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September 27, 2006
The Stupid Library
Ah, following links. Confused of Calcutta wrote some time ago about a Don Marti post on lightweighting that led to an article by David Isenberg which describes the "Stupid Network" this way:
Stupid Networks have three basic advantages over Intelligent Networks – abundant infrastructure; underspecification; and a universal way of dealing with underlying network details, thanks to IP (Internet Protocol), which was designed as an "internetworking" protocol. Some key "two-fers" emerge from these basics: Users gain end-to-end control of interactions, which liberates large amounts of innovative energy; innovative applications are rapidly tested in the marketplace; and innovative companies attract more capital and bright people.
Taking this thought a little further: I know there are a lot of really smart people at Amazon and Google, but they have designed their services so that I don't feel stupid when I go there -- I get what I want, and move on. I also know there are a lot of users who are smarter than I am who also go there, and get even more out of their experiences -- whether it's using A9 or doing a mashup, or whatever.
But you know what? We have -- and you have -- lots of library users who feel stupid using our services, or the services we link to. And you work with librarians for whom that's not a problem, who say with utter confidence in the right of their position, that if patrons will only take the time to use the "databases" and "OPACs" and "periodicals" the way they are designed to be used, that the patrons will get the benefit they should. Never mind that each of the "databases" has a different interface, most of which we truly dislike, and we think our OPACs suck.
So what is the outcome of our patrons' encounters with our services? They feel stupid, and we look smart.
Well, I've decided that I want our library to be stupid.
A stupid library is "underspecified" without lots of rules that evolved out of events long in the past that are unique to just that building, nor does your user experience depend on whom you talk to, or what you look like. In particular, a stupid library doesn't think it's smarter than you, so you don't have to obey its rules just because, and it's so dumb it it thinks you are smart enough to do things the way you think best. It has lots of "infrastructure" to meet your needs -- books, media, on-line information sources, web services -- all approachable in a "universally" understandable way.
A stupid library is set up to let you, the user, be the smart one. Just how many of us are prepared to let the next patron we deal with be the smart one? If we do, what if we see our "Users gain end-to-end control of interactions, which liberates large amounts of innovative energy; innovative applications are rapidly tested in the marketplace; and innovative companies attract more capital and bright people." Gee, that's a tough one.
Here's what brought it all crashing down on me:
John Blyberg and I had been batting this "stupid library" idea around, and we then moved on to something that caused him to get out his new Mac (that's him in the picture). I went on a riff about how much more useful Windows PCs were if you needed to do a wide range of things, and I could understand how my daughter the English Lit Ph.D. would find a Mac useful for her Internet surfing, email and writing, but I was surprised how many of the library techies had Macs (hi, Michael!). I accused them all of just being interested in cool and innovative design. John showed me how he could get to Unix, then he said simply, "Yeah, Macs, the 'stupid' PC." Ouch!
So, here's how I'm learning to look at it. "Smart" libraries are designed to be robust and broadbased, by people who think they know what you need, and provide it to you, even though their services are hard to learn how to use, have lots of interfaces that aren't compatible, and are down a lot. You have to work hard to use the services you need, and you feel stupid a lot.
"Stupid" libraries are designed to have the same access to a range of services just right for you, are approachable in the same way, are easy to use, and you feel smart when you use them.
My library: stupider than yours. And cooler.
I can live with that.
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 07:44 PM | Comments (2)
September 07, 2006
Good News. Your Place of Work is Risk-free!
We talk about "risk" quite often, but we're putting too much weight on one word. For example, John Blyberg led off a very thoughtful post-vacation post by talking about the need to tolerate risk:
So what does that mean for Library 2.0, and why is it important? Insecurity is an indication of risk, which is something we should all tolerate a little of. There is no guarantee that the work we put in to adapting 2.0-related ideas will have a net positive effect on our organizations and so the willingness to experiment on our production environments becomes a necessary aspect of L2. That, of course, is terrifying.
In fact, what we experience as we go through our days, is uncertainty. Risk is when you know the distribution of possible outcomes, and uncertainty is when you don't. It's like the difference between betting on the roll of dice (risk) and on a horse race (uncertainty.)
So what? Well, uncertainty leads us to make judgments about things ("that might not work" vs. "that's going to work 82% of the time") in a way that steers away from action. As a result, many of us drift to a system of decision-making that seeks to avoid "bad" things happening -- minimax.
What that means in practice is that we pass up actions with many successful outcomes because of the possibility of some failure.
Which looks like a typical library project, or policy? This:
or this:
For many of us, it's far better to avoid a potential problem -- some kind of failure -- even though it means passing up the likelihood of greater success.
What does that yield?
Rules that cause hardship for all patrons because of the actions of a few -- can anyone say "No cell phones allowed?" There is no better use for a cell phone than calling home 5 minutes before the library closes and saying, "They don't have 'When Harry Met Sally,' how about 'Last of the Mohicans?'" And just how comfortable is a caregiver going to be in the library if he or she is out of touch with her children at a critical time for an hour or two? All this foregone because of some jerks with an out-sized sense of privilege? I don't think so!
How about our procrustean beds of circulation limits -- "only three DVDs" or "that's due in two weeks, and I'm sorry if it means you can't take it on your vacation." (Here's a thought-experiment: what if a library which had self-check allowed patrons to choose how long they needed an item? There would be some problems, but I wonder if mode circulation times would decline -- and, boy, would patron satisfaction go up. Worth a try, unless we can't bear the thought of failure.) Radical trust anyone?
Why have we designed our catalogs for ourselves, not our patrons? Could it be that complex cataloging rules and hand-crafting mean that we can find what we're looking for ALL THE TIME (because we work with this thing ALL THE TIME) and we never want to fail, even if that means our patrons are missing the ease of use that Amazon gives them?
Pick the greatest peeve you have with your library and think about how it could be remedied if you were willing to bear the possibility that you might screw up when you tried to fix it. You know what, we need a Library Failures wiki more than we need a list of successful best practices. I bet we would learn more. (For example, we have been paralyzed in planning for adoption of a really neat idea for home delivery because there is a good possibility it will bomb. As penance, I'm going to blog about it soon, and if someone with more guts than we have decides to put into practice before we do and gets the credit, well, more power to you.)
You know, if we let our patrons play a greater role in deciding how the library can be useful for them -- "I'd like these books until my baby is due" or "Thanks for letting us use the meeting room to give you our thoughts on good book club selections" or "I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to borrow a digital camera for this weekend" or "It rcks tht u let us ply games even if we yell" or "It's outrageous that you let people use bad language when they comment on books in the catalog" -- it would not be a tragedy of the commons. After all, that's why we're there, isn't it? To deal with the exceptions and problems, and let the successes flow?
I used to work for an amazingly bright, thoughtful and gentle man by the name of Saul Yanofsky, whose second-biggest putdown of someone was, "he doesn't tolerate uncertainty very well." His greatest putdown, by the way, was, "that's simply not helpful."
Well, Saul Yanofsky would look at what we're doing and say, "You don't tolerate uncertainty very well, and that's simply not helpful."
So look around your risk-free library and see if you can't find some uncertainty to dive into.
Posted by Alan Kirk Gray at 08:22 PM | Comments (3)