I have no training or experience as a librarian, but I've been thinking about the public library patron experience for more than a decade. While my initial focus was on the catalog and the OPAC -- my background is in software -- my interests gradually broadened.
I believe that the patron experience is an important factor in public libraries meeting their current challenges, including the rapid changes in media and entertainment. There are three ways that you can improve the patron experience: you can add new services, you can eliminate services that aren't working, or you can improve the services you have. My focus is on improving public libraries' core services.
If you're interested, you can find my bio at https://github.com/lagbolt
You should read this if you want to improve basic public library services. It's best if this is a more than a theoretical interest. If you have the ability to make improvements, and you've already started making improvements, this note may help encourage you and speed you on your way.
If you have any feedback on this note, I'd be happy to hear it at carryonwilliams@gmail.com
Version History: 0.1.0 5/11/2020 Graeme Williams
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
(Or, what I have read recently)
In 2016, Rachel Clarke wrote a PhD thesis called "It’s Not Rocket Library Science: Design Epistemology and American Librarianship". It's great, it won several awards, but some of it is quite dense. I'm certainly not the person to comment on the thesis, although I do think as a practical matter it's very helpful. Read it if you have the time. Here's Clarke's design epistemology in two sentences: Don't delay change until you know exactly what will happen. You'll find out as you go along.
In 2020, Clarke wrote a book called "Design Thinking" which summarized the less theoretical parts of her thesis (e.g., no epistemology). I actually read the book first (ALA had a half-off sale!), then the thesis, then the book again. I generally agree with the book. I would have emphasized some things more, but that falls into the category of commenting on the book I would have written, rather than responding fairly to Clarke's book.
Clarke does an excellent job discussing the role of trial and error in design and change, using the same three examples that she presents in more detail in her thesis. It makes no sense to propose "Allow yourself to risk failure!" as an abstract rule if you're not actually going to show a sequence of failures with gradually improving results.
Clarke also mentions the role of empathy in user (i.e., patron) focus. Perhaps I would have been clearer that empathy with the patron means identifying and addressing their feelings -- possibly quite irrational -- rather than working towards satisfying their stated or unstated needs.
Finally, Clarke points out that a patron walks into the library -- or goes to the online catalog -- in the middle of things. They're already worried about making dinner or getting the car fixed before they ever decide to look for a book or movie.
I think that librarians are generally aware of the possibility of change, of improvement. And many are aware that the usual methodology -- form a committee to draft a recommendation for review by the board -- isn't radical enough. Clarke's point, inter alia, is that a different methodology by itself isn't enough. You have to build change rather than decide it in advance.
One of the good things about reading books and articles by librarians is that the references are always extensive and often quite helpful. I tracked down Edward Luca and Bhuva Narayan's Signage by Design and it's an excellent supplement to Clarke's examples of trial and error. I always find signage fun to read about because the "before" examples are so terrifyingly bad.
Clarke also references her work with Sayward Schoonmaker (Rachel Ivy Clarke, Sayward Schoonmaker, The Critical Catalog: Library Information Systems, Tricksterism, and Social Justice, CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 2020, pp1-13) which provides a nice example of the constraints involved in trying to improve the catalog.
Library Anxiety was named by Constance Mellon in 1986. I think it's important to keep in mind when discussing the need for empathy.
This doesn't necessarily involve overwhelming emotions -- just enough of a bump to make a trip to the supermarket to pick up zucchini feel more urgent than a trip to the library. Here's a personal example ...
A few days ago I was in the library picking up an inter-library loan for myself and a hold for my wife. I also took a paperback from the science fiction paperback rack. Our library has fabulous self-checkout machines which will read the RFID tags from a pile of books all at once, but when I piled the books on the machine, it didn't pick up the paperback. After fiddling with it for a while I gave up and went over to customer service, where the staff member was happy to check out the book for me. Which is when I remembered that paperbacks don't have RFID tags and you have to scan the bar code on the checkout machine.
The library would have counted this as a success for circulation (another book borrowed!) and a success for customer service (another patron helped!) but I felt a bit foolish. That's "library anxiety"!
It's also an example of the confusion between success and failure. Of course I'm not suggesting that helping a patron is a failure, but sometimes it can be diagnostic of failures in other areas. For example, if it's really true that people often ask the reference desk where the bathrooms are, perhaps you need better signage?
Which is a perfect segue to ...
Why is this so hard to get right? I think that part of the problem is that the people who put up signs in a public library have been working there for decades and know where everything is. Where do you put the sign for biographies? Well, you put it where the biographies are shelved. Now, how do you find the biographies? You find the sign ... ?
Wayfinding starts outside the library, whether you arrive by car, bus, wheelchair or unicycle. Is your library identifiable as a library? Yesterday I visited a library which was only identified on the outside of the building as "1771". Library buildings shouldn't be coy.
Can you tell where the main entrance is? Can you safely navigate the parking lot? In a wheelchair? In a walker?
