userslib.com

All of Amazon’s Search Inside!™ books now show stats about the content of the book: the book’s 100 most frequently used words, number of words, words per sentence, “readability” (difficulty), etc.

find stats by hovering over the cover of a book that has “Search Inside!™” and choose “Concordance” or “Text Stats” | link to example

[via information aesthetics]

The UM Hatcher Graduate Library recently converted a staff space into an exhibit & class room space to take advantage of the room’s prime real estate. This is now one of the few public spaces in the building that has super comfortable chairs, lots of windows and light, and quite!

The first exhibit is about former U Michigan Coach Bo Schemblecher. Congrats to the planning committee because it looks great. I was asked to take some photos of the exhibit and they’re now available on flickr:

The Sneeze, about the only “for-fun” blog I still manage to read, has a funny post about using the Domino’s Pizza delivery web order form. I feel like there’s an interface design lesson her, but not sure what it is…

The Great Pizza Orientation Test

The podcast of last spring’s SXSW panel “The Future of the Book: Dead or Alive?” is now available online.

How will information survive? Will digital archiving keep our information and memories intact, or will we lose more bits than we save? What do books mean in the digital age? Will old time publishing survive? Who are the real bookmakers today? What does it mean today that anyone can be their own publisher?

Moderator: Peter Merholz President/Co-Founder, Adaptive Path
Brewster Kahle Internet Archive
Terri Ducay Vice President Design, Cheskin
Eileen Gittins CEO, Blurb
Peter Merholz President/Co-Founder, Adaptive Path

I am a complete RSS addict. I’ve gotten to the point where if I happen to find a new website that has good, regularly updated content but no RSS feed, I don’t even bother bookmarking it. If I can’t subscribe, I know I probably won’t be back.

RSS feeds can be extremely useful to libraries - for one, they can deliver library-created content to the patrons (library news and events blogs, subject research blogs, etc.). But RSS can also be fantastic way to help your faculty and researchers keep up-to-date in their area AND promote all the databases and indices that the library subscribes to. Lately I’ve been seeing lots of RSS listings, directories, and aggregators popping up all over the place.

Here are a few creative uses for RSS in the library:

• News from ticTOCs - Table of Contents (TOCs) of academic journals. These are feeds created by publishers to promote their publications, so unfortunately they don’t include direct links to full-text for those who have access via their library. (found via A Feed is Born)
• College and University Feed Directory - Lists of feeds from different academic institutions and arranged by topic (Events, Sports, Libraries, etc.). (found via RSS4LIB)
• University of Saskatchewan’s Electronic Journals with RSS Feeds - Example of a library who has a separate listing of electronic journals that specifically offer RSS. And whenever RSS is available, it’s linked to from the journal’s about page AND shows the most current feeds from that journal!
• Georgia State University Library’s Library News and Subject Blogs directory - lists library sponsored blogs but also aggregates them all on the page, offers an RSS feed for individual blogs or everything, and lets you search all blogs.
• Bentley Library’s guide to Search Alerts and RSS Feeds - lists which databases allow RSS based on search criteria that you can set. I do this with Scopus and found it really useful - every week or so I get a short list of articles pertaining to research about libraries and usability.
• RSS aggregators, like LibWorm - gather blogs and resources on specific topics and allow searching or subscribing to the whole collection via RSS.

This last example is one I think has great potential… I looked to see if I could find libraries who have made their own subject specific aggregators but couldn’t find any. I really think there is a market for this type of service from the library. If you were a researcher wouldn’t you be interested in the delivery of content from selected blogs, journals, and databases right to your feed reader with one click?

Matryoshkus set of six traditional Russian dolls (via notcot)

Binary Watch

Binary Ring (via notcot)

HTML HEAD Sterling Silver Earings

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.

With anything these days, there’s always tons of debate over terminology, categorization, and placement of links on a page… We’ve been debating & testing our “Ask Us” (email & IM reference) service for over a year now and we still haven’t settled on something we all agree on (and the user’s agree on). So, Shana Kimball and I decided to do a little comparison of how some other libraries are doing it.

We’re not including any judgments in this report because we don’t have any data about how successful these libraries are - it’s merely a comparison. I’m sure there are many other libraries that have enticing graphics or wordings that we missed so suggestions are welcome.

Link to pdf of comparison chart (courtesy of the Usability Working Group).

When designing websites and interfaces, it’s important to know when to try to be unique and when to go with a standard. I think users are more adept at adapting to new interfaces than we give them credit for… however, if there is a standard already in place that will enable users to not have to think about where to click or how to search - why not use it?

To help with this, I’ve started a flickr account to collect Library Designs. I started with about 20 of my favorite library websites and took screen shots of the home page and a second level page.

For my first themed set, I picked out the sites that prominently link to their library’s email or chat reference services. I’ll formally report on this later.

I’ll add to this as topics come up. If anyone has suggestions for nice library websites, opacs, or digital library interfaces - I’m open to suggestions!

User’s Lib Flickr Design Library

Congrats to the folks at the University of Michigan Hatcher Graduate Library for putting together an awesome photo set of librarians reading their favorite banned books. I helped a little with this project and not only was it fun to do, it’s great seeing photos of all these people I don’t really get to see much (even though I work in the same building).

Check it out: Celebrate Banned Books Week Flickr set

Even our University Librarian Paul Courant participated!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From the news item:

Subversive. Objectionable. Offensive. Inappropriate. These are just a few of the terms used to describe many of the books that are challenged by society every year.

To participate in national Banned Books Week (Sept 29 - Oct 6, 2007), we invited our staff to highlight some of their favorite banned books in our library collections. Now these highlighted books and the wonderful people who select, acquire, organize, preserve and manage our collections are featured in Flickr, a photo-sharing web site!

The freedom to make your own decisions about what you want to read, and to have access to these items, are rights that libraries fully support. The University of Michigan’s library collection reflects these principles in its diversity. We invite you to get acquainted with our staff and our collections through our Celebrate Banned Books Week Flickr photo set.

For more information on intellectual freedom, censorship, and to view some banned book lists, see:

• Banned Books Week
• 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books
• OCLC Banned Book List
• ACLU FreedomWire