The Ugly Truth About Library Websites

The world’s ugliest websites are not library websites. But we’re not far behind.

In the course of my work, I scan some pretty dismal exemplars of this tragic state of affairs. But let’s be frank, we’re not talking about a few bad apples. Bad websites are the norm for libraries.

Now, I won’t draw attention to specific offenders (we’re all guilty to some degree after all) as I really want to focus on what goes into good library design. Nor will I indulge my first impulse to drop a few old-school animated GIFs onto this post to illustrate my point in 16-bit fashion. Let’s keep this civil. No need to induce any migraines or sore feelings.

But in order to highlight the best design approaches to common library problems, we need to first call out the number one cause of usability disasters in the library world.

Clutter

Busy bee librarians have built hives too heavy for their own good. Sooner or later, the twig of user patience will snap and the bears of irrelevance will eat us for lunch.

Here are the commonly heard refrains in library web conversations: Everyone-has-to-have-their-way, everything and the kitchen skink must be on the homepage, repeated ad nauseum from page to endless page, down the rabbit hole. If it is a thing related to the library, their must be a link!

[Your Brain Dump Here]

Clutter is a tenacious problem on any website, namely because it arises from the very sensible desire to help people find things. And for librarians, whose primary service model was built on pre-arranging materials in logical ways, this “helpfulness” seems natural and entirely appropriate.

But the short history of the Internet is littered with the failures of this approach. The clearest example was during the early Search Engine Wars between Yahoo! and Google.

Yahoo!’s approach was to organize the Internet into browsable hierarchies on top of having an okay search product (sound familiar yet?). Google, on the other hand, just focused on the search product (it had to be fast, accurate and dead simple). As you probably noticed, Google won.

Pretty much every library site follows the failed Yahoo! model. Again, this is largely due to the historical approach to pre-organizing information for people. It’s practically in our QP 624.

Meanwhile, Google continues to chip away at the loyalty of our user base. According to the 2012 Academic Library Edition of Library Journal’s Patron Profile Google is the initial choice for starting research for 76% of student respondents. The library was the first choice for 24%.

In some libraries, it’s the dreaded Web Committee that is the primary cause of clutter where the impulse to pre-organize information is compounded by group-think and organizational politics. Other times, it’s a simple lack of understanding of basic usability principles. And in some cases, the understanding of usability is there, but other considerations get in the way, such as clashing web strategies where the website is being used for purposes beyond what its architecture can handle.

Solutions

The Web Committee

The solution to the Web Committee is to break this body up and do an extreme makeover. Distributed content management is definitely the goal, but this must be a curatorial process handled by professionals. Sadly, most “information professionals” don’t come out of library school with usability core to their training. From my perspective, this is a key oversight in our professional strategy and one that explains why libraries no longer lead in terms of delivering information.

As I just indicated, the replacement for the Web Committee is a Web Curator Committee. Actually, it’s less a committee than a group. Whatever you call it, here are the basic outlines of what this body should be about:

• Small: Limit membership to one representative from each part of the library that is the main service provider for any given content. Typically, this might be one curator from instruction, one from reference, one from access services, etc.
• Focused: Each member should be a knowledgable expert from their department, that knows the audience their content addresses and the key services being offered. And that one person, will have sole responsibility for the pages they are assigned.
• Skilled: Each member will either come trained in usability or be trained to do their job well. In my library, this group has been given a measure of informal training, including webinars from usability experts and readings. Plus they get to hear me rant from time to time ;P

Once you have this group in place, it becomes much easier for distributed content management to happen and happen usably. The idea is that the group meets quarterly to keep on the same page but largely they work independently. Most importantly, curators are dynamite at keeping the clutter at bay as these people serve as ambassadors to their departments and often have more trust than, say, someone from an external web team. Their role, then, is to gather input on updating content and then edit ruthlessly using their arsenal of best practices and understanding of the library’s content strategy.

Usability? What Usability?

In many libraries, usability is a new concept. As I mentioned, training in usability principles is not (yet) core to our profession, so if you or someone you care about is one of these people, here are the basic principles of design you should consider.