I'm going to include a few photos I have taken both inside and outside libraries. If you're interested, I have a lot more. Btw, you can see the images in full size by right-clicking on the image and selecting "Open image in new tab".
I find this sign infuriating:
It's infuriating because it leaves out the one piece of information that would be useful to someone returning materials: if you're looking at the sign, the bookdrop is behind you.
Let's return to empathy and library anxiety. If someone arrives at the library already anxious and they have difficulty finding the book drop, they're going to feel foolish and more anxious. I don't want to belabor this point, but why is it even called a "book drop" when you can return other materials? To make things worse, the book drops at this branch are labelled "BOOKS".
What happens when you go through the library doors? Is the signage right there clear enough for someone with limited vision? Where will you go if you're in a hurry and you're looking for a book to help you with a certification exam at work? Not to service desks labelled "Discover" or "Explore"! In fact, if those words or anything like them appear anywhere at all, you're now a little more confused and a little more anxious.
I claim that you should be able to find anything inside the library just by following signs, without asking for help. Here's a photo from inside the same branch:
You can see one problem with the "LARGE PRINT" sign: someone has decided to put permanent shelves in front of the right-hand shelving unit, leaving "LARGE PR". The other problem is that this style -- large vertical letters on the end of the shelving units -- occurs nowhere else in the library. I hope no one thought it was funny to have the sign for large print books in large print. No, just no.
Signs can be complicated because the collection has a complicated structure. Just considering large print books, you might separately shelve LP fiction, LP non-fiction, new LP fiction and new LP non-fiction.
What happens when one part of the collection expands into the space of another? This:
You see that large "Audio Books" sign? That shelving unit has no audio books, which start halfway down the other shelving unit. When the large print books moved into the space formerly occupied by audio books, someone carefully made the small signs explaining where things are, but didn't notice that the larger sign needed to be moved.
Remember that large print books are used by people with vision limitations!
I assume you think you're ADA compliant. I'm not an ADA expert by any means, but there are two areas I want to comment on.
There are two general guidelines that apply to book drops: you should be able to operate them with one hand, and the opening or handle should be within 48 inches of the ground.
Here are two book drops with slightly different designs:
The one on the right can be operated with one hand -- the opening has a flap that you can push a book through -- but the opening is more than 48 inches above the roadway. The one on the left is within 48 inches of the roadway but can't be operated with one hand -- you need one hand to pull down on the handle and one to put the book in. Not good.
Also, it's not very pedestrian friendly to have to stand in the road to use a book drop, let along how it must feel using a walker or wheelchair.
The other comment has to do with wayfinding. If, for example, you have computers that can be used from a wheelchair, how easy is it to find them from the front entrance?
Obviously, there's a lot to say about making your web site accessible and easy to use. I want to comment on just one thing.
You're an information professional. You wouldn't throw all the library's books into a big pile in the middle of the building, and you shouldn't do the equivalent with the web site.
The organization of the web site -- the major categories, the way information is laid out within categories, and the way a patron navigates from page to page -- should reflect the best that you can do. And it should reflect how patrons think about the library, not how the library staff, or even the collection, is arranged.
You probably can't change the usability of your catalog -- that's controlled by an external vendor -- but you can control the completeness and correctness of the data in the catalog.
The catalog is the very definition of accessibility. If an item isn't in the catalog, it can't be found. And if the author's name is incorrect or series information is missing, perhaps an item won't be found.
It doesn't make sense to have special events and displays for MLK Day unless your online catalog accurately and completely represents BIPOC authors and themes. And the same is true for Gay Pride Month and your LGBTQIA+ materials.
If you'd like to improve services to bilingual families, a good place to start is to make sure that bilingual materials are easy to find in the catalog.
I had something to say about correctness on the ALA Core blog: Metadata Quality I'm going to repeat myself: you need to know the current error rate of the records in your catalog, you need to know what you want it to be, and you need a plan to get from here to there.
I have a lot more to say about this, so if you're a public library interested in catalog remediation work, feel free to contact me.
Library patrons don't interact with the library as a set of distinct services. The building, the signage, the web site, the catalog, the staff and the library policies all help to determine how patrons feel about the library, irrespective of which services they use.
Library patrons interact with the library as part of a day that is filled with other things, from cooking and laundry to jogging and gardening. They decide to use the library as part of their plan for the day. The library's accessibility -- or usability or whatever -- isn't a single value at a single point, it's a description of a path that begins with that decision.
Empathy with patrons suggests that goals and evaluation methods be turned inside out, not looking at each distinct service but looking at the effect of the library on the whole of the patron's day.
It's too much to expect anyone to know in advance how a change to library signage or the web site or a new service will affect every kind of patron. Clarke is persuasive that the methodology of design, suspending the need for certainty, provides the tools for building change in a way that simultaneously builds knowledge about the change.
You can't wait until you're sure you know what will happen.