This is great, Tim. Are you adding this to your blog? It would be nice
to be able to link to it. ;-)
I like the part in teeny tiny letters on the right hand side where it says:
" (do not use browser "back" button)"
Doh! too late!
kc
Tim Spalding wrote:
> It seems to me that we go round and round on various issues. A lot of
> it resembles a "religious debate"--a term of art in software and
> design.
>
> One way to break religious debates is to talk about something
> concrete. So, I'm going to plop something on the collective "table,"
> offer a brief critique. Won't you join me?
>
> I've chosen the "detail" page of a book, the first "Obama" book that
> came up in the BPL[1]. I propose to critique it as follows:
>
> *I'm going to critique the page, not the whole system; I want to keep
> things focused. As such, I'm not going to critique the top part of the
> page, but just the part "below the chrome."
> *I'm going to list everything I think is wrong with the page, and
> offer brief commentart on it.
> *They use the HIP OPAC, one of the most common, but not the worst.
> *I punch because I love. I picked BPL because it is my favorite public
> library. I love them to pieces, and indeed I think their catalog is
> better than many.
> *This email is very long--10 typewritten pages. That's because the
> catalog has a lot of problems!
>
> Here's the page: http://www.librarything.com/pics/blog/ngc4lib2.png
>
> ### LEFT SIDE
>
> My criticisms:
>
> 1. The page is session-based. That means we have to discuss it by
> screenshot, it can't be spidered, it can't be bookmarked, it can't be
> sent to a friend and so forth. In my opinion, this is a catastrophe
> for libraries.[2]
>
> 2. No permalink. Despite #1, there are tricks to link to many (but not
> most) HIP pages, and other tricks that can link to all. The page COULD
> include a permalink, with icon--a familiar feature of sites like
> Google Maps. It does not.
>
> 3. The "Holdings" section on the left is misleading. The divet and
> other structure implies that the things underneath it are subheadings.
> I'm frankly uncertain if that's the intent. Maybe the list is of
> "holdings" related to the item. If so, "Holdings" is a very weird
> word. It's a weird word even in a librarian context--a link to a
> review is not a "holding." And it's weirder in a non-librarian
> context, where "holdings" doesn't mean anything at all.
>
> On further investigation I see that "Holdings" referred to the fact
> that, along with all the other info, the page I was on had the
> holdings info. The design is confusing.
>
> 4. The "Fiction and Biography" functions strangely. First, it's
> meaningless--what am I to expect that it does?
>
> My first guess would be that it would take me to other examples of
> Fiction and Biography. It does not. Instead, it takes me to a list of
> headings, "Genre" and "Topics." Both have subheadings, like
> "NonFiction" and "Politician." On Safari the headings--although
> black--turn into links when you roll over them. On Firefox they don't.
> In neither do the links go anywhere.
>
> The problem is probably technical. Whatever.
>
> 5. "Library Journal Review" works. Mostly. I searched for the review
> elsewhere, and Barnes and Noble has it. Barnes and Noble preserves the
> paragraph structure of the original, as well as italics and other
> formatting. The BPL has it as one giant text lump.
>
> 6. "Summary" is somewhat confusing insofar as there is a "Summary"
> field on the right, in the "book information area." The two are
> different. The summary works, but it's also somewhat "undigested." It
> ends with the non-sentence "a website where updates and comments may
> be posted as the campaign progresses: http://obamapolitics.com Book
> jacket."
>
> Why do libraries, which, if it stands for anything here, stands for
> sophistication and exactitude of metadata, allow thesse unformatted,
> half-gramattical text-blobs.
>
> 7. "Table of Contents" works pretty well. It's a bit odd, though,
> insofar as the same content is presented in the "Contents" field of
> the book-info-field.
>
> It took me a while to untagle the relationship between the two fields,
> though. It's non-obvious. Eventually I figured out that certain data
> (eg., the introduction, page numbers) were stripped out and returns
> replaced with "--". (See later for my rant against that idiotic
> typographical device.)
>
> 8. "More by this author" works as you'd think, but there are still problems:
>
> *Clicking on it takes you to other works by the author. In this case
> there are some. In many other cases, there aren't. When there isn't,
> it takes you to the record you are on! (Most users will record that as
> "I clicked on the link and nothing happened. So I did it again.
> Nothing. So I left and went to Amazon where the website works.)
> *The Last-First format is a fossil of the "dictionary catalog." In
> other book contexts--book covers, spines, bookstore displays, Amazon,
> B&N, LibraryThing, publisher websites, etc.--authors are First-Last.
> Only bibliographies still use last-first, precisely because
> bibliographies require "dictionary order." No such order is needed
> here. It looks fussy.
