building a better library website

Lorcan Dempsey - Library websites again

The more I look at library websites, the more they do indeed seem to wrap a thin layer around a jumble of things which have not been designed for the web.

and quoting an article from Information Technology and Libraries

Library users' mental models of library processes have fundamentally changed, creating a serious disconnect between how users expect to use a library Website and how the site was designed.

I don't know if I can craft the right words for this, but here goes.
Language will shape how you think.  So let go of OPAC, WebOPAC, ILS, catalog.
Instead of those, think always "inventory system".

Now see how this sounds: "we need to do a better job of providing our inventory system to clients".

Here is how I define my terms: browse is going through categorized lists.  Browse is the original Yahoo, now called the Yahoo Directory.
Search is typing in a few (key)words and discovering relevant matches.  Search is Google.
Retrieval is locating a particular set of information, when you already know the exact thing you want.

Now you will notice an interesting thing on Yahoo.  The search box is right at the top.  The directory links are now buried far down the page.  Google directory doesn't even show their directory on the main page at all. 

Search beat browse.

Beyond search, there is enhanced relevance results.  That allows you to explore/discover potentially related results.  That is Amazon.

Now for a long time, I was mystified by the catalog (remember: "inventory system") left-anchored title "search".  I couldn't understand why anyone would use this.  But then I finally understood.  The inventory system isn't about SEARCH at all, it's about RETRIEVAL.  The inventory system is there to find what shelf a book is on, when you already know the exact book you want.  Not only that, but if you don't know the exact book, it presents you a simple unsorted list of all possible matches.  Because in a retrieval system you are the expert, you already know what you want.

It took me a long, long time to figure this out, and I work at a library.

So now imagine you're coming from the search world.  In the search world, the system is the expert.  It makes its best guess at presenting you the most relevant results.  You come to the OPAC (remember: "inventory system") and you think you're searching, just like every other search box you've used on the Internet.  And you get, well... you know what you get.  To put it kindly, you get a collision of paradigms.

Science Library Pad has some guiding principles.  One is "Free the Humans".  Let machines do automated things, wherever it makes sense, freeing our very complex brains to do very advanced tasks.  Two more are "Live Where Your Users Are".  If your users are in Google, get your results into Google.  This is the brilliance of Open Worldcat.  Another is "You Are Not the Technology You Use".

This is a key.  Technology exists to serve us, not the other way around.  I don't care if you've spent your last 15 years working with a particular OPAC ("inventory system").  Serve your users, not the OPAC.

I'm going to make a ridiculous example.
Imagine you have a haberdashery, then you expand into millinery.
And you have such success that you need to get a hat inventory system.
The Hat-o-Matic 2000.

And for years this runs fine until one day the fashion is for orange hats.
And your system cannot inventory orange hats
Now there are two ways you can go.
If you decide you are not selling orange hats, or that people shouldn't wear orange hats, or if you decide to dye the orange hats white so that they can go into the inventory, and then redye them orange when they are to be sold... then you have confused your job with the system that you use.
You are letting the system drive your decisions.
Let go of it.  You Are Not the Technology That You Use.

People want to search and find relevant and related results.
If they're academics, they want a simple interface that provides access to all resources, particularly full-text articles linked with citation and bookmarking tools.  They want to click on results wherever they are, and get either the appropriate copy or have an order done automatically.  They want to have the opportunity to share information with a community of similar interests.  They want to be notified automatically when there are new results of interest to them.

I have an idea.  Give them that.