Session C104 - Inspiration for your Library Redesign October 29, 2007

Bennett Ponsford and Christina Hoffman Gola, Texas A&M University

Notes:

Questions to ask users

• What type of items are users searching for?
• How do they discover new resources?
• What to do with subject and class guides?
  • Audience and function questions
  • format, location and terminology
• What web 2.0 features are desired?

Methodology: Recruitment

• Traditional
  • blanket campus emails
  • advertising in student newspapers
• New Tools
  • FB group
  • blog
  • discussion forum

Results: First Survey

• People aren’t really looking for pages on the website, they were looking for
  content

• Searching differences between different user groups
• Need for information about the library — undergrads needed more how-to
  information
• Interaction with the Libraries’ website
• Web 2.0 Issues
  • Limited interest in tagging
  • Limited faculty interest in user-generated content (undergraduates were
    more interested, but still not overwhelmingly so)
  • Traditional preferences for communicating with the Libraries

Results: Second Survey

• Confirmed earlier results on use of the site
• Default search
  • Want books or everything, but last searched for articles
• What to keep on home page?
  • Emphasis on simplifying the homepage, but had no consensus on what that
    meant

Results: Bulletin Board

• Intense hatred of our pop-up windows
• Frustration
  • Want to search, click on full-text
  • not interested in all the options we give them*** (this is using SFX and
    MetaLib)
• Confusion
  • Often can’t even describe where they got lost

Results: Focus Groups

• Undergraduates didn’t know about Google Scholar, but it was the first place
  that faculty went
• Integrate systems (catalogs, edocs, etc)
  • users wanted to log in once and have it personalized and not have to log
    in again
• Discovery of databases
  • not using Libraries’ website to discover - are mostly learning through
    word of mouth
• Subject and class guides
  • Audience was different than previously assumed
  • Interdisciplinary issue on campus
  • Not discovering them b/c they weren’t in good locations or listed in good
    formats
• Need more ways to allow self-discovery and shared knowledge ****
• Visual and “sexy” is good (participants encouraged them to “sell the
  sizzle”)
  • no one even realized they had lots of RSS feeds
• Use of Web 2.0 tools
  • Undergrads mentioned wikis
  • Use of RSS — glass half full or half empty?
    • About 50/50 are aware of RSS and its use in libraries
    • Where does user education come in (*this is a great opportunity for
      instruction)
  • Personalization features
    • She also mentioned personalization of librarians, as in creating
      Facebook-like profiles for librarians on the Libraries’ website

Web 2.0 in Academic Libraries

• How far should we go?
• Academic standard vs. Web 2.0
• How much education to we provide?
  • i.e. do we want to support use of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. with
    instruction

Recommendations

• Help them find our stuff and then get out of the way
• Reaffirmed traditional design rules
  • Let the user control the interface
  • integrate systems
• Determine user groups’ needs BEFORE trying to use 2.0 tools

Next Steps

• Focus groups, interviews, etc

********************************************************************************

Erica Reynolds, Johnson County Public Library

Web design is a fairly new, fairly “young” world, but art is ancient — we can
learn from and be inspired by art

Lessons about web design learned at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Lesson 1: Have a back-up plan.

• When redesign rolled out, they still gave staff access to old site
• Went from 5,000+ pages to 250

Lesson 2: Be bold. Be dynamic. Be human.

• Teen Scene - users can personalize and select their own skins

Lesson 3: When you paint to sell, you paint people.

• Teen Scene - teens can submit poetry, comments, etc.
• www.jocokids.org

Lesson 4: Enliven your collection through reorganization and presentation.

• Break apart your content and see how you can put it back together again
• Redistribute content to enliven collection
  • Change interface for purchased content based on what patrons want

Lesson 5: Technology changes everything.

Lesson 6: Experiment with small studies and prototypes.

• Usability studies
• You have to back up large changes with small studies
• Card sort
• Paper prototyping and more paper prototyping

Lesson 7: A desire for beauty and serenity endures.

