Human-Computer Interaction, or, the more common silent glaring contest between a librarian and the flickering computer screen

No lie, these articles were difficult for me to get through. Cervone’s was straightforward and informative, while the article by Zhang et. al seemed packed with fascinating information but written in such a way to discourage interested readers. Despite their readability, both articles presented useful material which I found very useful. The perplexing notion that has stuck in my mind is that librarians rarely design their own software and systems - while some companies do hire librarians to help with the design, there’s a huge gap between the users and the designers.

I’ve used about three different library systems over the last several years: Voyager, Sierra, and LibraryWorld. When I say that I used LibraryWorld, I mean that I used the version which was installed on my high school’s computer which was still running Windows 98 in the early half of the 2000s. Hours spent copy cataloging and wrestling with the large graphical interface that looked like a 3 year-old’s first laptop toy. So when I say that I prefer that experience over the current release of Sierra, you know that I mean business. The reason for my distaste for the version of Sierra that the WRLC uses (rather, that Georgetown and GMU use) is its interface design and inefficient functionality. The slow loading time, inconsistent displays, bright teal interface, and menus that appear to be loosely based on Excel are not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Not to ignore Voyager: while I’m not overly fond of its jargon-heavy menus and buttons, I don’t dislike it. Having used it for a while now it has begun to make sense. While it’s not intuitive or pretty, its functionality wins out.

All these systems were designed for librarians to use and operate, and using these systems “involves a strong cognitive component” that is difficult for the non-librarian/library staff member unused to complicated software or jargon-heavy language Zhang, 2005). Sutcliffe’s research is cited by Zhang as supporting the statement that “[while Human-Computer Interaction] created structured methods from both academic research and industrial authors, these ideas were largely ignored by software engineers” (Sutcliffe, 2000). The software we are currently using is meant for functionality but not usability. So when technology starts moving in the direction of smooth, clean, lovely interfaces and the designers behind our professional software don’t keep up, what then? Frustration abounds. This is the dark side of changes in technology and policy, when a solution exists but is ignored by those who can make a difference. When companies/corporations/designers/publishers restrict access to materials, users complain and put their own skills to use. They circumvent DRM through bypassing software, using their own non-electronic digital hardware (“I say to you, “Behold, the typist.””).

What do librarians do?

What can librarians do when our own systems discourage us from using them by being all but unusable?

Design our own highly-complex-but-usable cataloging software? Certainly not. We don’t have the money to hire a developer, don’t have the skills of our own, can’t come to an agreement on formats, standards, and compatibility. We are stuck with badly-designed, clunky, slow, expensive software. We are a stubborn bunch who choose to weather out the difficulties of interface design and curmudgeonly complain (not without some inner joy) about it rather than raise pitchforks or put hand to the grindstone and learn how to make the software ourselves.

Our own system development life cycle gets a wrench thrown in its wheel as soon as design enters the picture. We choose software that is as flexible as possible for the patron interface. Sacrificing our own usability for functionality. The training period, which is usually completed during the initial installation and transition between systems, becomes stretched and elongated, costing significant costs in time and mistakes. The continuous feedback is quickly exhausted and turns into frustrated sighs, and by the time we realize how long it will take to get the kinks worked out it’s too late to turn back. (Cervone, 2007)

A librarian’s response is to make the patron-facing side of the software as usable as possible and be as personally knowledgeable as we can in order to help with the learning curve. To once again be a buffer between the corporation and the patron. Most OPAC software is pretty snazzy, usable, and (largely) easy to use. Unfortunately, systems like Sierra often come with really nice patron-side interfaces OPACs or have nice add-ons like Encore that make things prettier for patrons, but fail to have beauty deeper than the smooth lines of the CSS file in their demo.

Fortunately, librarians have become Internet-savvy and vocal, and companies are beginning to open channels for collaboration. Innovative Interfaces has a user group forum that encourages feedback and sharing of solutions. User interface design is becoming more and more a focal point, thanks to the fact that patrons are using their own technology and beginning to realize that the power of a piece of software and difficulty of use shouldn’t have a positive correlation. Encouraging companies to use human-computer interaction development as a focal point for their usability tests may be the most useful thing to do for everyone involved. There are many, many very talented designers in the vast Internet, and companies now recognize the need for them.

