User-Centered Practices in Libraries

By Kent Millwood
Library Director, Thrift Library of Anderson University
Presented at 2009 ALABI Annual Conference, and updated June 20, 2009
ALABI – Association of Librarians and Archivists at Baptists Institutions

WHAT IT IS

Introduction - Unlike traditional, “top-down” planning and administration practices, “user-

centered” practices promote change from the bottom up. The following discussion notes some of
the ways this practice is already changing libraries. Whenever possible, hyperlinks are included
to take the reader to the original source.

Definition – A “user-centered” library determines its goals and practices based on user needs,
not its own, and does so on a continuous basis.

The following quotes are taken from “Innovation and Strategy: Risk and Choice in Shaping
User-Centered Libraries,” by Kathryn J. Deiss. Go to http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1717 Then click
Deiss1732.pdf.

“Creating services that add value for the customer takes precedence over all other drivers
in determining organizational success in the twenty first century. Libraries uniquely
capable of anticipating and meeting customer needs in ways that mirror a changing world
are the libraries that are deemed successful and, therefore, are able to attract resources
and talent.” - p.17

“For innovation to occur libraries must tap the creative potential of their staffs, vendors,
and customers.” - p.18

Discussion Questions–
• Is it more important to give customers / users / patrons what they want or what you think
they need?
• Is there a difference between what users say they want and what they really want?
• If you don’t give them what they want, will they go away?
• Are libraries in danger of being replaced, at least in part, by organizations like Google,
Amazon, NetFlix, Wikipedia, etc. that give users what they want? That allow users to
create content? That allow users to create the rules?

EXAMPLES OF INNOVATION

1. Example of a library system (in this case the entire state of Pennsylvania) available from
anywhere at any time. Note that providing 24/7 assistance is much easier for groups of libraries
than for single libraries.

Click to ask questions on any topic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

http://www.askherepa.org/

2. Example of a library that shelves books in a “user friendly” way instead of the “right” way.

Library in Phoenix suburb abandons Dewey system

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070719/news_lz1n19read.html

3. Example of a library that has created what may become a common staff position.

Facebook Application Programmer Position available at the University Library

https://www.honors.illinois.edu/?q=node/238

4. Example of the new library catalog at Ann Arbor District Library that allows its users to “tag”
collection items with their own subject headings and write reviews.
http://www.aadl.org/catalog

Look up Cooking with too hot tamales : recipes and tips from TV food network's spiciest
cooking duo, by Mary Sue Milliken, and compare the official Library of Congress subject
headings –
Cookery, Latin American.
Cookery, Mexican.
Cookery, Spanish.

to the user created subject tags.

spicy, recipes, cooking, food, tamales, mexican, food network, tv, Mexican food,
burritos, Tacos, Enchiladas

Discussion Questions–
• Do users have more time to catalog than catalogers – If it is a book that interests them,
yes, but then who tags the boring books?
• Do users choose better tags than catalogers?
• Although we might like our tags (and controlled vocabulary) better, which method is
more likely to result in the user finding books?
• How is it that neither the cataloger nor the users picked cookbooks as an access point?
• Why do we still limit subject headings as if we were living in a world of limited
resources (3x5 cards, card catalogs, understaffed technical services department, etc.)?

There is a very good article in Wired Magazine on how humans are having a hard time adapting
form a concept of “scarcity” to one of “abundance” in Chris Anderson’s “Tech Is Too Cheap to
Meter: It's Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity.”
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/mf_freer

In it Anderson quotes the science fiction writer Cory Doctorow and what he calls "thinking like a
dandelion." Doctorow writes: "The disposition of each—or even most—of the seeds isn't the
important thing, from a dandelion's point of view. The important thing is that every spring, every
crack in every pavement is filled with dandelions. The dandelion doesn't want to nurse a
single precious copy of itself in the hopes that it will leave the nest and carefully navigate its way
to the optimum growing environment, there to perpetuate the line. The dandelion just wants to be
sure that every single opportunity for reproduction is exploited!"

Librarians have always wanted the best subject headings, the best Dewey and LC numbers, and
the best author / title / notes fields. But have we always gotten it right? Remember when the
official LC subject heading for a “Light Bulb” was “Lamp, Incandescent?” And how is it
possible that both librarians and users failed to choose “cookbook” as a search term? Who
knows, maybe the next searcher will tag our example with “cookbook”, or “cook book”, or
“cook books”.

Users could care less if we get it right – or even if they get it right. There are lots of typos in
Tagging. Users simply want to find they book they want no matter what search term they use. In
other words, they want to find the book in every crack in every pavement.

Later in this presentation, under Examples of Web 2.0, various social networking sites are
described. How might the online catalog change if these techniques were used?

