virtually a librarian

Sarah Houghton Jan has posted slides from a presentation she gave at a recent conference, called 20 Steps to Building a Thriving eBranch. The whole presentation is incredibly useful. I spend a lot of time talking and thinking about what I call our “online branch library”, and it’s great to see all the threads come together in a comprehensive, practical presentation. I’ll definitely be referring my colleagues and team to this. Indeed, it’s the first item I’ve added to our team’s new del.icio.us account - and i’ve tagged it MustRead.

What really stood out for me was this quote:

The library’s website, and by extension its entire web presence, is no longer an ‘extra,’ just another PR outlet, or an add-on to your other ‘real’ library services. It is its own branch. Treat it as such, or perish.

Something to ponder…

Two posts on a similar theme popped into my feed reader today. Both centre on the concept that, for our users, the library website is not be the be-all and end-all of resource discovery.

While munching on my lunch today, I came across a post on Library Web Chic titled The future of web services isn’t the library website. I’m somewhat preoccupied with online services atm, given that my current priority at work is developing the concept of the online library, so this title grabbed my attention. The post talks about how for the author, the website redesign she’s recently been working on is not so much about ‘fixing’ the existing website as it is about

defining the types of content the library has to offer its users and getting that content into pieces that can be reused and repurposed elsewhere.

Interesting. I’ve been pondering the idea of content that can be dynamically pulled into various places in the library website, but this post started the cogs turning in a bigger picture context. What if libraries were to make their content and metadata mashable, repurposeable, RSSable, third-party-searchable… in a much larger setting than the library website? What a way to truly get ourselves into the line of vision of non-users. And what a way to make our services more relevant and accessible to our existing users. I made a note to do some more thinking about this idea.

And then… I just opened up my feed reader again on getting home from work and discovered a post from Lorcan Dempsey about the idea that “discovery happens elsewhere”. What exactly does this mean?

No single website is the sole focus of a user’s attention. Increasingly people discover websites, or encounter content from them, in a variety of places. These may be network level services (Google, …), or personal services (my RSS aggregator or ‘webtop’), or services which allow me to traverse from personal to network (Delicious, LibraryThing, …).

Hmmm, doubly interesting. Two posts in one day… I wonder if the universe is telling me something?

Certainly, libraries need to put some energy into making our content and metadata accessible from third party services. We’ve already seen some great examples of this (such as Libraries Australia seeding Google Scholar with data from the National Bibliographic Database). But there are so many more opportunities for all of us.

I sense I’ll be spending a lot more time thinking about this one… But no time for that right now! I’ve got a conference paper to finish that I’ve been seriously procrastinating about.

Web Worker Daily is consistently a blog that I not only find interesting but that also offers up practical gems that help me do my job better, smarter, faster, more creatively.

One post this week really resonated with me and I’ve been mulling over it all week. This particular post asks “Is desire a priority in your site?”. And it got me thinking, is there anything about our library websites that really draws our users in and engenders in them a desire to explore what we can offer them?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that desirability has probably not been a big focus for libraries in developing their websites. And the fact is, our websites are pretty much the gateway to a lot of what we do. Want to find a book? Search the OPAC. Want to read the latest newspaper from Chile without leaving the house? Log on to the library website and check out an online resource. Want to see what events the library is holding? Check out the events page. So it would make sense for us to spend energy building desirability into our sites, because to use the library, people need to use our website.

The WWD post relays three tactics for creating desirability, as outlined by Kerry Bodine in a recent Forester report:

2. Focus on aesthetics:
As much as people laugh at me for being bothered by formatting, design and general prettiness in my work, I know that looks do mean something. Some websites are just so unappealing that I’m really not interested in using them (think internet banking, for example). I’m a visual person, and I need visual stimulus, but even those of us whose brains aren’t hardwired to glean meaning from the visual are (consciously or subconsciously) influenced by the way things look. Good design is not a luxury; it is an absolute essential. We cannot afford to focus solely on content and functionality. Graphic designers may be expensive, but can we afford not to use them? At the very least, we should acknowledge the skills of our more creative colleagues and involve them in the design process.

