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.

This Saturday, I’m honored to be moderating a panel of Pratt Alumni at the Pratt Student Chapter of ASIS&T New Media Symposium. It promises to be an amazing day, featuring keynote speaker Alex Wright, information architect at the NY Times and author of Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages!

What I’m most excited about: the fact that I’m a PUBLIC LIBRARIAN getting an opportunity to pose questions to some brilliant voices in information architecture, usability, taxonomies/ontologies, and content strategy.  On a daily basis, at the Greenpoint Branch of Brooklyn Public Library, I do my best to facilitate productive, satisfying relationships between library patrons and information objects.  (Um, yeah, by ‘information objects’ I mean books for the most part.)  All of the alums that will be speaking at Pratt this Saturday do the same thing I do, only for private enterprises: they also strive to create meaningful relationships between users and information.

Speakers:

Vincent Au- Information Architect, ROKKAN
Terence Fitzgerald – Taxonomy Systems Analyst, AOL
Sari Harris – Senior Information Architect, ThumbPlay
Tim Salazar – Assistant Vice President Client Experience, JP Morgan
Erin Scime – Senior Content Strategist, HUGE
Marc Wendell – Human Factors Engineer, Elsevier

I’m hoping I can reach out to you PLA Blog readers to give me some ideas for questions I should ask these people, or even topics you think it’d be useful to steer the conversation toward.  I regularly yammer on about how we need to create an innovation culture at public libraries, but the truth is that most innovation happens in the private or academic sector.  I don’t hate on that.  As a public librarian I always look to design firms, academic libraries, artists, and everyone else for ideas that I can adapt for use in libraryland.  Can you all help me pick these people’s minds?  What do we as PUBLIC LIBRARIANS want to learn from these successful people?

Wisniewski started off by noting bad reasons and good reasons to initiate redesign. Bad ones included boredom with current site and “my boss says I have to” while good reasons included:

• navigation is dysfunctional
• difficult to update
• “hopelessly sick” code
• poor usability
• site not performing according to goals and objective

Wisniewski stated that users typically dislike redesigns, citing Facebook as an example, and  work through the five stages of user grief (denial, anger,  bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance).

Libraries often fail to account for assessment time before redesign. Where do users go on your sites? He suggested checking out Google Analytics and Clicky.  If a usability study hasn’t been done recently, do one now. Find and document current page rank. And while he suggested reaching a consensus on goals, he advised: “If you can avoid committees, do so.”

Wisniewski discussed that users and librarians have different expectations for sites. It makes more sense to design for the user and expect the librarian, an information seeking pro, to adjust.  He also advocated exploring “outside the box” options like content management systems, blogs, and wikis. (I later attended a “tiny tech” session where many smaller and rural libraries in Kansas are using WordPress blogs as library websites, but more on that later.)

It’s also a good idea to look at sites other than library sites because user expectations of what library sites should do are based on the web as a whole.  Further, make sure to have specific measurable goals of what the site should do.  Define clear paths: what are the primary functions of your site? Design around these tasks.

I was scribbling down the previous sentence when I heard, “Is anyone here from Queens?” I looked up and it took me a few seconds to register that I was looking at my library’s website.  I raised my hand and said, “Oh! Um, uh … yeah!” It then became somewhat mortifying when  Wisniewski said, “What? You don’t know?”  I was surprised the site was mentioned and that surprise grew when Wisniewski held it up as a good example of a site that defined its primary function as finding materials and then designed around supporting that task.

As an institution with a staff of experts, we should draw on our remarkable capacity for content. Wisniewski also said, “Cut and paste should die” and libraries should make sure all text and content is written in such a way that it is optimized for the web. Don’t be lazy! Rewrite and tweak.

Lastly, be as transparent as possible, and consider communicating about the process through a blog or wiki (example: Cook Library Website Redesign).

Usability links:

• Useit.com
• Usability.gov
• User Interface Engineering