The hottest story in the library world right now may be Maricopa County Arizona’s new Perry Branch, which is arranged according to BISAC Subject Headings, the same system used by bookstores (including Amazon, etc.). This has gotten a lot of attention in both the library world (lists, blogs, etc.) and beyond, including a piece on NPR called Arizona Library Shuns Dewey System. The discussion has been very interesting, with a mix of strong opinions, pro and con.
Whether our collections are organized according to Dewey, LC, or some other system, I do think most libraries need to work on ways to make it easier for users to walk in our doors and find what they’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible. I think some of the frustrations with library catalogs (ours and everyone else’s) are exacerbated by the fact that people need to use these systems way too often, far more often than they need to use the computers in the more browseable bookstores.
If someone walks into your library looking for the dog books or books about the Civil War or a book of Robert Frost’s poetry or books on wallpapering or Linux or resumes or Renoir or Chinese, how do they do it? How long does this take, and how does their experience compare with doing these same tasks in the local Borders or Barnes and Noble?
Has your library been Yelped? Yelp is a community-based directory service with listings for all sorts of businesses and institutions. By “community-based” I mean that this is yet another popular website in which users sign up for accounts and provide all the content — add and
edit listings, add photos, add reviews, etc.
A few of our libraries have listings including a few reviews. The review for Danvers says:
“the library is great and has a nice selection of books. I am addicted to Noblenet.org, where you can order any book from member libraries. It is the greatest innovation.” | Yelp Listing and Review
But my favorite library review is for the Somerville Public Library, which says:
“One thing I have noticed about the Somerville Library is the uniform friendliness and cheerfulness of their staff, a far cry from your stereotypically surly librarian.” | Yelp Listing and Review
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Open Source for an Open World — Here’s a link to my presentation from the NELA ITS Conference Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Open Source, held at the beautiful Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston.
During my presentation, I demonstrated the song-clapping exercise as an example of the “Curse of Knowledge.” A basic problem in communication is that when you know something, it’s difficult to imagine what it’s like to not know it. In this exercise, one person taps or claps out the rhythm of a song to a partner who tries to identify it. It’s very difficult for most people to guess the song based on just the rhythm, but the surprising part is that if you’re the person doing the tapping, it seems so easy! You can hear the song in your head, and it’s hard to remember that the other person can’t hear it, too, or how useless the series of taps are when separated from the tune.
This was taken from the book Made to Stick : Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath, an interesting, entertaining book that’s great reading for anyone who deals with communication issues…which is all of us.
Songtapper — Try tapping out tunes on your keyboard and see if Songtapper can correctly identify them!