> *It's unclear to me why the author's first name needs to be followed
> by "1969-." Not even bibliographies do that. It's probable that
> libraries are in the pocket of the gravestone industry.
>
> 9. Subjects. Some problems:
>
> *Subjects are in Last-First format (eg., Obama, Barack). This is
> unusual--elsewhere I see his name as First-Last. There must be a good
> reason. Surely it is because it's an alphabetical list. Whoops, it's
> not. There is no reason for it.
>
> *The links *look* hierarchical, but they aren't. Given "United States
> -- Race relations -- Political aspects" you'd think you could click on
> any step of the hierarchy. You'd think wrong.
>
> *The links take you to a dictionary list of subjects, including the
> one you clicked on. You have to click it again to get something. That
> is, the link doesn't take you where you want to go, it takes you to a
> list of thinks, including a link to where you want to go. Did humans
> design this?
>
> *The use of "--" to indicate hierarchy is non-standard. The rest of
> the information work uses ">." It's unclear why libraries think the
> most basic web conventions must be ignored.
>
> *Whoever decided on using "--" in a web-product should spent five
> minutes with the Chicago Manual or Words into Type. "--" is what
> typewriters used for the em-dash. It didn't exist before typewriters,
> and it has no reason to exist now, when every computer and most
> cellphones are capable of the em-dash.
>
> *Since we're being persnickety, it's unclear why subjects end in
> periods. They aren't sentences. Punctuation, like "--" and "." have
> meanings. Misuse isn't a big deal, but it decreases confidence and
> tires the eye.
>
> *2001- should be an en-dash. Okay, I'll stop.
>
> 10. "Browse catalog by name" works okay, but it's unclear why it gets
> only one entry, and that's the author--who already got a link. Given
> the term "browse" I'd think that the link would put me in the middle
> of a millions-long list of books sorted by author. No. It does the
> same thing as the "More by this author" link.
>
> 11. "MARC Display" is weird. But at least it's small. Now, onto the
> main part of the page!
>
> ### MAIN PART
>
> 12. "Barack Obama : this improbable quest / John K. Wilson." Is weird
> in at least four ways. Together they reinforce the impression that the
> library catalog is arcane and fiddly.
>
> *The string "Title [slash] Author" is a library convention. In other
> situations, title and author are distinguished either typographically
> (as on a cover) or with the words "by."
>
> *In real life (except in France), book titles employ capital letters.
> As I've said before on this list, when LibraryThing started showing
> library titles, users complained that the site was "broken." Something
> was causing book titles to lose their capitals. Funny? Alas, the jokes
> on libraries.
>
> *In real life, colons don't have spaces before them.
>
> *In real life, author-title lists don't end in periods.
>
> 13. All text from this point goes underlined when rolled over. But
> it's not clickable. This makes no sense at all. If LibraryThing did
> this, I'd have ten bug-reports inside of a minute. I wonder if people
> report this, or if the general atmosphere of brokeness prevents it.
>
> 14. "Publisher," "Boulder, CO : Paradigm Publishers, c2008." What a
> peculiar string. The publisher is "Paradigm Publishers" but their
> location is listed first? And why call it "Publisher" when it includes
> publisher-town, publisher-state, publisher name, copyright symbol (in
> case you thought it might be public domain?), and publication year.
>
> Order implies importance. On what planet is the publisher's location
> the second-most important fact about this book?
>
> 15. "ISBN: 1594514763." Is this really the second-most important fact
> about the book? To whom? I know it's shocking, but most readers don't
> know what an ISBN is. The rest don't care.
>
> And ISBN *might* be a useful way for a knowledgeable user to jump from
> Amazon to a libray catalog. But they'd have to get the right edition.
> The rest of the time, the ISBN is trivia for stockboys.
>
> 16. "Description: vi, 210 p. : ill. ; 24 cm." As others have said,
> this is a meaningless jumble. It doesn't merit the title
> "description." It's junk.
>
> The patron *might* want to know how long a book is--so "210 pages"
> migtht be useful. I'd even be fine with "216 pages."
>
> The patron might also want to know that the book had photographs. It
> would be better to know how many, or even to get a list of them.
>
> 24cm is wrong in about ten ways. First, although "the most European
> city in America," Boston is still part of the USA. In the USA we use
> inches, not centimeters. There's there's the issue of one measurement.
> Is can't be width. Is it height? Width? Maybe it's like TV and
> computer monitors. That must be it.
>
> 17. "Target audience: Adult." This is useful here. There are a lot of
> kids books about Obama. I'm glad this isn't one of them.
>
> 18. "Summary." Fine, except for point six, above.
>
> 19. "Contents." Fine, except for point seven, above.
>
> 20. "Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index."
> This is marginally useful. For "bibliographical references," I'd use
> the plain-jane word "bibliography."