Lesson 8: We like surprises. And anticipating the surprise is even more delicious.

• Created a button that says “Surprise!” and people liked to click on it.

Lesson 9: A good guide enhances the experience exponentially.

Lesson 10: Destruction and creation and forever linked.

Lesson 11: Never stop innovating.

Lesson 12: We can be both prestigious and playful.

* Usability stuff is up at www.jocolibrary.org/usability

Session D104 — MySpace & Facebook: Pros & Cons October 29, 2007

Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library, & Author, walkingpaper.org

“WhoseSpace?”

Presentation

• Putting ourselves out there in social networking sites puts us in the user’s realm.
• Libraries are unfriendly in our web spaces, as well as our physical spaces
• Google doesn’t yell at you, it gives you good suggestions
• Social networks take “story time” to the digital stage
• Newsflash: MySpace is teaming up with Skype? Wow - big news!
• MySpace accounts by different libraries:

Brooklyn College Library
Denver Public Library
UIUC Undergradute Library
London Public Library (if you like the way your site looks, teens probably don’t.)
ALA

• It’s not just enough to have a profile - you have to have content! This is the most important point.
• Have a plan before you announce your profile
• facing resistance from administration about setting up a profile? It’s an intellectual freedom issue.
• Senator Matt Murphy of IL, wanted to block all social networking sites in IL libraries. He used a blog to get out the word! Doesn’t get it.
• Yalsa has a good page on social networking sites and DOPA.
• Bookspace - MySpace for books and adults

******************************

Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian & Meredith K. James, Assistant Professor, Eastern Connecticut State University

“The Facebook Phenomenon: What Our Students Need to Know”

• How do students use facebook? (80% of college students use it because their friends do, 1/4 of students who use it say that their personal information is more private than it was two years ago, 22% say that such data is less secure)
• Facebook is 8 times better read than the New York Times
• Good blogs about Facebook: fbTown, Global Neighbourhood
• Statistics show that a lot of students accept friend requests uncritically
• How do students use facebook? party notices, embarrass friends with pictures, procrastinate, people watch, post announcements. Why? funny, sexy, for attention, easy, free, part of their culture
• So many security issues with Facebook - graduate schools, administrators & professors reading profiles, students posting inappropriate pictures
• University of New Mexico (?) has banned access to the site
• Our job is to educate students about the dangers and uses of putting up personal information on Facebook - this is her main point.

*********************

Ok, I would have liked to hear more about what university libraries can be doing with Facebook, if anything. The Facebook session was more about “Ooh, how dangerous! Let’s warn them of the dangers…” and that’s about it.

Ha! October 29, 2007

From the Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette:

Library 2.0, Embracing
A new version of the Internet (version 2.0) is now available. Libraries are now free to abandon the first one.

– Posted from Internet Librarian 2007.

IL2007 - The New Rules of Web Design October 29, 2007

Jeff Wisniewski, University of Pittsburg

Rule of Seven

• Limit your content categories to 7 +/- 2
• This isn’t necessarily true
• Very context-dependent; if your content is well-organized, you may be fine with more than 7

Three clicks rule

• …is dead
• Users will click through on a longer path, as long as they feel that they are really getting to their desired page

Design for 800×600?

• No
• Nielsen says optimize for 1024×768 now
• Focus on flexible, rather than fixed width designs

Don’t look at other library websites for redesign inspiration (this is sad)

Banner blindness

• Users are used to seeing ads at the top of web pages, so don’t put mission-critical information there
• You can put information there, but make sure it’s also linked elswhere

Pop Up windows

• No

Flash

• It’s not taboo anymore, but the technology has to be used properly (I’d like more information on this)

Mouseover menus

• Slower and not scannable

Opening links in new window can be okay, but let people know you’re doing it

Keep it above the fold?