Jessamyn West once called librarians a “dumb market… dumb in that I don’t think they’re aware as a homogenous group of just how powerful they are…. Well, tell [the companies] to stuff it, and tell them to come back with a better [product]. Theoretically we have the power to do that” (Carlson, 2007). While she was referring to scholarly publications and contracts, I believe that her statement rings true in many cases. When libraries begin to become a sea of hands instead of just a sea of voices we will begin to start seeing change. Put aside our comforting complaints and begin to really create a feedback loop with companies, get dedicated ongoing evaluations and share our training experiences. I can’t say it will solve the world’s problems, but it might make the world’s information a little easier to access.

Works Cited

Carlson, S. (2007). Young Librarians, Talkin’ Bout Their Generation. Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(8), A28-A30.

Cervone, F. (2007). The system development life cycle and digital library development. OCLC Systems & Services, 23(4). 348-352.

Sutcliffe, A. (2000). On the Effective Use and Reuse of HCI Knowledge. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions, (7)2.

Zhang, P., Carey, J., Te-eni, Dov, & Tremaine, M. (2005). Integrating Human-Computer Interaction Development into the Systems Development Life Cycle: A Methodology. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, (15). 512-543.

Tolliver and Swanson

I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I love reading usability studies. Something about the idea of evaluating our libraries’ accessibility and usability reminds me that there’s nothing that can’t be improved upon, and that’s encouraging to me. We can try and do our best, but we’ll never get there without listening to the people who use the web site. Seeing how other people evaluate and solve problems is fascinating, and I always enjoy seeing the outcomes and trying to discern similar issues I experience with the CUA web site. While both studies had a broad range of improvements they touched on, what struck me most about the articles was the emphasis that both usability studies put on jargon and how patrons interact with library lingo -- or don’t.

Swanson’s article addressed how students picked apart search results and approached a Google-like search box, and the study cited found that “students had trouble interpreting results after performing a search” and later that some students “had difficulty recognizing when they were looking at a list of subjects, article titles, or keyword results” (Swanson, 2011). Just yesterday I had a patron who was experiencing this very thing. While searching for a basic philosophy text through the SearchBox (which runs on Summon) on the library’s main page, he couldn’t decode the results and moreover could not determine how to use the catalog interface to proceed, supporting Cervone’s statement that “there is no built-in mental model for federated searching” (2005). Even though the patron could probably have found the material easily using a single Google search, he used our own catalog to find the correct item for his class. The patron thought he was searching for a book (because he rightly clicked the tab for ‘books’), but when the search failed him and returned multiple formats, he was unable to proceed. The federated search did not meet the needs of the patron - in fact, it did the opposite of what he wanted and lead him further into the maze.

While Swanson’s article begins by stating that many people want a “Google-ized” interface, the fact remains that libraries’ materials are not the same as Google’s and therefore they present results in different ways. Google’s interface presents everything in a simple and unified list, with little or no differentiation between the kind of resources. Libraries, on the other hand, present their materials in their plethora of formats with options by which to narrow down the search so the patron has a choice in what appears in the results bar. While the ability to search for file type, domain, etc, exist within Google, they are not in plain sight nor are they easy for the beginning user to understand.

When we use Summon in order to mimic Google’s simplicity and straightforward approach, the information patrons receive is garbled and overwhelming. Why is this? Libraries don’t just have web sites, pages, PDFs, and ebooks as Google does, we have those and print books, maps, CDs, videos, LibGuides, contact information for subject librarians, and other libraries may have even types of materials! The purpose of a federated search is to gather as many materials as possible to present to the searcher rather than present the most precise results. Having a Google-like interface without having a similarly powerful engine which presents the materials in a clean and easy-to-understand way defeats the purpose.