PLANNING vs. INNOVATION

Planning – Typically, a means to improve what we are already doing, or add to what we are
doing. Planning usually results in incremental change, leaving the organization’s identity intact.
“If you asked an American what he wanted for better transportation prior to Henry Ford, he
would have said a faster horse.”

When online catalogs first came into being, a popular feature was the ability to display metadata
as a catalog card.

Innovation – Things that change the way we do things. Examples of Innovation:

• Automobiles, television, TV dinners
• Websites vs. newspapers
• Full Text Databases vs. Periodicals
• Cell phones vs. all of the following - phones, ipods, computers, televisions, radios, GPS
loators, still cameras, video cameras, notebooks, calendars, telephone books, yellow
pages, travel atlases, alarm clocks, flashlights, etc.

Consequences of Innovation – If you truly innovate, you may

1. Abandon many of your core goals and objectives
 Which of the following traditional library tasks are endangered?
Binding Journals
Microfilm and microfiche
A wide variety of daily newspapers
Reference books – particularly annuals available for free on the internet
2. Change yourself into something you no longer recognize.

Time Frame - Traditional needs 1- 5 years. Innovation needs only 3-4 months.

Discussion – How do you budget for innovation when your organization operates on an annual
budget?

Don’t Over plan

• KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
• 3 Minute Plan
Feel your way along. Innovation is not a rocket you aim and release. Innovation in the 2.0
sense is like driving down an unfamiliar road, constantly making minute changes in speed
and direction as your reality changes.

Be willing to Fail
Something will go wrong, and that’s ok. Remember “thinking like a dandelion”. The
concept of abundance applies just as much to ideas in competition with each other as it does to
the use of computer memory. This means being willing to strike out 100 times in order to hit that
grand slam.

Assessment – Talk to your customer, constantly.

Assessment Tools
• Online Surveys
• Focus Groups
• User Observations
• Conversations - Collect Stories
o Offer compensation to your volunteers (focus groups) - Freebies
o Talk to people outside the library

Discussion Questions
• What do you do when your users ask for something unreasonable?
• Will administers be willing to put up with 99 failures to reach one wonderful success?
• Will users?
• Great innovators tend to be the ones with nothing to lose - newcomers or organizations
threatened with extinction. Does that describe libraries? What were Kodak, Fuji, and
Polaroid doing while the digital camera as being developed and marketed? Was their
mission to make “film” or to make “pictures”?
EXAMPLES OF WEB 2.0
(Definitions provided, in part, by Wikipedia.)

The following web sites practice various aspects of web 2.0 where there users supply
content and/or assist in organizing and improving the content, services, communications of
the entity. NOTE: An increasing number of these sites practice multiple aspects of web 2.0.

Tagging

Delicious –Sometimes called del.icio.us – a social bookmarking web service for storing,
sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. It has more than five million users and 150 million
bookmarked URLs. Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can
tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy. A
combined view of everyone's bookmarks with a given tag is available.) Its collective nature
makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users. Some libraries use
delicious to post their Favorite websites. Those that don’t can still use Delicious to identify
valuable sites to add to their own pages.
Go to Delicious at http://delicious.com/ Search for customer centered libraries. Then
click on the Traveling Librarian.

Flickr – So what makes Flickr so social, and therefore so different? Flickr follows a
"desire lines" philosophy, letting people create their own metadata, laying paths where people are
walking instead of trying to lay out paths and assuming people will follow them (like, say,
structured classification). This gives you an opportunity to observe a user-based classification,
and learn what your users think your data is about, and possibly using that to your advantage to,
say, improve your classification, or study how the patron mind works.
For a larger discussion read Andrea Mercado’s blog on “Tagging on Flickr & del.icio.us”
in LibraryTechronics. http://librarytechtonics.info/bits/295/tagging-on-flickr-delicious/

Rating

NetFlix – An online DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental service, offering flat rate rental-by-
mail and online streaming to customers in the United States. The company, on average, ships 1.9
million DVDs to customers each day. Netflix developed and maintains an extensive
personalized video-recommendation system based on ratings and reviews by its customers,
similar to the system used by Amazon.com.

Reviews

Amazon – America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the internet sales
revenue of runner up Staples, Inc. It started as an on-line bookstore but soon diversified to
product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics,
apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Not only does Amazon solicit customer reviews of its
products, but it also utilizes their opinions in providing rating.
 TripAdvisor – A free travel guide and research website that hosts reviews from users
and other information designed to help plan a vacation. TripAdvisor is an example of consumer
generated media. The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the
website makes its money from advertising, mostly from travel-related industries.

