userslib.com

I just finally got around to reading the Horizon Report.

In true 2.0 “practice what you preach” fashion - it’s available in a variety of formats!

• Read it & comment on it via the comment press version
• Video of the report presentation
• Read the study’s wiki
• Good old fashioned PDF

I just found this fantastic information graphic from Business Week that demonstrates what people are doing online and is broken down by age range. I particularly like the categories used: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, Inactives.

Looking at the Youth (18-21) column, social networking is the top activity for this group with 70% participating. I think this definitely supports the argument for “being where our patrons are.” At the very least, that we should be aware of where they are and think about how it informs their use of the web.

As an obsessive RSS & Delicious user, I find it somewhat difficult to believe that there’s relatively little activity going on in the “Collectors” category. Maybe these technologies just fit a niche need (the need to share links, need to have a central bookmark collection, the need to read way too many blogs).

Link to source of graphic | found via Smashing Magazine

I posted recently about our library web survey but I thought it’d be interesting to talk a little about one particular question:

If you could contact a librarian via Facebook or MySpace for help with your research, would you? If not, why?

The main impetus for this question comes from a current trend for libraries to create Facebook apps that allow OPAC searching and other library related functionality from within Facebook. There has also been a lot of discussion and experimentation with using Facebook for reference and outreach.

There were a total of 330 responses. This was a free-text entry field so responses were organized and coded into basic categories.

The Data:

Breakdown of coded responses:

The data was cross-tabulated based on the respondent’s status to see if there were any trends in how they responded.

Responses by UM affiliation/status:

A total of 23% of respondents stated that ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ they would be interested in contacting a librarian via these two social networking sites. Undergrads had a slightly higher than average percentage of 34%.

Nearly half of the total respondents stated they would not be interested, but for various reasons - the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they felt it was inappropriate or that Facebook/MySpace is a social tool, not a research tool. Though this latter category does not represent a majority, these responses were the most emphatic. Of those who stated their reason as having to do with seeing Facebook/MySpace as a social thing and not a research thing, undergraduates and graduate students comprised the largest group.

Some of the interesting responses:

“Sure because its something that I check often and is quick and easy to use.”

“I wouldn’t, because I feel as if I can do most of the research on my own.”

“…facebook and myspace are very public sites…it’d be weird to contact a librarian that way.”

“No, facebook does not seem like a site I would use for school purposes. I don’t want librarians looking at my profile. Facebook is not for school, it’s for fun.”

“No, because you can already chat with them online through the library website and I wouldn’t want to contact a faculty member using my personal networking site.”

“No. I would rather just send an email or go to the library and talk to them in person.”

So what can we learn from this? There is definitely some interest in using facebook as a tool for more than just social interactions even though some perceive it as pretty weird. The weird factor is likely to change as more apps (like lookabee and CourseFeed) are created and adopted, more students friend their professors, and they start to realize more and more that privacy on facebook isn’t a given.

And what’s the harm? We’re not talking about friending every student in your subject specialization and sending them vampire and zombie invites (or whatever those stupid things are)… we’re just talking about being where our users are, marketing our services, and trying not to be left in the dust.

[Link to the full survey report pdf] [Link to all usability reports]

Our web team and I recently did a survey to better understand our University of Michigan library patrons – their web use, their library use, and their perceptions of the library. It was mostly successful in that now we have more information about our users than we did before. As with all usability/survey studies, the results merely provide a window into understanding our users. The things we learned in this survey can now be used in conjunction with other studies and log analysis to form a more complete picture. This is just a preliminary report… A full analysis will be put online at some point in the near future. We also plan to do a version of this survey annually - so we will also be assessing the survey itself to determine what worked or didn’t.

