Does anyone remember Gloworms? I had one when I was a toddler. It was roughly the size of a typical baby doll but was essentially worm-shaped (no appendages) with a cute face that lit up when you squeezed its body. It was a really comforting companion at bedtime, a sort of huggable, portable night light. However, when my Gloworm lost its glow, I lost interest. The Gloworm was all about the glow.
Today I lost a little bit of my glow. At a work meeting the website redesign mock-ups were unveiled. I actually sat on the edge of my seat because I was so excited. When the new site pages were finally revealed I was impressed. I could tell instantly that the new site was a vast improvement over the old one. Not only did it look better, with a new logo and color scheme, but I could tell that it would work better. That is, patrons might actually be able to find what they seek. (User-research has informed us that many patrons leave our current site because they are lost, frustrated, and/or overwhelmed.)
The person responsible for the redesign did an excellent job. She has faced a formidable challenge; our institution is large and complex, with many divisional goals to meet and our collections (both digital and traditional) rank among the best in the nation. She comes from the user-centered design camp and has conducted over 40 hours of interviews with our patrons. The site’s proposed search interface uses hierarchical faceted metadata, aka Flamenco. Basically, this search interface guides users with category metadata and allows users to easily expand and contract their searches.
Great stuff, right? Nope.
In a meeting that lasted an hour and a half I heard not a single bit of positive feedback on the site redesign. (Well, I did hear myself emit more than a few quiet oohs and ahs.) Can you guess who was doing the lion’s share of the complaining?
The librarians.
They were upset that the digital collections took the spotlight (the search interface doesn’t search the library or archive’s catalogs). There were links to the catalogs, and they certainly could have been more prominent (they hold records for 99% of our resources). I overheard one of the librarians say that she took this very personally and felt overlooked. At first I wondered if the complaining librarians were just really concerned about the patrons not finding the necessary resources, but as the meeting progressed it seemed to me that this was a battle of a different sort. It was a pissing contest waged over pixels. It was blind rejection of something new. It was petulant complaining instead of creative, constructive criticism. It was a lack of proposed solutions or suggestions for improvement. In a room full of adults, an ugly tension developed. I suddenly felt surrounded by grown-ups on the verge of temper tantrums, which is much, much worse than when children reach a similar brink.
I can’t say I haven’t been warned. I can say that encountering individuals who respond like this rubs off a bit of my glow and wears upon my optimism. And it’s not just because I’m young and green in the library world that I have a high-level of optimism and positivity. I work darn hard for my optimism.
After the meeting I sent the web designer an e-mail with my positive feedback and an idea to increase the prominence of the catalogs (why not have them appear as links in the search results with the label “Search MadCat for more resources on this topic”?).
Please, I want to keep my glow.
Tonight it is a dim flicker– I am a Gloworm doll with low batteries.
Good luck with that glow thing… Given enough time “life” tarnishes us all. These days. As long as I keep getting a paycheck, the powers that be can have me paint the stacks pink for all I care. I don’t let it bother me anymore. Keep Glowing!
Anyone that can write to entice another to read about library science and the lightening changes gets my vote. As a k-12 teacher who interfaces research and writing, I appreciate what the future holds for my current students. The majority of the students at the junior high level have no clue what is in store for them in the collegiate world. However, they prefer cyber-research over any other, so the point of departure and website design is critical. Keep glowing, advocating, defending, dimming, and glowing. And . . . keep writing.
I’m a new librarian and after 6 months in my current job I had totally lost my glow! I suppose I did have that common idea that when you leave college you can really make a difference but after a few months you realise that it’s not possible. I’m the only librarian in the organisation and after many times of being undermined by non-librarians including my boss, I’ve decided I need to find a new job which will hopefully relight my glow.