Today I recreated the patron’s search, and I better understand his confusion because the SearchBox does not filter out journals or non-book materials, even when the ‘Books’ tab is clicked on the page. The options to narrow down the search results are unintuitive, and the results at the top are not relevant to the desired material. Tolliver’s card sorting showed that “library jargon” should really only be used when “meaningful to users,” and it’s clear to me that it was not meaningful to the young man I helped yesterday. The one piece of data that would have helped the patron is mentioned by Tolliver when he states that the word ‘materials’ “does not suggest checking out books.” Sure enough, the area to choose format is headed “Content Type,” which is not what I would look for as a freshman patron. A clearer menu heading would have enabled him to remove all the unwanted formats and cut straight to the chase. The Summon interface is heavy with library vocabulary and jargon, which turns what could be an incredibly useful tool into a very confusing one. It’s not unlike moments in Star Trek when someone asks Wesley a yes or no answer and he responds with fifteen seconds of technobabble. As librarians we need to choose tools which are user-friendly and allow the patrons to be more independent. We are not gatekeepers, we are gate-openers (Bell, 2012)! This means making sure that darn gate has a handle with which to open it... our content is worth nothing if it is not accessible to our patrons.

Overall, this week’s readings in conjunction with the patron’s interaction with the system have frustrated me greatly. We need to start giving feedback to our vendors and software. The tools we buy for our libraries cost significant amounts of money, and discovery tools (such as Summon) are in the early stages of adoption, so it’s up to us to be advocates for our patrons and collaborate with the developers in order to improve the products. It helps everyone in the long run.

At Apple, my inventory team adopted the saying that “accuracy = fulfillment = customer experience.” As long as we do our part to help provide accurate (usable) tools, our patrons will be able to locate their materials and have better experiences in our libraries. It’s a simple equation, but the thought process reminds us that we can improve our patron’s experiences at the library before they walk in the door by actively improving our services.


Cited:
Bell, S. (May 31, 2012). No More Gatekeepers. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/05/opinion/steven-bell/no-more-gatekeepers-from-the-bell-tower/

Swanson, T. & Green, J. (2011). Why We Are Not Google: Lessons from a Library Web Site Usability Study. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37, 222-229.

Tolliver et al. (2005). Website redesign and testing with a usability consultant: lessons learned. OCLC Systems & Services, 21, 156-166.

@jessamyn on libraries & publishers

Jessamyn C. West

Age: 39

Position: community-technology librarian at the Randolph Technical Career Center, in Randolph, Vt.

Claim to fame: Runs Librarian.net, one of the most popular library blogs on the Internet.

Should the relationship between libraries and publishers change? If so, how?

Of course it should change. When you do the numbers, librarians have this incredibly insane, crazy amount of purchasing power. Who buys all those scholarly publications that scholars create in order to get tenure? Libraries do. Who else? No one -- or almost no one. So libraries are this big dumb market for a lot of this material, and I only mean dumb in that I don't think they're aware as a homogenous group of just how powerful they are.… You wouldn't think then that they would be on the butt end of all of these terrible, terrible licensing agreements with any nonprint information that they buy from publishers, and yet they still are. I think what we are seeing is publishers of print are trying hard as hell to not make as much print anymore, because paper costs real money and electrons don't.

We're only seeing a couple really clueful people enter the marketplace, and we're seeing a lot of the same tired old you'll-buy-it-because-you've-always-bought-it business model.… I'd like to see libraries take more of the upper hand in terms of buying some of these products that reflect the actual purchasing power they have as a giant buyer of things, and less of, "Oh, my gosh, Elsevier gave us this contract, … but it's got all these restrictions, and what can we do?" Well, tell them to stuff it, and tell them to come back with a better contract. Theoretically we have the power to do that.

Carlson, S. (2007). Young Librarians, Talkin' 'Bout Their Generation. Chronicle Of Higher Education, 54(8), A28-A30.

Hirshon, Liu, and Pixar

Upon reading this week’s articles, one of my main thoughts was the large disconnect between the creators of library web sites and their patrons. In Hirshon’s scan of library web sites he addresses the uniqueness of Digital Natives and their learning styles in relation to technology. Given that Digital Natives exhibit “behavior [which] is very diverse by geography, gender, type of university, and status at the university” and “assess authority and trust within seconds,” (Hirshon, 2008), it’s necessary for libraries to reassess their approach to web site and system design in order to be more accessible and reliable.

