onepager, or try the demo at influx.us/onepagerdemo.
You’ll notice that there isn’t any interactivity built in to One-Pager. Some might consider this a limitation, but we think of it as a restriction leaning toward advantage. Advanced website features are worth pursuing only if they rest atop a solid foundation. The majority of library websites don’t meet basic standards of usability, appropriate writing, and graphic design. They lack this groundwork and should get the basics right before moving forward. Scaling back is a way to make this happen.
I’m not a strict reductionist and fully support libraries aiming toward the development of interesting, higher level aspects to their websites, such as Ann Arbor Library District’s Treasure Quest summer game, which offered clues and earnable points to participants online. But we have to nail the design fundamentals first—and focusing on one great page for every library could be our most direct path to success.
This first appeared in “The User Experience,” a column I write for LJ.
It probably isn’t a good idea to post signs on your library that read “library closed” when that’s not what you mean. Removing the paragraph at the bottom (that no one is going to read anyway) would have freed up the space to include “will be” inline.
These signs on signs are particularly unfortunate because, even though the overall design of the sign is lacking, the visual design is perfectly okay.
The signs’ nice visual design is also rendered less effective by the “let’s laminate these with packing tape” implementation. It detracts from the professionalism that nice looking signs might otherwise express.
The Chester Public Library in New Hampshire implemented Influx’s One-Pager template for their library site. I noticed some friendly writing explaining a sane library policy.
What fines do I have to pay if I return an item late?
We are easy going people. We do not have late fees/fines. A conscience box is located on the counter for you to make a donation for late items. Privileges may be temporarily suspended if items are a few months overdue. Please be courteous to fellow library users and bring your items back in a timely fashion.
Any amount of user research is better than none. Why? Even a little knowledge about the preferences and needs of your library’s community can help guide your decision-making process. Not sure where to begin? Here’s a great first project—let’s call it the User Interview Challenge.
Step one: set a goal
All user research projects should have a goal. Without goals, it is difficult to demonstrate a project’s efficacy and value. By contrast, showing that a research project met a goal, especially one that directly supports the mission of a library, is a great way to prove that user research is a worthwhile endeavor. This can lead to support for conducting more research and, with any luck, create a virtuous circle. Example goals are:
You’ll notice that these goals have an action component. When these are met, the result is positive change for your library.
Step two: prepare
You’ll need to decide whom you interview to get the best data to meet the project’s goal. This could mean speaking to multiple types of library users (or nonusers). Likewise, go beyond narrow library definitions (young adults, senior citizens) to include larger information behavior roles (reader, creator, researcher). Whatever you decide, don’t overburden this introductory project by scheduling more than four in-person interviews. Find participants, schedule a convenient time, and give your participants a reminder call a few days before. Consider remunerating them with a gift card.
Next, prepare some questions for the interview. The topic and scope of these questions will depend on your goals. If the purpose of your interviews is exploratory, you’ll want to ask more indirect questions. Even if you ask direct questions, make sure they’re not leading or limiting or simply questioning opinions. For instance, if you’re interested in improving your circulation desk, don’t ask, “So, how do you like our circulation desk?” or “What can we do to make it better?” Instead, offer prompts about information-seeking behavior, like: “When you find an item you want to bring home, take me through all the steps you go through to get it out of the library.”
Keep in mind that you want the dialog to be conversational, more like a reference interview. It will produce better data and be more fun for everyone if you treat it like you’re simply having a chat.
Step three: conduct interviews
If this were a large-scale project you might want to conduct the interviews outside of the library to keep things neutral, but don’t worry about this now. Just prepare a room where you and a colleague can work away from distractions. Both of you can conduct the interview, or you can designate one person as the note taker.
Again, keep it simple. There’s no need to record these sessions. If you have the ability and the staff, you can use a camera to display the meeting in another room where others can watch.
Step four: debrief and discuss
If you had colleagues observing, get everyone together immediately after wrapping up each interview. This ensures that the feedback is fresh in everyone’s mind and that the project doesn’t lose steam.
The goal of this gathering is twofold: to discuss the patron behaviors reported during the interviews and to determine what you can change based on that data. Aim to leave the debrief with a plan for a specific change and how you’ll assess its effectiveness.
Step five: experiment
There’s no reason to make a permanent change right away. Instead, consider this part of an experiment. Make sure everyone involved with the implementation knows that the change is rooted in user research and isn’t an arbitrary, top-down directive.
Plan to revisit the move after a set amount of time to evaluate the outcome. Has it effectively solved the intended problem? Have there been any unintended consequences? Could any tweaks further improve the situation? Were things better before? No matter the answers, the experiment was worth doing because of the added data you have about user behavior.
If the change you made was an improvement, you now have a case study that you can use to get support for additional user research. If just a bit of user research led to making an improvement for library users, just imagine what you could do with even more user research.
This first appeared “The User Experience,” a column I write for LJ.
A fun single serving type site from the Durham County Library: Is the Library Open?
It has an effective responsive design and the code is available for all to use. Yeah!
If readers are too lazy to copy and paste the URL, and write a few words about your content, then it is not because you lack these magical buttons.
A good reminder that social media strategies are pretty lame and that the best way to get people to look at your stuff is to create excellent stuff.
Read Sweep the Sleeze.
Dabble is a community marketplace for people to discover, teach & host unique and affordable one-time classes. Did we mention that all classes are held in-person and cost just 20 bucks?
Their explanatory video is a bit long, but you’ll get the drift quickly.
Are any libraries taking as user-generated of an approach to their programming? I’m not saying that all library should be taking an approach like this; there’s real value in librarians assessing what folks want and then providing events in response. But utilizing a mechanism like Dabble does could be a really nice compliment.
A similar service is available between libraries as “Interlibrary loan” or ILL-service. However, these schemes are slow and expensive.
The Pirate University is ILL organized by library users and fulfilled via the web. Request an article to which you don’t have access and someone with access might just upload it for you.
It is a new site – there have been only 29 article requests and less than a dozen responses – and it probably won’t gain much network effect but it is still interesting.
