User Experience: Resist that Redesign

Article focuses on making continuous, small changes to the library website rather than a big overhaul. Provides reasons why not to do a big change, and suggestions for implementing/easing the transition to such a committee/project.

"Don’t redesign your website. You will be tempted, especially if your website hasn’t received adequate attention in the past few years—but don’t do it. Learn from some of the most successful websites around. Amazon, Apple, Google, and Netflix have never done major redesigns. They’ve slowly evolved their sites instead. Like them, plan to make many small improvements constantly to your website through incremental iterative changes."

"Website redesign projects, even if they result in a technically improved website, are likely to affect adversely the heaviest users of your site. Consider the inevitable outcry that follows any change to the Facebook interface. Momentum plays a big part in usability, and people adapt to designs even if they’re less than ideal. Forcing them into an entirely new environment is jarring no matter how friendly the result. Fortunately, small iterative change spreads out the cognitive load required to learn new things on a site."

"If your site is truly that awful, there are probably plenty of obvious fixes you can make right away. Spend a year constantly tuning up your site and turning it into the site you want, learning as you go, rather than putting all of your money on the elusive perfect redesign. It’s going to take time, money, and the right talent, but it will pay off—and right away."

LJ March 1, 2011

Teaching Children Philosophy through Children's Literature

"This website is dedicated to helping adults conduct philosophical discussion with and among elementary school children.

"Contrary to what many people think, young children are both interested in and good at discussing philosophical questions. Picture books are a great way to initiate a philosophical discussion with young children and this site will help you get started."

Good for educators. Also has a lot of Book Modules (essentially book discussion questions and guides) on picture and chapter books. Discussions are themed around philosophical ideas, but are basically just thought-provoking questions.

Teaching Children Philosophy

Booklist Online: Teen Recs under 200 pages

Booklist Online SR Short Teen Recs

Librarianship

LJ letter to the editor, response to Michael Stephens' "Heretical Thoughts"

"Innovation required
In 2009, we created 'innovation' as a performance requirement for all staff at my library. Each person (shelvers, custodians, librarians, department heads) must 'bring a new idea, development, or system' (Michael Stephens, 'Heretical Thoughts,' Office Hours, LJ 12/10, p. 72).
...
The goal is to encourage and reward the staff for thinking of improvements.
...
Stephens's closing paragraph recalls something that Lawrence Clark Powell wrote: 'A good librarian is not a social scientist, a documentalist, a retrievalist, or an automaton. A good librarian is a librarian: a person with good health and warm heart, trained by study and seasoned by experience to catalyze books and people.' —Nann Blaine Hilyard, Dir., Zion-Benton P.L., Zion, IL"

Ms. Hilyard, please hire me!

LJ Feb. 1, 2011

Reference: Screencasting

Screencasting can be used to answer reference questions for any number of people... Record your navigation to/through a database or online content and distribute it to users. Could be used for how-to's posted on a website or to answer virtual reference questions for one individual. Can be archived or posted to YouTube for others to browse and utilize.

Tame the Web

LJ January 2011, expanded article with tool reviews

Nancy Pearl...

"...conducted workshops for all 1200 staff members. 'From pages to library managers, everyone learned new ways of approaching readers, and they generated scores of new ideas,' says KCLS director Bill Ptacek. The library’s 'Take Time To Read' program, with its simple goal 'to make King County a more literate community,' grew out of Pearl’s workshops."

"'People who [are] circulation clerks or pages in libraries work there because they love libraries. Otherwise, they’d work at McDonald’s,' says Pearl. 'We must not cut them off from being able to talk about books and other materials with the people who use the library.'"

"'A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,' says Pearl.
'We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading."

"When people ask, 'What should I read next?' we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns."

"People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest."

"'She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,' says Janes" -U Washington iSchool Chair

"My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading."

"Pearl also worries about the demise of independent bookstores and the relative health of public libraries. 'Librarians must figure out what we need and how we need it, and then we have to get together and make it happen. I think we still have some power over the direction of these changes.'"

LJ January 2011

User Experience: Benefits of Less

Less is more - less content can lead to better website design.

"Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a daring pilot and talented author, also weighed in on user experience:

'In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.'

In some ways, libraries have been taking the opposite approach. We've gotten in the habit of tacking on new services and taking on new responsibilities, and many library websites can be seen as piecemeal collections of patron engagement tactics."

