Hi Kevin,
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 13:19, Kevin M Kidd <kiddk_at_bc.edu> wrote:
> Wow, Alex. In the past, I have found many of your statements astounding for
> their casual and self-righteous arrogance.
Wow, Kevin. Thanks! It's wonderful to get such great confirmation that
all my struggles do indeed have meaning, that my persistently
permuting these fine folds of the fabric of library-land has somehow
paid off! By your writing I can see that there is *much* work to be
done in trying to open some peoples eyes to some - shall we say -
*basic* problems of human behavior and how it relates to the
artificial models we create in order to understand our world.
> Your self-assuredness is sometimes
> amazing in the face of your clear lack of understanding of - or, indeed,
> sympathy for - the context of the problems that libraries face when it comes
> to technology and the possibilities for addressing those many problems.
Can you point to *any* writing of mine in which I don't have sympathy
or understanding of the problems libraries face? And I mean any
writing, just pop by the archives and pull some out; by your
statements there should be aplenty there for the picking.
You may not have noticed, but whenever I write here I'm mostly trying
to do two things; 1) point out things which are problematic by the way
we (ie. librarians) do things now, and 2) point towards possible ways
to solve that problem.
Let me explain something right now based on my original writing; "You
can never, ever hope to understand what your users want and need, nor
what quality it should be presented in." First thing up is that I've
worked in user research for many years, doing UX, UCD, IA, user-labs
and semantic modeling, both with and without computers. Through this
I've learned one big fat lesson, and that is exactly this; no matter
how much you try to understand your users, you will never get it
right.
Why is that? Well, first of all, all people are different, with
different needs, wants and behavior. I don't think I need to explain
this to you in more detail than that. So our example here of an
academic library tries very hard to pigeonhole information out there
to "suit our users", so they build a model of their domain and apply
information to it. These are the same processes for any human trying
to grasp information; we create a model, and pigeonhole the
information on top. Some times it falls into the shape of that model
and gets absorbed (ie. you've collected the item) or it gets rejected.
All people and organizations work this way.
So, when I say "You can never, ever hope to understand what your users
want and need", that's easy enough to prove; ask any of your users if
the information they would want is in your collection. No, not if they
found something in your collection which was usable, but if it was
what they wanted. Or if they found something else. I dare you. Go out
and talk to your users, and you'll quickly find out that there are
holes in your collection everywhere. Even the biggest collections in
the world would have such gaps.
Is this arrogance? Really? To point out that users are impossible to
pin down? You have got to be kidding me.
> But this statement - indeed this whole post - is amazing for its
> utter cluelessness about the role an academic library plays in a university.
One would think I had a better clue as I've worked in one and now
consults for a few. I guess I'm just not as smart as you.
> Most significant academic libraries employ people (called bibliographers) whose job is
>
> a. to collect materials [...] b. to stay abreast of current research and practice in their
> respective fields - [...] - and to use this knowledge to enhance collections and services
> the library provides students and faculty. c. to stay in ongoing, *direct* communication
> with faculty and academic departments [...] d. to use appropriate tools to understand
> how collections are actually being used and to collect and analyze data to improve
> library services and collections.
Well, I appreciate the lecture, but where have I failed your test of
clueness? I know very well what an academic library do, it's just that
the classical model (the paper based one) isn't the same as the one
we're slipping into, the one where resources are increasingly
electronic and plentiful. The resources are growing faster than the
domain experts can ascertain it (little less control it), and *that*
is the problem we're discussing here.
> *Of course* an academic library knows exactly who its users are.
No, you only know your pigeonholed users, mate. Your *real* users you
will never pin down, and thinking you can is a sure sign you will
fail.
> And, despite the fact that you blithely assume an academic library needs to
> compete directly with Google, we know very well we do not actually serve the
> same group of users that Google needs to serve.
Who was the arrogant one again? And ignoring Google Books and Google
Scholar is even a few good steps up from arrogant. Congrats.
Alex
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Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Mon Mar 02 2009 - 22:00:53 EST