Four good starting places:

1. Dan Brown of EightShapes has a great webinar on the principles of good web design. Watch it (or scan the slideshow) and you’re already halfway done.
2. Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen is slightly more detailed (and ironically, not the most elegant design-wise)
3. Also, of course, Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, is an easy classic that is simultaneously funny.
4. Kristina Halvorson’s Content Strategy for the Web takes you step by step on how to build a framework to do content right.

Mission Creep

Sometimes library leadership knows all about usability…but then there’s what they do for a living. Let’s face it, the top brass are wheeling and dealing, fighting the good fight on a level that we lower down the organization can’t even comprehend. The library website, to some library leaders, is, yes, a discovery layer that needs to be usable, but also a tool in winning friends and allies and keeping the budgets healthy. Thus, we get the library site that is at once a tool for 99.9% of our users to find things, but also built around a host of other purposes.

This can result in lots of content…trough-fulls of it…and it all must be on the homepage.

Until this is managed appropriately, this problem can best be described as mission creep. More complicated than either of the other two causes of clutter, mission creep is actually quite common. In cases of mission creep, it’s important to turn to experts like Kristina Halvorson. While Halvorson is a stickler for holding the line on runaway content, she also understands that business goals are key to content strategy. And if your leadership’s business strategy requires lots of links to keep the lights on, ultimately, your site must provide this.

For the usability purists, this is a hard truth to face. But there are creative options open to us. Consider the following:

1. As Dan Brown might say, break the navigation. Create content areas on your site that allow you to put new links or images or even blocks of text that meet any business needs your library might have down the road.
2. Another Dan Brown turism: Growth Happens, so plan for it.Build your architecture so that it anticipates “runnaway growth” in a way that doesn’t overwhelm your typical library user. This can include planning for sub-sites or handing over a menu to meet changing missions.
3. Let search save you. Fortunately, many, many people prefer using your search box than browsing your pre-organized links. If all else fails, make sure your search tool is central, easily reachable and works.

There are places where professional usability-minded web managers need to draw the line, however:

1. The left-most menu item is sacrosanct. This should be considered the easiest, most usable spot on your site and every effort should be made to keep it free of content that can mislead or confuse users with too many dead-end options.
2. The little arm of the F: The above the fold, below the nav bar area just to the right of your left rail is critical. This is where your search must be on your homepage and if you do this, all the clutter in the world will not stop most users from ignoring everything else and getting to your resources. Unfortunately, many users will find your website deeper in the navigation, having come from a link somewhere else, but again, that’s when creativity in design (such as in your navigation) can help save the user.

Best in Show

So what does good design look like? A pretty nice implementation of a clean, usable library site is at the ETH Bibliothek in Switzerland.

The first thing you’ll notice about this library website is that it doesn’t look anything like your library website. You’ll note the slick, modern design that looks like something out of Mountain View or Cupertino, not the Web Committee.

You’ll see that it has the search box visible right smack on the small arm of the F-pattern and that this box appears on every page in exactly the same place.

You’ll also note that this site has a lot of content (look at the fat footer site map). See? Clearly the architect had to build for lots of needs, but used an ingenious technique for meeting those demands, while keeping the site smooth and simple.

So, to sum up: the library world needs a good, strong shot of usability…or else. And the real heroes that will save our users and our relevancy to the world, are the leaders in this area.

Responsive Design Now Ordinary

I had a great time at Matthew Reidsma’s talk on Responsive Design last week here in Chicago. But as I explored the concepts on a MAMP install of WordPress, I was startled to see just how ordinary Responsive has become. That’s because the default themes of WordPress are now responsive (and have been since last year’s Twenty Eleven Theme). Talk about “un-sexying” a technology!

It’s actually quite funny (and yet not funny) because I know many people (not in WordPress) who are working really hard to create responsive CSS using media queries from scratch. And this can be quite a job, because you really need to think differently about content, styling, design and even HTML. In fact, the whole enterprise of building a website is turned upside down…assuming you believe (as I do) that the simplest approach to building a responsive site is a Mobile First strategy.

WordPress (and some Drupal themes) just took all the mystery away, I suppose. If you’re fortunate to be able to use WordPress, responsive is just baked into the system and you can instantly see how it will look on different screen sizes by just dragging your browser window in and out.

Once again, this CMS impresses me for its elegance at solving the user experience issues of our day. Hats off to the WP community.

Virtual Privacy

Privacy is dead. Security is not.