Similarly, Liu discusses how Web 2.0 principles are changing the relationship users have with technology. Users, Liu shows, are more engaged with information to the point where it technology isn’t just a “stand-alone, separate silo” in relation to users, it’s the interface with which they “integrate” with information. As Web 2.0 continues to dominate the Internet and take down barriers between individuals and technological tools, so should libraries in their digital spaces.

As part of my current job is to evaluate and consider ways to improve the CUA libraries web site, my mind during the reading of these articles was largely focused on how to apply this new knowledge to my ongoing projects. The web site here at Catholic University does not reflect either its patrons’ diversity or their close relationship with information. In fact it seems to present as much information as possible to the user rather than only the information relevant to the user. The site has the same danger Liu calls a “universe of information… that fails to recognize users as individuals” (2008).Graduates see the same circulation page as the undergraduates, and the same goes for faculty. This web site is text-heavy, with no tailored portals or useful graphics to guide the flow of information. Part of this, I believe, is because it is designed to be a guide to library resources and policies rather than a own stand-alone virtual library.

The largest challenge involved in restructuring the library web site is meeting the needs of our diverse patron base, which includes not only our students and faculty but also visiting students from the John Paul II institute, WRLC patrons, and Washington Theological Consortium patrons. Our patrons are of varying ages of levels of technological learning, and so creating a site which reflects this requires a significant amount of work and an overall rethinking of the site as a whole, but will ultimately serve them better than our current web site.

Considering the site as a whole to be the virtual representation of the library was not something I had done before reading Hirshon’s scan, and it is now certainly part of my thought process in the project. Incorporating spaces for entertainment and engagement as well as functionality is vital to making the site a place where patrons will come for browsing and exploring our resources as well as answers to questions about borrowing privileges and downloading e-books. After reading these articles, I’m contemplating what interactive and collaborative features we could add to the library site to make it more engaging. It’s certainly something to think about, whether or not anything is ultimately implemented.

My last thoughts are on a different note: Hirshon refers to a study at the University of Rochester done by an anthropologist about the habits of undergraduates. The study found that not all “Digital Natives” are at home with the “Digital” aspect of their generation. In short, they struggle with technology just like previous generations. This seems to be almost in conflict of some of the previous statements in the article. Not every young student has had access to the Internet or the “world where the Internet has always been present.” Some students do not have the option of interacting with their peers through smartphones and Twitter, whether on a local basis or on a “world-wide scale.” Likewise, not all libraries are able to supply these needs to their patrons.

Small colleges and universities are not privy to the same resources or consortia as one such as Catholic University. This makes the librarians all the more important to be advocates, grant-winners, or simply just scrappy individuals who are very clever with duct tape and paper clips. Cost-effective resources (such as the OLPC laptop and the Raspberry Pi) are becoming more available will help to close this gap, but there is still skill required to implement these device, not to mention the significant time and effort it takes to convince administration and install the technology. Anecdotally, patrons who do not have a laptop at home may have a smartphone, and yet many databases and libraries do not have full support for mobile operating systems. This effectively shuts out the patron and forces them to access the materials on a limited basis. The gap exists not only in the patrons’ skill and comfort with technology but also with the existing technology and its ability to meet the patrons on their home ground.



Articles Cited:
Hirshon, A. (2008). Environmental scan: A report on trends and technologies affecting libraries. Nelinet, Inc.
Liu, S. (2008). Engaging users: The future of academic library web sites. College & Research Libraries, 69(6-27).

The purpose of this blog

As I begin my time at Catholic University of America, I think it's important to state precisely what I intend to do with this blog and how I intend to use it. This blog was originally created last summer for class assignments for ILS225, a basic intro to computers and technology for my undergrad. It largely consisted of quotes about aspects of libraries and technology and a collection of blog entries in which I interviewed local academic librarians. When I visited Kansas in December I continued to blog about my time there, scanning and digitizing my grandparent's slide collection and family pictures. Since then I have used it more or less to record my time at PBS, thoughts about corners of the Internet, and note important milestones in my path to graduate school.