[Library Web Survey Fall 2007 Results & Preliminary Analysis]

Inspired by a Smashing Magazine article - 20 (Alternate) Ways to Focus on Users - I thought I’d put together a list of alternative ways to focus on Library Users…

1. Interact with the patrons (outside of a usability setting): reference, email, suggestion box, etc. If reference isn’t part of your regular job duties, volunteer for a shift of your own (or just sit in on one now and then). If you’re lucky, you’ll have interactions dealing directly with the resources you are have a say in changing. But at the very least, you’ll get to experience the patrons on a human level - what brought them to the reference desk, what types of assignments they have, what language do they use to describe their needs, what they’re generally distracted by or have difficulty with…
2. Talk to the people who interact with the patrons: (reference & instruction librarians). Not only do these people interact with the patrons everyday, they’re the ones who have to develop lessons and explain all those difficult to use resources over and over again. I guarantee they all have something to say about the difficulties of using the various library websites, opacs, and other resources!
3. Log Analysis: what are they searching for on the library website and not finding? Are they searching for “Psychinfo” and not finding it because it’s actually “Psycinfo”?
4. Be where they are (online): search the web & blogs for mentions of your library. Are students taking lots of photos of your libraries or making videos in your library and putting them online? Are they posting to their blogs about the library or about research, and what are they saying? Join Facebook groups. For example there are facebook groups for UM incoming 1st years, individual schools and departments have groups, etc. You can find out a lot about what are they worried about, what technology they’re using, how much beer they’re drinking, etc.
5. Be where they are (in the library): go sit at a computer in the computer lab or group study areas in the library and eavesdrop. Just be stealth about!
6. Ask them (Guerilla Tests): if you have a simple question you’d like answered this is ideal. It could be as easy as “We have a service called _________ what do you think that means?” Or, print out the home page of your library website and ask them “where would you click if you wanted to find ____________?”
7. Ask them (Surveys): surveys are a great way to get lots of quantitative and qualitative information. My 2 favorite survey questions are open-ended “What do you like most about the library” and “What do you like least about the library” - you’ll be surprised how they have to say for both.
8. Ask them (student advisory groups): lots of libraries already have student advisory groups in place and chances are they’d be willing to let you use that group to conduct a focus group or do formal or informal user testing.

I’ve been working with the University of Michigan library web team on a survey to find out how patrons feel about the library’s website and online resources, as well as some questions about what types of web technologies they’re currently using… and my favorite question “If you could contact a librarian via facebook or MySpace for help with your research, would you? If not, why?”

The survey is geared to UM affiliates and we’re giving away 3 $50 gift certificates to encourage folks to fill out the whole (24 question) survey. Sorry - only UM folks are allowed to submit for the prizes.

So if you’re at UM (or use any of the UM libraries) - please take our survey!

I plan to post the results when I have them.

Over at the Information Wants To Be Free blog, Meredith Farkas has compiled the results from her 2nd survey about librarians and their blogging habits.

She’ll be releasing it in chunks, the first being the results of the demographic section:
[link]

Here are the bits I found most interesting:
Of those who responded to the survey…

• The largest demographic group for age is 31-40
• The largest demographic group for job type is reference
• The largest demographic group for type of institution is large academic libraries (with large public libraries a close second)
• The largest demographic group for gender is women, but according to Meredith
  

  Women are definitely better represented in the blogopshere than they were last time, but men still are more likely to blog in proportion to their representation in the general population of librarians.

Oh my. School will be starting next week. Ann Arbor is already crawling.

A couple of months ago I wrote a “Who are we dealing with” post to describe these new academic users/patrons in an attempt to better understand them. Beloit College also regularly publishes a rather extensive list of tidbits about our new first year students. And Jenny at the Shifted Librarian has just added some great and more techy examples.

Here are a few of the tidbits I came up with (link to full post):

• They were born in 1989
• They’ve (more or less) always known the internet, home computers and graphical user interfaces, and mobile phones.
• They were newborns when the first episode of The Simpsons aired, they were 3yrs old when the first episode of MTV’s The Real World aired
• They were 4yrs old when Schindler’s List won an Oscar for best picture, they were 10 when they saw their first Star Wars movie.
• They were newborns when the Berlin wall fell, 5yrs old during the OJ Simpson murder trial, and 12yrs old on Sept. 11, 2001

Here are a few of Jenny’s (link to her full post):

• They have always had to narrow down search results (rather than expand them).
• They have never started a search at an “advanced” screen.
• They store information and documents on keychains.
• They have always copied and pasted.
• “.” is pronounced “dot,” not “period.”