Last weekend I got on the Virtual Private Network (VPN) bandwagon and thought I’d share some tips on how to get this set up. While running VPN on a computer is relatively easy, there are a few things you’ll start to run into once you get beyond that step, so I offer my lessons learned below.

Getting Started

VPN is simply a way to protect your personal data and privacy. In this day and age of mobile devices, public wi-fi hotspots and sophisticated information poachers from well-organized groups (like the Chinese government), VPN is probably the next big thing everyone will be doing. In a sense, it’s almost as required these days as having anti-virus software on your computer.

For a detailed introduction to VPN, how it works and where to get an account, see this Lifehacker article on the topic. But basically, a VPN service encrypts all your outgoing Internet data, routes it through their servers where it is un-encrypted and sent on to the website you are trying to reach. The information sent back to your computer also routes through their server, is re-encrypted and sent back to you where your machine un-encrypts it for your browser or other web client to render. The beauty is that all this information cannot be tied to you, all data is encrypted while it travels through any public networks and, as is the case with most good VPN services, they destroy their logs, so no trace of your data will be left on their servers.

The easy part is choosing a VPN Service. In my case, I chose Private Internet Access (PIA) because it was cheap, offered multiple US and international services and had high marks from reviewers.

Once paid for, PIA has software you download and install on your machine. In their case, this software lives in the menu bar beside your wifi icon, etc. From this menu item, you can connect to any one of their servers around the world.

To test that this is working, you can go to any one of the IP mapping services a quick google search will bring up. PIA offers a What’s My IP service for their customers. So, if you’ve connected to the London server, this map will show you the IP address and surrounding neighborhood in London where the server you are connecting to resides.

Dealing with the Alarm Bells VPN Triggers

So now that your VPN is working, you’ll probably start receiving distressing emails from Google that there is suspicious activity going on with your account. This is because suddenly your account was accessed from a foreign country (if you’re using, say, the German server run by your VPN service. This is also a sign of success.

However, now you have to configure your google accounts so that you don’t get access dropped as they scramble to protect you from what they think are hackers. To fix this, you need to set up 2-step Authentication. This is a layer of security that is a good idea in it’s own right, even if you’re not using VPN. The way it works is that when you access your Google accounts from a new device, Google will ask you to sign in. If you do this correctly, they will then text you a special access code to your mobile phone. You then enter this code into a 2nd authentication box and only then can you get into your Gmail or Drive accounts.

What’s nice is that once you do this on a new device, you can let Google know that it can always trust that device and so you won’t need to use your phone every time you want to read your email.

In some cases, such as with synching the Chrome Browser or accessing YouTube on Apple TV, you need to create an application-specific password, which you can do quite easily. For using YouTube on your Apple TV, for example, you’ll need to enter the application-specific password (and not your personal password) in order to connect to your YouTube account.

Making VPN on your Devices a Breeze

Once this is done, you will then want to download VPN software to your other computers and devices. With the mobile devices I use (an iPad and Android phone), this is simply a VPN setting under your device’s network settings.

However, making this more seamless requires a few more steps. Most device OS’s are not considering VPN to be as commonly used as it probably will be in the near future. For that reason, VPN controls are usually buried inside the interface, making it a pain to switch back and forth. And let’s be honest, when you stop for your Sunday afternoon coffee, you might be tempted to just risk checking Facebook without VPN. So, making this easier is just a good security precaution.

With the iPad or iPhone, you’ll probably want to jailbreak it (for the legal considerations of this, read this post on the Librarian of Congress’ recent decision on jailbreaking) so you can add some interface features that allow you quicker access to turning VPN on/off. The Cydia app store (for jailbroken iOS devices) offers an invaluable iOS hack called NCSettings that will allow you to add quick on/off toggles to your Notifications Bar. A VPN toggle is one of these options.

For Android, there are a number of apps in the Play Store that allow you to create quick, one-click toggling of VPN.

Once this is all set up, you’re pretty good to go…

Hope that helps!

Rise of the Machines

As I write, the Roomba is cleaning my house. Googlebots are driving cars on California roads. Siri is learning what you want.

And, to the dread of many reference librarians, Watson is beating the pants off Jeopardy Champions in an opening AI move that will surely impact the library in the near future.