3. Incorporate elements of game design:
As the WWD post points out,

[i]f your visitor is playing, chances are, she’s staying. That may mean creating a system of challenge and reward or developing a narrative structure to motivate visitors to interact with the site.

How can we learn from game design to build tutorials, interactive help and self-service reference tools?

According to Bodine,

many Web sites make users struggle to complete simple goals, have little to no emotional punch, and fail to embrace the diversity of consumers’ wants and needs…

Is this true for our library websites? Admittedly, not always. Some libraries do a pretty stellar job of creating dynamic, engaging websites that address the needs of their users.

But these tactics definitely offer food for thought for a lot of libraries.

Know of a library that’s doing a great job at drawing users in to their websites? Drop the URL in a comment…

Kathryn Greenhill posted last week about the recently released report The Impact of the Mobile Phone on Work/Life Balance Preliminary Report June 2007.

As a mobile phone internet user myself, Nick Cowie’s amusing video about why people should build mobile specific websites rings very true for me. Last week, I locked myself out of the house on a very windy, rainy day. While I waited for someone to come home with a key, I decided I’d sit in the car and do a few things online, on my phone, that I hadn’t had time to do at work. Prime opportunity, given that I was in range of my wireless network, and could therefore avoid paying the verging on exorbitant rates my phone carrier charges for internet access. After ten minutes worth of sheer frustration, I decided staring into space would be a better way to kill time.

Even so called “phone friendly” sites are often painful when viewed on a phone. And normal sites are near unusable.

From what I’ve read, I understand that part of the problem is that web browsers that run on most smart phones don’t support fancy code (that’s a very technical term, that one). So the lovely, pretty, smooth AJAX-y / Java-y web tools I play with every day just aren’t gonna work, or not as well, anyway. But the other part of the problem is that people (read:libraries) just haven’t spent time developing even basic HTML websites that are optimised for viewing on small screen devices.

3G mobile is upon us, and while the Impact of the mobile phone report indicates a lower takeup of mobile broadband than the techno-addict in me would expect, it won’t be long until people catch on to what’s available. We need to be ready to deliver our services to users of small screen devices, because mobile broadband is surely going to take off some time in the very near future. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Googles of the world will get their small-screen compatible websites right (in fact, the Googles of the world are doing ok right now - the Google mobile suite is pretty much all I can bring myself to use with any regularity on my mobile). If we want to compete with these big players in the information economy, we need to get it right, too.

A little aside: Cool stuff is coming out for iPhone users. Facebook for iPhone looks very promising. And my favourite IM tool, meebo, is now available for iPhone too (pics here). But what about us poor iPhone-less Aussies? Is it too early to start lining up for one?! Seriously, though, can’t they just make these things device independent? It seems like a big waste of energy to build a different version for every kind of phone…

And a postscript: I still love my whiz-bang phone. I just really wish all the websites and tools I use regularly would display in a usable way. One day.

David Lee King posted about an epiphany or two late last week. The stand out for me was this one:

…a library site should mimic the actual library. And what type of experience happens in a library?

One of community. And conversation. And participation.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of community and library websites. I think the key is we need to consider our library websites as spaces, just like our buildings, where people ‘connect’ (and I don’t mean connect in the sense of ‘dialing in’ - I mean it in the sense of real, meaningful interaction) with our services and collections and with each other. Library websites are, essentially, online branches. They’re places for exploring the collections, for interacting, for sharing and developing ideas and knowledge… And just like our physical spaces, they should centre on community and activity; they should allow users to interact with, and through, them in meaningful ways.

Does any of this sound familiar? We’re operating in a 2.0 world, where social networking is the buzz concept of the day. Sites like Facebook allow users to communicate with friends and colleagues, to form and join groups on topics of interest to them, to connect for work, play, and a whole lot more.

The tools we need to create dynamic, participative online branches are at our fingertips. Lots of them are even free. Initiatives like Learning2.0 are seeing us build the skills sets we need to allow us implement these tools. So now all we need to do is just get cracking.

And, perhaps, give up on worrying about getting it perfect.