And now, a few from Berloit (link to full list):

• Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
• “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
• Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
• Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
• Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.

Are you ready?

Sorry for the delay - here are some of my notes from last Tuesday’s MLibrary2.0 Gaming session.

Eli Neiburger: Gaming in the Library?

Eli is from the Ann Arbor District Library and you can find his presentation here.

Eli did an excellent job of describing and putting gamers in context. I think it’s an interesting area that is often overlooked when we think about what activities our patrons (and future patrons) are interested in and how we might use those interests to promote the library.

“Email is how you talk to old people” - AADL gamer

According the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the second most popular activity of those polled (ages 12-17) was gaming at 81%. [I also just came across this Trendspotting blog entry: 1 out of 4 online users are online game players: facts you should know so I think its quite clear that this is an area we ought to pay more attention to.]

• Gamers are very accustomed to dealing with complex interfaces like those used in online role playing games like World of Warcraft. They expect ubiquity. They expect everything to do everything - from water fountains to websites and wifi.
• Content from peers has a higher value than anything else. “Authority” has spent their authoritative capital.
• There are games that some faculty are starting to take an interest in as tools for learning. For example, SimCity and Civilization can be used to teach history, economics, city planning, etc.
• In a study by OCLC: College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, Libraries were rated more trustworthy and accurate than search engines but search engines were rated much higher than Libraries as being more convienient, easy to use, cost effective, reliable and fast. [oh my!]
• Establishing the Library as Third Place. Eric Frierson goes into some detail on this as well as the event in general.
• The Ann Arbor District Library has a blog on it’s front page to share info from the Director, about events, programs, and the collection. Eli said one of the great things about this is that it acts as a sort of focus group because they can get immediate feedback about what’s going on via patron comments.

Jane Blumenthol - Second Life

Jane is the Director of the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries where they are working on extensive plans to use Second Life in conjunction with the Medical School. They are planning a whole campus for medical school related events. There will be 3-D models that can be explored and simulations of patient consultations so med school students will have an additional way to practice their bedside mannor.

Her presentation isn’t available online yet, but see her del.icio.us account for many Second Life related links.

Lisa Hinchliffe

Lisa Head of the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Undergraduate Library and spoke about Library 2.0 initiatives. I found this to be an especially inspirational talk because she talked about the technology and being brave, passionate, decisive (just do it!), willing to change your mind, attaining a state of continuous evolution, funding the future, and saying “yes.”
UIUL developed a browser search bar for their catalog, website, and google. They were the first to develop a Facebook app for searching their opac, and they feed their twitter and various blogs into the library’s home page. They circulate games and hold tournaments.

Lisa also gave some great advice for when dealing with innovation: be careful not to put too much importance measuring success. It doesn’t operate like it might with circ & reference stats. Sometimes just trying something new is successful.

There’s a recent trend at our library: non-public service librarians volunteering to do reference. I think this is great! Since my “Interface & User Testing Specialist” position is a primarily HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) based job and doesn’t include any reference duties, I started volunteering a couple of semesters ago. Because it’s part of my job to understand library users - what better way to do that than to spend a couple hours a week helping patrons navigate the tons of resources available to them. Its one thing to look at an online resource and declare “this is so not intuitive!” and another thing to have to repeatedly try to explain to patrons the 20 steps required to find what they want. I feel very lucky to be in a position where I have the opportunity to interact directly with our users outside of an official usability context.

So back to the title of this post. Periodically the idea that librarians are going to become obsolete reemerges. Right, everything is going to be online and fully searchable. But there’s going to be exponentially more information every year. And much of this information will remain proprietary and subscription based. Of course I’m a big proponent of having easy to use interfaces, but interfaces are only useful if they themselves can be found. This is where librarians come in. They are the sifters, funnels, aggregators, and above all mediators between the people and the technology.