>
> It's funny that this is spelled out in prose but "ill." isn't. There's
> probably some good reason.
>
> 21. The "Copy/Holdings information" box has some problems:
>
> *I'd love to be able to click on locations to find out where they are.
> Although a long-time Boston resident, "O'Bryant School of Mathematics
> and Science" means nothing to me. I guess I'll have to ask at the
> desk.
>
> *The "Collection: Nonfiction" confuses me. I wasn't aware libraries
> were divided that way. In fact, they aren't. But there probably is a
> fiction section, that includes *most* of the fiction.
>
> *Capitalization is almost random. "14 day loan" but "In Library"? Why?
> Or take the capitalization of the section header, "Copy/Holdings
> information." The other place with a similarly-styled heading uses
> title case, "Related Information." Small inconsistencies make a site
> look sloppy.
>
> 22. The form below is literally backward. It's formatted like this:
>
> Format: ( ) HTML ( ) Plain text ( ) Delimited
> Subject: __________________
> Email to: __________________ [SEND]
>
> When I reach the third line, I gather it's an emailing form. Why
> doesn't it look like almost all other email forms on the web--the ones
> that START WITH THE EMAIL ADDRESS? Also:
>
> *Whoever designed this form didn't look at how you email things on any
> other site! Do I need the subject field? If I do, why can't I write a
> note.
>
> *What is "Delimited" anyway? I have no idea.
>
> *The form cuts off the title, into "Barack Obama : this improbable
> quest / J". The form field allows only 40 characters, but is visually
> larger. This is confusing and completely opposite how most web forms
> work. Anyway, why are they only allowing 40 characters--bandwidth
> costs?
>
> 23. "Next Reads." I gather Next Reads is much liked.[3] But this
> "advertisment" feels intrusive and over-prominent. It certainly
> doesn't fit in with the design at all. The line "Sign up for email
> book suggestions in your favorite genre!" *may* relate to the icon
> here, or it may not.
>
> 24. "Did you know? Many items held by the BPL are not listed in this
> catalog. Find out about all of our catalogs."
>
> *This notice is not visually separated from the line above, about
> NextReads. Are they all part of the same notice. All separate?
>
> *The notice is certainly unfortunate. If all their stuff isn't in the
> catalog, they need something like this. But it certainly raises
> doubts.
>
> ### Final Points
>
> 25. The design is unappealing and slapdash. Some examples:
>
> *The information architecture of the left-hand side is all weird. I've
> mentioned the divet and the "--"s in the subject. But what about the
> stray horizontal line in between "Table of Contents" and "More by this
> author"? Is it necessary? Is it attractive? Did somebody's teenager
> design this?
>
> *The "Add to My List" and "Hold this for me" buttons, although on the
> far right, are somehow creating extra space between the book title and
> its information. To an untrained user it's just another tiny mark of
> inferior quality. To the trained web developer it's evidence that
> someone doesn't understand floats.
>
> 25. Font sizes
>
> *The most important information--the book info and the holdings
> info--are in the smallest fonts. That's crazy.
>
> *Apart from that, font sizes and styles are slapdash. The title of the
> book is less prominent than "Related Information."
>
> 26. Accessibility
>
> *The page fails all levels of all accessibility tests. Five years ago,
> when I made school software, I paid close attention accessibility.
> Governments all require it. How did libraries get to opt out?
>
> *Test aside, nobody has looked at basic accessibility issues--semantic
> coding, order of information, tab-order, alt-text, etc.
>
> 27. The great bullet problem
>
> Finally, as web developer I have to mention one thing that, when I
> found it, made me laugh out loud--and I don't usually do that.
>
> The bullets on the left--the giant, ugly bullets that don't quite
> align right--are not an unordered list (<ul><li>...</li></ul>, etc.).
> They are instead a table, with two columns--someone's attempt to
> produce a bulleted list, without using the HTML markup for... a
> bulleted list!
>
> To get it, the list was "tableized." The left-hand column is for the
> bullets. But instead of printing the unicode for a bullet, using a
> graphic or wahtever, the left-hand column is comprised of
> single-entry, no-content unordered lists. Apparently someone at
> SirsiDynix thought that <li> </li> was a trick to get a bullet.
>
> [1] The BPL is having some sort of deep problem. Most of my searches
> turn up page after page of blank records. This was the first non-blank
> one.
> [2] Not being "on the web" is, in my opinion, the single most
> important factor that drags libraries down in the internet age, and
> therefore a great threat to library success, library jobs and indeed
> to education and democracy. But hey, what do I know? Maybe the rest of
> the web is wrong and libraries are right!
> [3] I don't know the product very well, but I am a fan of Novelist and
> its people.
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Sat Mar 14 2009 - 19:56:18 EDT