Content

Wikipedia –A free, multilingual encyclopedia. Its name is a portmanteau of the words

wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning
'quick' and encyclopedia). Wikipedia's 13 million articles (2.9 million in the English Wikipedia)
have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles
can be edited by anyone who can access the Wikipedia website. It is currently the most popular
general reference work on the Internet. Critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and
inconsistencies, and target its policy of favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial
process. Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy are also an issue.

When Time magazine recognized You as its Person of the Year for 2006, acknowledging
the accelerating success of online collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the
world, it cited Wikipedia as one of three examples of Web 2.0 services, along with YouTube and
MySpace.

YouTube –A video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos, and
view them in MPEG-4 format. The company displays a wide variety of user-generated video
content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as
video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by
individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, UMG and other organizations
offer some of their material via the site.

Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload
an unlimited number of videos. YouTube made it possible for anyone who could use a computer
to post a video that millions of people could watch within a few minutes. The wide range of
topics covered by YouTube has turned video sharing into one of the most important parts of
Internet culture.

Blogging –A type of website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of

commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. A typical blog
combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic.
The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many
blogs.

LifeHacker –Daily weblog on software and personal productivity recommends

downloads, web sites and shortcuts that help you work smarter and save time. Found a better
mousetrap? Share it with the world.
Reaching Out (Social networking)

Facebook – A free-access social networking website. Users can join networks organized
by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also
add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about
themselves.
Facebook is working hard to find ways to compete with Google. Their theory is that some
users would prefer to use their personal networks to find information – how to find a reliable
doctor or plumber or flat screen TV, important news story, or interesting YouTube selection,
rather than “impersonal” Google.
Read Fred Vogelsteins comments in Wired Magazine’s “Great Wall of Facebook: The
Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out.”
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall
How do you determine if information is reliable? Apparently, for some users, it depends
on if it comes from someone you trust – like your personal network. Does this mean that all
library’s need their own Facebook page, like this one at the British Library?
http://www.facebook.com/britishlibrary

MySpace – A social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of

friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults
internationally. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006. Note that the
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Undergraduate Library is “excited to meet the 2009
UIUC First Year students! Mood: curious.”, or at least it was in June of 2009.
http://www.myspace.com/undergradlibrary

Twitter – A free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to
send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140
characters, displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed
to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or,
by default, allow anybody to access them.
A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social
network, Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace which puts the number of unique
monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million.”

Library-like Sites

Shelfari - Members can build virtual bookshelves, discover, rate and discuss books, and
participate in online groups.

LibraryThing - An online service to help people catalog their books. The catalog can be
accessed from anywhere—including mobile phones. As of May 2009 it contained 37 million
books and reached 650,000 users. Used to post personal collections online, discuss books, and
find books of a similar nature. One Million free covers can be downloaded into your PAC.
 GoodReads.com - Get book recommendations from people you know. Keep track of
what you've read and what you'd like to read. Form a book club, answer book trivia, collect your
favorite quotes.

These three sites take traditional library services, such as cataloging books, locating
books by topic, author, and title, arranging books in a browsable fashion, reviewing books,
promoting the use of books, etc., and empower users to create their own virtual libraries – minus
the full text, at least for now.
Note that some library catalogs retrieve book covers from Library Thing (and Amazon)
to use in their PACS.

WHAT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS WANT?

The following preferences were collated from user surveys, personal interviews, and focus
groups prior to the construction of Anderson University’s new Thrift Library in 2008.

• Unrestricted Cell Phone Use. Cell phones are now an integral part of the collaborative
research process.
• Informality
• Food and Drink
• 24/7 Service
• Comfort and convenience
• Plenty of easily accessible power outlets for laptops
• Seating – Variety, Formal and Informal
• Seating - Single / Tables / Small Group
• Seating - Quiet / Normal Voice / Louder
• Easy, free printing
• Virtual Library
• Fewer Rules (unless someone is inconveniencing them)
o Ability to check out Reference Materials
o Longer circulation periods
• Empowerment - Do It Yourself Options
o Self Checkout
o Online Renewal
o Ability to review and update online account
o Online Instructions – Power Points, Q&As, Specialized Instructions as Needed
posted at Point of Use.
• Make Library Experience Easier / More Effective
• What your customer’s do NOT want?
• Old technologies
o Microfiche
o Bound Periodicals
o Current magazines
o Newspapers
 o Paper indices and bibliographies such as Readers’ Guide, MLA Bibliography,
Book Review Digest, etc.
• Barriers to service - Millennials tend to give up easily.
o Fees for photocopying and printing
o Having to learn the libraries “secrets” – Classification System, esoteric database
search techniques,
o Unwilling to come to the library
o Less likely to ask for human help. Used to clicking on it.

