Library Journal Movers and Shakers Sandra Sajonas and Lisa Chow teamed up to run an excellent talk table on methods you can use to study your library and make sure you are focusing on users in ways that work for them. They presented a project they did for library school focusing on the Highlawn branch of the Brooklyn Public Library that had recently implemented self-checkout. They went through their process, which included many ideas inspired by Ideo cards, including:
· Fly on the wall observation, where they recorded activity at the library unobserved.
· Flow analysis, which also doubled as error analysis, as they watched users move from a service desk to a service point, like a photocopier, and then back again when they had a problem.
· Surveys of both users and staff, which they then converted into a wordle wordcloud.
We then chose activities from the Ideo cards and conducted them at our own tables and shared our results.  You can find more information about their project here.  Within the week, they should also have our results posted there. There’s a lot of great information on the site, including links to some free CAD drawing programs they used and images of the flow charts they created.

Talk tables are great for the intimacy they provide and the chance to really collaborate and network with colleagues. There was a representative from ProQuest at my table, who provided a welcome different perspective. Some other slightly unrelated great ideas that came up: a weekly short story read aloud and discussion for adults and Book-A-Librarian, a chance to meet with a librarian one-on-one for in-depth research assistance.

You can also check out Lisa’s recap of the conference on her blog.