Already, robot shelvers are in place in many libraries, such as Santa Clara University’s Library. And if you saw the recent executive summary of Library Journal’s Patron Profiles, you saw that 76% of students reported turning to Google first when initiating their research. Compare that to just 24% that opted for the library.

This isn’t news, really, but when I heard economist Paul Krugman connecting the dots of automation, nagging unemployment, innovation and worker productivity and identifying it as a challenge to society, I had to agree with his thesis: robots are replacing people at an ever-increasing rate…and in parts of the economy we once considered safe.

Like I said in my previous post, sometimes the future sneaks up on you. But even if robotification is inevitable, we must ask ourselves, what are the human qualities that make us a value to other people?

Some might say that it’s about the in-person assistance that we can bring to our libraries: true. They might emphasize the smiles, encouraging words and subtle forms of non-verbal communication machines are pretty lousy with so far (until the David 8 release at least).

But we have to be very careful about convincing ourselves that retreating to our ramparts of physicality and empathy will serve us for very long. As the Library Journal survey illustrates, the cold, white Googlean box is often a superior tool than a library website…and quite possibly more approachable than our staff.

No, to be effective and valuable, we have to embrace the shifting technological realm and make it our own…and humanize it, improve it, augment it.

Until David 8, that is…

One Giant Leap Coming Up!

Al Gore, in an interview at the NY 92nd Street YMCA: ”There’s never been a time in human history when we’ve had so many truly revolutionary changes going on simultaneously.”

——–

C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one.

Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.

Sometimes, the world just hangs tight for a period of time and we forget how quickly everything we assume about the future can be changed. I had one of those moments recently, when I read about the two asteroid mining startups that launched in the past year.

On the face of it, this sounds like one of those outlandish proposals made way-ahead of schedule, where no serious money is being put into implementing such a scheme. Only, there is serious money being put into implementing this scheme. And upon closer inspection, the scheme is looking like a real business opportunity.

And if it pans out, in ten years, a serious space age economy will be underway.

Here it is in a nutshell:

• There are trillions of dollars in recoverable materials in near-Earth asteroids that can be recovered with available technology at a cost less than that of the value of those materials.
• There is actually frozen water and other materials that can be extracted from asteroids to sell to other space customers (NASA, ESA, SpaceX, etc.)
• Space-recovered resources are far cheaper than earth-based resources, which translates into a potential space-boom economy that asteroid mining would form the basis for

Companies like Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources are eyeing this opportunity with space-based, laser beam intensity. If they are right (and why not), then they will jumpstart human expansion into space in as little as a decade or two.

Consider this scenario: The first successful asteroid mine recovers billions of dollars in precious metals, rare-earth materials and water by 2023. This hollowed out asteroid is then available to build a space station within, with lots of fuel (made from the hydrogen and oxygen in the asteroid’s water) to use for whatever mission its owner wants: perhaps a resource recovery exploration of the asteroid belt? a mission to Mars? or a tourist trap 100,000 miles above Earth.

Seriously, this is tantalizing. Consider how much cheaper spaceflight would be if you only needed to get people and food up in orbit, rather than all those heavy fuel tanks current Earth-based missions require.

As Al Gore is now currently noting on his latest book tour, things are changing quick. He is noting the convergence of multiple, massive changes being foisted on society, including advances in genetics, continuing impacts of Internet communications, shifting centers of geopolitical and commercial power and, of course, how all of this is brushing up against a resource-crunch that economic growth and climate change are causing.

Gore is one of those people who thinks we do pretty well in a crisis. Faced with the kinds of challenges unfolding around the world, he expects us to put the electric-pedal to the carbon-fiber frame and start solving problems at a fever pitch.

So perhaps this will be a pretty amazing decade, climate change and ESKAPE pathogens be damned. Perhaps we will suddenly have space-stations galore in 20 years time. Perhaps we might even have a breakthrough in space-elevator design. Perhaps traveling between stars won’t be so ridiculous anymore. Perhaps everyone will have a monolith in their dining room.

Might even resemble the future you dreamed of when you were 10. Get ready for takeoff!

The Librarian of Congress Says No to Unlocking Your Device

Chalk one up for the bad guys: Last weekend, the Librarian of Congress handed over much more power to your wireless carrier over your life, your technology and your choices.

Say what?