"More content thins out our efforts. It sounds simple, but the more things a library tries to do, the less attention it can devote to any one thing. Without the attention they deserve, web content and services can’t be as effective as they should be."

"Good content takes staff time to produce and arrange, and the navigational overhead can be a time expenditure for users. I’m not suggesting that libraries shouldn’t try new things or add content to their sites. They should. Still, the library world needs to start a dialog about an additional way to prevent stagnation: subtraction." Less content is easier to manage, thus make better.

LJ January 2011

Chicago government and CPL

John Berry's editorial calling for more cities to follow Chicago/Daley's example and to place an emphasis on public libraries. CPL's budget increased for FY11!

"Mayor Daley, LJ’s inaugural Politician of the Year (LJ 11/15/97, p. 28–30), sees each branch as a community 'anchor' crucial to Chicago life. Branch use is heavy, and the local branch is often the only library a citizen uses."

"When cultural institutions such as libraries are run by business managers, they are forced to adhere to the simplistic methods and measures that ignore their importance as public goods. In terms of economics, a public good is a service most efficiently provided to all people through taxation. Schools, libraries, public health, and police and fire departments are public goods. When anyone uses them, everyone benefits. It is more efficient to provide them through taxes than to levy a charge for each use."

"Commissioner Mary Dempsey and her team know CPL is a true public good and that when any Chicagoan uses it, everyone in Chicago gains. The United States will be a smarter, stronger nation when more elected officials follow the Chicago model and give the highest priority to their public libraries, recognizing them as the government agency that serves the needs of all the ­people."

LJ January 2011

Picture Books - not dead yet

Response to NYTimes story "Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children."

"'We live in such a visual world. Visual literature is increasingly important, not less important. Picture books are one important way to develop that.' Many picture books are better when kids are older. That's true for fractured fairy tales... which work best if kids know the originals. 'Those definitely require higher-level thinking skills.'" -Karen MacPherson, children and ys coordinator Takoma Park Library, MD

"The pressure to get kids to read at a young age is unfortunate. 'It's skipping a whole evolutionary chapter in the child's life.'" -Ken Marantz, emeritus professor of art education, OSU

"Picture books exercise kids' brains in a different way than test-only books. 'There's no other art form where pictures and words are completely interdependent on one another. An illustrated storybook can stand on its own when read aloud, but a true picture book needs both.'" -Elizabeth Bluemle, co-owner Flying Pig Bookstore, VT and ABC president

PW Dec. 13, 2010

American Libraries/ALA updates

Interesting things to remember:

ACRL's College & Research Libraries is now open access.

YALSA Teen Services Evaluation Tool

Gateway Games

Game reviews for five board/strategy/card games for all ages. Great for gaming beginners!

Tsuro
Blokus
Fluxx
Aquarius
Qwirkle

Library Journal Nov. 2010


Gateway Games, Up a Level:

Carcassonne
Forbidden Island
Pandemic
Settlers of Cataan (use for transition from basic to more complex games)
Tigris & Euphrates

LJ January 2011

Anythink: innovative libraries

Anythink is the new brand for a county library system outside Denver. Lots of interesting brand, space, culture, and job innovations.

"Beyond the deep rebranding effort, the Anythink “revolution” includes constructing four innovative buildings, dropping Dewey for the “WordThink” system, eliminating fines, upending summer reading for the more experiential MySummer, and recasting staff roles from librarians to Guides, bolstered by Concierges and Wranglers."

"They’re discernibly libraries but with some tweaks. Most important, there’s no reference desk but a 'front perch' and 'back perch' (and sometimes another), stand-up stations where librarians (er, Guides) and Concierges offer quick assistance. The buildings—the product of a stutter-step process that began eight years ago—are organized for flexibility, not for books."

"Because the library pays many bills (on time) with credit cards that accrue points, it can send staffers to conferences and training events without cost, says finance director Mindy Kittay, a former CFO and consultant for many small businesses, who began a new library career eight years ago. Also, staffers can partake in a technology lending program—iPads, Flip cameras, etc.—and buy technology at the library’s discount, with the payment deducted from their paychecks over three months, interest free."

Director: "'Instead of trying to get everything perfect,' observes Smith, 'we work to get the big idea right, then circle back to work on correcting and refining the details.'"