Now compare these preferences to those listed by Richard Sweeny in his online document,
Millennial Behaviors & Demographics as noted below.
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:ZBXEFHEBypYJ:library1.njit.edu/staff-
folders/sweeney/Millennials/Article-Millennial-
Behaviors.doc+millennials+characteristics+college&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

• Millennials are Digital Natives. They love technology and incorporate it into their lives.
• Millennials expect a much greater array of product and service selectivity.
• Millennials strongly prefer learning by doing.
• Millennials prefer to keep their time and commitments flexible longer in order to take
advantage of better options; they also expect other people and institutions to give them
more flexibility.
• Once Millennials do make their choices in products and services, they expect them to
have as much personalization and customization features as possible to meet their
changing needs, interests and tastes.
• Millennials are furious when they feel they are wasting their time; they want to learn
what they have to learn quickly and move on.
• Millennials have more friends and communicate with them more frequently using IM
(instant messaging), text messaging, cell phones as well as more traditional
communication channels. They are prolific communicators.
• Millennials know how and when to work with other people more effectively.
• Millennials, disturbingly, are not reading literature or newspapers as much as previous
generations of the same age.

WEB 2.0 – LIBRARY 2.0

Library 2.0 can be understood to have these four essential elements as noted by Jack Maness in
“Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries.”
http://webology.ir/2006/v3n2/a25.html

• It is user-centered. Users participate in the creation of the content and services they
view within the library's web-presence, OPAC, etc. The consumption and creation of
content is dynamic, and thus the roles of librarian and user are not always clear.
 • It provides a multi-media
media experience
experience.. Both the collections and services of Library 2.0
contain video and audio components. While this is not often cited as a function of Library
2.0, it is here suggested that it should be.
• It is socially rich.. The library's web
web-presence
presence includes users' presences. There are both
synchronous (e.g. IM) and asynchronous (e.g. wikis) ways for users to communicate with
one another and with librarians.
rarians.
• It is communally innovative
innovative.. This is perhaps the single most important aspect of Library
2.0. It rests on the foundation of libraries as a community service, but understands that as
communities change, libraries must not only change with them, they must allow users to
change the library. It seeks to continually change its services, to find new ways to allow
communities, not just individuals to seek, find, and utilize information.

CLOSING COMMENTS

The image above is sometimes called the “Fl “Flying Whale”, “Twitter Whale”,, and even the “Fail
Whale”. Forget Twitter for the moment and imagine “Library” Whale
Whale.. Think of the whale as the
t
library and the birds as our users / patrons / customers. We know
now what whales do based solely
on their own efforts. They swim. Now imagine what they accomplish
omplish with the help of their
users?

Library 2.0 attempts to involve library users in changing the library by y asking them what they
want and then giving it to them. Not only does it make the librlibrary “user-centered
centered” in terms of its
goals and objectives,, but it taps the power of its users in enhancing library services.
RECOMMENDED READING

Anderson Chris. “Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It's Time to Manage for Abundance, Not
Scarcity.” Wired Magazine. 17.07 (2009): 72-77. Web. 22 June 2009.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/mf_freer

Bradley, Phil. How to Use Web 2.0 in Your Library. London: Facet, 2007. Print.

Brown, Anna Laura. SocialNetworkingLibrarian.com. (Blog covering the convergence of social

networking and libraries.) View the following:
Librarian’s 2.0 Social Manifesto Video
Library Thing Video
http://socialnetworkinglibrarian.com/

Deiss, Kathryn J. “Innovation and Strategy: Risk and Choice in Shaping User-Centered
Libraries.” IDEALS @ Illinois. Web. 31 May 2009.
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1717
Reprinted from Library Trends 53.1 (Summer, 2004): 17-32.

Mercado, Andrea. “Tagging on Flickr & del.icio.us.” LibraryTechtonics. Web. 24 Oct. 2005.
http://librarytechtonics.info/bits/295/tagging-on-flickr-delicious/

Mick, Jason. “Hash Tags Rise as Latest Social Networking Fad.” Daily Tech Blog. 12 March
2009. Web. 31 May 2009.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14557

Maness, Jack M. “Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries.” Webology,
3.2 (June, 2006). Web. 31 May 2009.
http://webology.ir/2006/v3n2/a25.html

Mashable – The Social Media Guide – (Blog covering cool new websites and social networks:
Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube.)
http://mashable.com/

Sweeney, Richard. Millennial Behaviors & Demographics. 22 Dec. 2006. Web. 30 April 2009.
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:ZBXEFHEBypYJ:library1.njit.edu/staff-
folders/sweeney/Millennials/Article-Millennial-
Behaviors.doc+millennials+characteristics+college&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Vogelstein, Fred. “Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet
— and Keep Google Out.” Wired Magazine. 17.07 (2009): 96+. 25 Web. June 2009.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall .