Re: What has LIS learned?

On 5/4/07, Ron Peterson <ronpeterson39401_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> We, as libraries and librarians, are supposed to be the experts in connecting
> people to information.  I think it is a mistake to turn that responsibility over to
> the users, to let them tell us how we should do our jobs.

I'm not sure that's what has been suggested. I think what's been
missing in our "expert connecting ways" is that the information round
plug don't always fit into the square user hole. Most of what we do is
running around buying adaptors for people instead of creating a new
plug that fits the square.

>  Not that we shouldn't get their feedback, formally and informally.  We have
> a lot to learn from our users; how they find information, how they use
> information, how they are creating information, how they are communicating,
> what information they are looking for, etc., but it is up to us to develop the
> means for them to accomplish those goals.

But how are we to design for them if we don't listen to them, letting
them telling us how to do our jobs? Remember that our job description
basically says "do what we can to help users do what they want to do."

>  That doesn't mean adding tags because they are asking for it, but it may
> mean adding tags because it helps them find the information they need.

Or, it *could* mean that we add it because they ask for it.
Information knowlegde and management is part of our culture _as_well_
as being a property of the systems we design. Some times the users do
indeed know best.

Hey, I've actually got a real story to go with that last paragraph;
back when I was doing digital motion detection and digital fingerprint
systems (hmmm, 15 years ago?), a lot of our users asked if we could
display fingerprints with a blue background around the image. This was
ignored for some time, because we thought it was a vanity. Users may
or may not have known that in fact the human eye have different
sharpness perception depending on the mean hue and color of what is
being observed, but they had found out through preference that indeed
blue (and a more specific kind of blue, through research) makes the
rest of what you see sharper. And as soon as we found out how stupid
we had been in ignoring this vanity, the first systems with blue
background saw a huge increase in both revenue (there weren't many
competitors :) and user satisfaction. A simple, silly little color
preference can in fact be a crucial point to determine success or
failure. The world is complex, indeed.


Regards,

Alex
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