• You don’t really have to, research indicates that users will scroll — still, it’s best to keep your most important info above the fold

Put pictures of people on the website, but not if they’re too good-looking. people don’t trust them

“It’s never a bad thing to delight users”

IL 2007 - Opening Keynote October 29, 2007

Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet and the American Life

2.0 and the Internet World

*****

Notes:

Eight hallmarks of the new digital ecosystems
1) ubiquitous
the web is a storage device
2) internet at the center of the revolutions
73% adults 93% teenagers use internet
broadband at about 50%
broadband users are content creators
3) wirelessness is it’s own adventure - carry on internet use anywhere
wireless users use the internet differently than non-wireless users
more likely to be content creators
college students are living in the future
4) ordinary citizens have the chance to be content creators
no longer in a broadcast era
“Facebook is the dashboard for social life”
content creation (even if in fact blogging) -isn’t considered blogging any more
hard to capture who is writing and who is reading blogs
19% of young people have created avatars in virtual worlds
5) content creators have a large audience
54% of college students read blogs
36% of adults read blogs
older people are delighted to get a larger audience for blogs
younger people are horrified to get a larger audience for blogs
44% of young adult internet users read Wikipedia
6) internet users are sharing what they know
using the internet to rate things
34% of young internet users have “tagged” things
7) americans are customizing their online experience
(iGoogle, rss aggregators, etc.)
“myLibrary” - would this be even something to consider?
8 ) different people use these technologies in different ways
Gadgets
Actions (w/ gadgets)
Attitudes
9 different technology user groups (1 non-users)
1) high end - OMNIVORES (8%)
into web 2.0, blog, make and share stuff online
young, male, late 20s, racially diverse, broadband, students
2) high end - CONNECTORS (7%)
connect, don’t create as much as the Omnivores
late 30s, female dominant, email, IM
3) high end - LACKLUSTER VETERANS (8%)
male, 40ish, more white, more upscale
not thrilled with ICT enabled connectivity, being “always on”
4) high end - PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCERS (8%)
like tech for what it can help them do
40ish, diverse, upscale, full-time workers
5) middle end MOBILE CENTRICS (10%)
early 30s, gender parity, minorities rule, middle income
love their phones, functionality
6) middle end CONNECTED BUT HASSLED (10%)
more female, mid-40s, to go online is a hassle, white, middle income
experience information overload
7) low end INEXPERIENCE EXPERIMENTERS (8%)
50ish, female dominant, diverse, occasionally take advantage of interactivity
8 ) low end LIGHT BUT SATISFIED (15%)
mid-50s, fine with what they have, don’t need much more
call them to check their email, love TV and radio
9) low end INDIFFERENTS (11%)
lifestyle choice - I don’t like this stuff
late 40s, whites, don’t need the internet
10) low end OFF THE NETWORK (15%)
mid-60s, no cell phone, no internet, female dominant
tend to be poorer

large low-tech crowd (49%)
small technophile group (8%)
lots of tech capability idle in people’s hands and homes
not yet in a mature phase of ICT adoption in the US

connectivity changes our relation to information, and to each other
1) volume of information is growing (long tail)
2) velocity of information is increasing (smart mobs)
3) venues of intersection with info and people multiply - place and time shifing occurs “absent presence” “present absence”
4) venturing for information has changed - search strategies and expectations have changed (very quickly)
5) vigilance for information transforms - attention is truncated “continuous partial attention” and elongated “deep dives”
6) valence (relevance) of information improves - “daily me” for news
7) vetting of information becomes more social
8 ) viewing of information becomes more horizontal, less vertical, new reading strategies emerge as coping mechanisms
9) Voting on and ventilating about infomration proliferates, people feel more powerful
10) inVention of info and visibility is greater

*****

My thoughts:

The Pew Internet and the American Life project has provided so much great data about who is using the internet and why. I think it’s interesting that the number of technophiles is a lot smaller than made out by the media. However, many of these technophiles are students, so what does that mean for academic libraries. If these high-end internet users are content creating all over the web, what does that mean for libraries and library websites? Libraries are good (and getting better) at providing access to content, but not necessarily creating content. How can this change? Should it?

