The article is collaborative with several authors each contributing individual sections on Web 2.0 and libraries. However, the sections are long on possibilities, many without adequate detail, and they do not address the important issue of turning visions into reality.
Sometimes comments are made with little regard as to their consistency or sense. For example, Rick Anderson, Director of Resource Acquisition, University of Nevada, Reno Libraries, writes:
As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity.How are patrons going to have access to everything? Can public libraries do this? Can academic libraries do this? Should they combine their resources? What would this cost? Should the government subsidize information access. Should "universal" information access be mandated and prices regulated?
News: Rossetta Stone has stopped selling licenses to libraries. The universe of everything just got a little smaller.
Rick Anderson writes "Think again", but why doesn't he do the thinking, instead of just leaving ideas suspended in midair? He writes: "This may be our great opportunity", but in what way? He does not say. These vague and general comments by Rick Anderson are the sort of comments that can be tossed off in a few minutes and then submitted as an article -- where is the work?!
I agree we need interfaces that you can easily learn to understand while you are using them -- the so-called "intuitive" interfaces. Rich Anderson writes:
But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. One-button commands, such as Flickr’s “Blog This,” and easy-to-use programs like Google Page Creator, offer promising models for this kind of user-centric service.But not all problems with interfaces are due to poor design. A complex interface is also a function of the specificity needed to conduct research that focuses on very detailed material -- specialized science databases often require training to get the best results from them.
What's the problem? Searching is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. Interfaces sometimes impede that search, but just as often searchers impede their own searches by not learning the basics of using the database they are trying to search. Indeed, Mortimer Adler's classic, How to Read a Book, teaches how to read a book effectively and efficiently -- why should online or database searching be any different?
We need better interfaces, but we also need better searchers.
It is amazing that Rich Anderson can assert: "But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons", a patently false claim.
It would be enlightening if Rick Anderson provided examples of what he means by:
One-button commands, such as Flickr’s “Blog This,” and easy-to-use programs like Google Page Creator, offer promising models for this kind of user-centric service.-- again, where's the work? Is he suggesting a "one-button command" search? How effective would this be? Is he suggesting searching should mimic Google's Page Creator. How so? Is he proposing that web design developers focus on user-centric interfaces? Is this cutting edge?
Rick Anderson writes:
We have to be a bit more humble in the current environment, and find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. At a minimum, this means placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web); even better, it means integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play.How? RSS? And, what patterns of work is he talking about? Indeed, what does he mean by daily patterns of work, by daily patterns of study, and by daily patterns of play? Image all the working people we meet: at the supermarket, at the mall, at the cinema, at the post office, at gas stations and at restaurants, and then image them enjoying library services during their "daily patterns of work"! I suppose that parents would welcome their children engaging the library in their "daily patterns of play" -- with regard to what: The Internet, CDs, DVDs, Gaming Software, or Educational Software?
This species of article is commonplace in library literature. For example, Micheal Stephens writes in his section:
This librarian bases all planning and proposals for services, materials and outreach on user needs and wants.How do we distinguish between user needs and wants? Are all user needs and wants within the mission of libraries to satisfy? Should libraries provide the photocopying options of professional photocopying and image processing centers? Should libraries provide minimarts or cafes for their patrons? Should libraries provide postal services for their patrons? Should libraries provide showers and temporary rooms for homeless patrons? Should libraries provide daycare for working patrons? If these are patron needs and wants, then why not?
These writers provide a rich source of material for comment. I will simple end by noting that opened ended proposals like those of Micheal Stephens in fact are mostly fantasy that have little place in the real world.
If these writers focused on real world implementation of pragmatic programs extending library services in keeping with new technologies, rather than indulging in wildly unthought through proposals, these writers would have much more to contribute -- as it is, theirs is but a rather tedious pollyannish futurism.
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