Yes, that’s right, the Librarian of Congress…that otherwise benign, somewhat ceremonial position over the Library of Congress…but also, in this case, the Decider over patent law as it relates to consumer rights concerning their mobile devices. That’s because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) grants the nation’s top librarian power to set rules for how the law will be applied. And last weekend, the LOC ruled against the public interest.

In a major slap in the face for technological accessibility, consumer choice and innovation, Dr. James Billington, the current LOC, just made it illegal (yes! against the law!) to unlock a device that you purchase from a carrier in one of those common 2-year contracts. These are the same, highly-attractive deals that have allowed smartphones to not just flourish, but be within reach of people who otherwise have little access to the Internet. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 38% of black/hispanic Americans, 40% of households making under $35k and 42% of young people, ages 18-29, use a mobile device as their primary means of accessing the Internet.

And if you’re not in one of those groups, you’re probably still impacted since most people opt for the lure of much cheaper smartphones when they sign a 1-2 year contract.

To add insult to injury, a recent piece by Paul Solman on the PBS Newshour, spotlighted the nickel and diming shenanigans that plague every mobile subscriber in the United States…hidden fees that bulk up the carrier’s profits.

All of this is to say that Dr. Billington just did another huge favor for AT&T, Verizon and their lot. And he did a big disservice to the rest of us. The market simply does better when there is abundant choice and openness. Helping the carriers silo off their consumers, limit our options and the applications and operating systems we can use, does nothing good for the public, the economy or the freedom of information, for that matter.

You’d think that Dr. Billington would have been more differential to these considerations given his apparent interest in Russian history, particularly in Russian populism. Just check out the titles of some of his writings:

• “Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism” (1956)
• “Fire in the Minds of Men” (1980)
• Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope, August 1991″ (1992)

Speaking of fire in the minds of men! This guy needs to remember that freedom isn’t something that he just read about in a book. It’s something that shouldn’t be trampled on…something leaders in a democracy (and especially leaders of librarians) need to preserve and protect, especially when it’s given up to such narrow, short-sided interests like a select clutch of communication conglomerates.

More on the story can be read on C|Net. and for a real eye-opener into how the Librarians of Congress have been sticking it to the little guy for the last several years via their DMCA rulings, see these stories from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Star Wars Reboot

Sillof’s Samurai Wars Action Figures

So, J. J. Abrams will be directing Ep7 of the Star Wars franchise?

Okay, I’m definitely straying from library science, but hey, I grew up in the 70s…in California no less, where a lot of people looked like Luke Skywalker and, let’s be honest, Chewbacca. How can I, despite the miserable insult that was Ep1-3, not respond to this news?

Truth be told, when I was 7 years old, I used to get into schoolyard tussles because I thought Close Encounters was cooler than Star Wars. But, despite this early critique of the space opera from far, far away, my devotion to Star Wars will likely go on, like a Jedi’s soul, shimmering in the long night well after this mortal coil is shed.

So, really, at the moment, I’m fascinated by what thoughts and doubts must surely be running through J.J.’s mind right now. Lucas was obviously taken by what Mr. Abrams did with his reboot of Star Trek, so I’m sure that he’s been encouraged to do the same with the new movie. But, should he not go further?

I think about this way too much. But if I was in his shoes, I would be soooo tempted to re-imagine the entire look and feel. After all, CGI has taken us light years from aliens that are really nothing more then men in latex suits. I really liked the alien beasts that made an all-too brief appearance in Abrams’ Star Trek movie. So I’m hopeful, he’ll overcome the limits once imposed on Industrial Light and Magic and shoot for some really “out-of-this-world” planet-scapes and bestiaries.

And while he’s at it, can we also take the sets and costumes to another level? I’m not advocating steampunk or samurai rebooting like Silof’s rebooting of star wars figures. But let’s think outside the box a little here. It’s the 21st Century now. Have you seen what today’s soldiers look like (think Zero Dark Thirty)? Shouldn’t we be conceiving of sci-fi as something more than what the US military can put together for a special ops drop in Pakistan?

And, of course, J.J. will undoubtedly be tempted to actually direct talented actors and get good performances out of them…and he’ll likely include a little human drama and conflict in there. Just make it Galactic Coffee, J. J.: Dark and bitter. The old fans like me will be oh-so happy you did.

May the Force be with you, J. J.!