We’re in UR conference, bloggin UR talkz October 29, 2007

Sorry folks for the lack of live-blogging. Despite Jenny and I being at Internet Librarian 2007, the conference has a shameful lack of internet connectivity. Jenny also has a computer which likes to delete her notetaking on a whim. Stay with us for future developments…

Museums Do it Better October 26, 2007

This post on Walking Paper got me thinking (again) about the state of library websites. It’s hard for me to admit that most library sites make me want to cry blood. After all, designing for libraries is a big part of my job. But I’d venture to say that most of us who work on library web interfaces are librarians who happen to like web design and not web designers who stumbled into librarianship. And while I’m sure we’d all agree that we want functional, usable and visually appealing sites that our users want to use, there’s probably a small minority of librarians out there who really have 40 hours a week to devote to this task. And that’s mostly because we’re not talking about a handful of pages here - my Libraries’ website, just as an example, has about 20 gatrillion sub pages that have to be dealt with. When I redesigned the website for UNC’s House Undergraduate Library as a field experience project in graduate school, it took me about 3 months of pretty solid work to get maybe 2-3 dozen pages moved into a new design. The implications for a site as large as those maintained by most academic libraries is nearly enough to make you feel like you finally understand the urban legend about Pop Rocks and Coke making you explode.

But that was all just a long intro to serve as a disclaimer that I’m not recommending that all libraries go out and undertake full redesigns. But as our institutions think into the future, it’s really important to consider that having a pretty site (that is also usable and accessible, of course) can be something that attracts users.

I really appreciated Ellen’s efforts to go forth and find lovely library websites, though I will admit that most of them left me feeling a little eh. But a few days ago, a colleague was showing me the website for The Art Institute of Chicago (FYI, they have little tiny rooms there), and I was suddenly inspired. As a grad assistant, I was lucky enough to do some fun original web design, and I frequently checked out museum websites for inspiration. Since I’ve started my real job, I haven’t done a huge amount of design from scratch, so I’ve let that habit go. But remembering it now makes me wonder why library websites can’t be more like museum websites? Museums, of course, are often related to aesthetics in some way, and I’m sure that ups the importance of the pretty factor. But libraries and museums serve similar functions, right? So why not emulate museums a little more? I’m sure that lots of these places have professional designers working for them, but if you take a close look, you’ll see that they’re really pretty simple and clean (that’s why I like them, really). Check out the Smithsonian Museums for more examples.

What do you think? I can see “but we have too much content to make sites like these!” being an argument, but I’m not sure that’s really the case. Sure, we have lots of online content, and information architecture can become a big headache, but can’t we still aim to simplify and clean things up?

Web Design Survey Results from the other ALA October 22, 2007

Last April, the folks at A List Apart (FYI, one of those sites that comes up when you Google “ALA”) launched their massive survey of Web Designers. I took it, since a large part of the job that I had just accepted would be web designing. Well, this past week the survey results just came out, and they are pretty interesting.

I’d love to know more about how many web-designing librarians took the survey. When I see the one statistic that 31% of people who categorized their job title as “Other” work for a school, college or university, I wonder if that’s the librarians representing. In any case, I’m going to download their data (they’ve made it available) and play around with it to see what I can find.

KSU Digital Ethnography October 22, 2007

Michael Wesch, a professor of anthropology at Kansas State has produced another thought-provoking look at the state of information in the Web 2.0 world. His previous videos are Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us.

This one is called A Vision of Students Today and comes directly from a survey he did with his Cultural Anthropology class.

Jenny! You’re on his campus! How much does he interact with the library and/or librarians or the other way around?

Website eyecandy October 10, 2007

I know you all are always look for more website eyecandy for design inspiration. And design|snips looks to be an excellent site to find it. It just launched this summer, so it’s pretty new, but keep checking back, or add the RSS feed to your aggregator for your daily dose of eyecandy.