This program has similar assignments as my undergrad, so the blog will continue to serve as the platform on which I post those entries. However, I have already had a few posts sitting in the back of my mind prompted by this week's classes, so I will also post my thoughts on those. I do invite any readers to respond and comment as I would love to have some conversation around the topics I discuss in posts. In the coming months are several different symposiums and events I will be attending (Ruby on Rails at CHNM, the Cultural Heritage Symposium, etc), and I will post about those as well. I hope other LIS students here at CUA will be encouraged to attend these events and will feel more comfortable by reading about my experiences.

To clarify, I'm going to continue using the blog as I did before but with (perhaps) a little more purpose and decorum. There are now links to this blog on my about.me/tehgort page (which is on my business cards and most social media sites), so now it is more public than before. With that in mind I will attempt to address issues relevant to my profession and what I learn. This does not mean I will stop putting gifs in posts or stop putting up pictures of wookiees, but it does mean that I will be a little more conscientious when I do.

In which I deal with having too much of a good thing

Earlier this year when I was accepted to CUA I spent the time to create a finely honed and crafted spreadsheet of classes I wanted to take that would fit well within my focus. In addition to this information I added when they were offered and created a basic plan for the next several years of my life. It looked something like this:

It felt so great to have my next two years planned out. Seriously, it felt great. Then I went to #CURATEcamp and rethought my life. Not quite so dramatically, but I did rethink my classes. After spending some time on the CUA LIS website and browsing the recommended courses for my focus, the spreadsheet got really complicated and I just made a list that looks like this:

I have serious feelings and issues at the moment. I can only fit 36 credits (a total of 12 classes) into my degree, and that's including the four core courses. That means I can only take eight classes of my focus into the next two years - and I need to narrow down the list of twenty by next summer.

Admissions office? Where's that?

It's been about fifteen years since I spent much time on a physical college campus aside from the occasional jaunt to UMD, GMU, and of course Trinity. Getting my grad experience started has been an interesting re-introduction to campus life, and I spent much of yesterday meandering from office to office and getting to know Catholic University. It was a gorgeous day, so I joyously donned my Vans slip-ons and ventured forth to the green and hilly campus.

Columbus School of Law (right)

This is near where I'll be taking several classes. Recently, the School of Library & Information Science (SLIS) was changed to a department in the school of Arts and Sciences, so it is now simply an LIS. Since last year's earthquake damaged the beautiful Marist Hall, the offices of LIS moved to the Columbus School of Law, one of the most modern and striking buildings on campus.

Standing in front of the Columbus School of Law, looking toward the lawn

 I'm incredibly fond of this area. There are benches and sunny spots, chairs, trees, and it's just filled with fresh air.

 

The Kane Center

The whole reason I went to campus yesterday was to hand in some records to the Graduate Admissions office, but lo and behold they sent me to Student Health Services at the Kane Center. . . which was closed due to it being the summer and all. . . . I scanned the forms at the library and sent them to myself, so I'm still kinda waiting for the bureaucracy to sort itself out. (update: WHICH IT HAS JUST DONE)

The great upside to being on campus yesterday was that despite not REALLY getting anything done, I did get some other things done. Recently I met my new friend, Liz, via Twitter. Actually we were introduced on Twitter by a fellow student at CUA who I met at my monthly #DCHDC meetup, which I've gushed about here before.

Columbus School of Law (left) and "The Pryz" (right)

Since the Internet introduction, the two of us have met up for dinner and tweeted back and forth regularly about our classes. Liz and I met up for coffee and sat in the sun while ruminating on major questions in life as well as how on earth we were both going to learn the Library of Congress cataloging scheme (answer: online tutorials, duh). We're taking a class together this coming semester, so I'm grateful to have someone to sit next to in class. Sometimes being back on a campus just reminds me how easy it is to feel alone, especially when starting something completely new.