"At the end of her board interview, Sandlian Smith, who describes herself as 'very shy and very quiet,' boldly laid it on the line: 'I believe the responsibility of a leader is to shoot for the moon,' she said. 'If you want to build regular, normal libraries, don’t hire me.'"

"'I think you can be a brilliant organization, but without proper marketing/PR you will never be as strong or as viable as you need to be.' As such, the Communications Department reaches deep into the library’s activities. It not only creates newsletters, press releases, and advertising and writes speeches but also coordinates special events, manages signage, and runs the public art program."

"The use of aspiration as a management tool is a profound insight." - Jamie LaRue, director of Douglas County Library System

Library Journal Nov. 15, 2010

YA Reading

Too many journals to read through, so I've decided to save a list of YA future reading and focus on youth books to make sure I get an order placed this week.

"Today's YA Scene" - PW Nov. 29, 2010 p. 22

VOYA Dec/Jan
VOYA Feb/Mar

Carl Malamud on Public Information, Copyright

"There has been a lot of noise about orphan works in Washington, DC, about how there’s materials that were produced that are not available, that we can’t scan and make available because there’s potential copyright issues. And this vacuum of leadership in Washington, DC, has led private parties, like the Internet Archives, Google, and others, to wing it to try to figure out what to do. But it’s an area where librarians should be telling members of Congress and the executive branch leadership that this is a tremendously important issue. I don’t think I’ve seen that happening. I haven’t heard yelling and screaming in sufficient volume to impress people in...Washington, DC. The other thing that I think librarians really need to be aware of in the legal world is the amazing amount of money that libraries spend with the vendors. While budgets are being cut, it’s still a huge business, and I’m not convinced that the libraries have wielded sufficient muscle against vendors, such as journal publishers that have in a sense raped and pillaged your budgets. It’s sad to see how much money is spent on some of these resources and then how many locks are put on them at the same time. Not only do you pay big bucks to get this stuff, you can’t necessarily make it available."

"Google’s doing ten million books, then, jeez, why isn’t the Library of Congress doing 100 million or a billion books? Why aren’t it taking the lead and digitizing this. And why isn’t the Librarian of Congress going to the committees in Congress and saying there is an orphan works and particularly a fallow works problem—this issue of works that are just sitting out there, not getting used at all, not on the market, you can’t find the things; you’re lucky if you can go into a library and get them? In a few cases you can, but many of these works should be totally liberated and in the public domain as they were meant to be when we passed the copyright acts. Because remember that’s the whole point of the copyright acts: you can make some money off this, but then we all get it when you’re done.

The whole point of copyright is to promote the public domain. That’s not an incidental side effect. That is the reason the Founding Fathers put that in the Constitution."

Also includes a great overview of the federal government's digitization, information and computer system needs.

-LJ November 1, 2010 here

Thing 6: IM

on my experience with IM:
Well, having used AIM extensively and regularly in college, I feel I have quite a bit of experience with IM. (It kind of got to be too much, constantly taking any funny quote or activity and planning to turn it into an away message. Oh well - college.)
However, I did sign in to Yahoo!Messenger for the first time. It was incredibly simple since all it requires is our preexisting Yahoo (email) account info. Sadly, our library reference desk is currently offline, and I don't know if anyone I know is on Y!M. But through the website, it looks like a fairly simple and easy to use app. I do wonder if it's any good at having multiple conversations, as that's what often happens in AIM.

on IM communication:
IM is a great form of communication, but only if you and your friends are regularly on computers (though I think you can use IM on iPhones, etc. so it doesn't matter where you are). It's very similar to text messaging, all though I find typing onto a keyboard easier than into my phone. IM is very useful in many cases as it's free and there are no worries about charges for texts or talking on the phone.

on IM reference:
I think that IM is a great option for reference (provided the library is open and/or online). Many people don't want to talk to us to ask us questions. Having worked in a bookstore with a focus on customer service, it was always amusing when people would ask if there was a computer or someplace they could look up their answer, rather than just asking the bookseller their question. Corporate statistics claimed that something like 80% of customers would not talk to the booksellers (thus we needed to be incredibly helpful and take initiative). I think the library is similar to bookstores in the customer service aspect - and some people might be more likely to ask through a computer than talk to a real live person.
Also, BPL had a service which connected patrons to remote librarians for general reference 24/7 along with the option of IMing their reference librarians during business hours. That seems like a great idea (if people know about it and want to use it).