The Intimidating Library

This morning at a business breakfast I sat next to a local woman about my age (that is to say not a kid, but not an "older adult" either). We had not met before, and as we chatted before the speaker began she told about a Small Business workshop that she had attended the week before. The workshop was sponsored by the Small Business Administration and intended to give people contemplating starting a business information about tax laws, forms of incorporation, funding sources, business plans, etc. It apparently featured a number of speakers.

The good news was that my table-mate reported that a number of the speakers talked about the value of the public library as a resource for small businesses. The less good news was that there was no one at the workshop from a public library who could talk in any detail about the resources and services libraries offer. The worse news was that, when asked, many people in the audience indicated that they had not visited their public library in some time. But the worst news of all was what my companion told me about why she personally does not use the library very often.

She said that the primary reason she does not use the library is that she is intimidated. As someone who last regularly used the library as a student, when we still had card catalogs, she is not at all confident about using the computer catalog and certainly doesn't find it intuitive. And as she put it to me "Even though I know there are staff members who could help me, I am embarrassed to ask because I feel like I should know how to do this." She went on to say that the last time she was in the library she was trying to find something and must have looked like she needed help so a high school student came over and helped her find what she was looking for.

She wasn't talking about a generally unwelcoming environment, or unfriendly staff. She was talking about a set of systems and service models that discourage her from even trying to use our services.

Wow! What an indictment. Now bear in mind that this is a confident, articulate, college-educated, reasonably outgoing, native English speaker who is technologically savvy enough to be making good use of her Blackberry during the breakfast. If she's intimidated what about those who are less well-educated, don't have good English language skills, or are just shy?

Joan Frye Williams, Stephen Abrams, and other leading library thinkers keep telling librarians that our systems and service models discourage library use but it takes it to a whole new level of understanding when a member of your own community tells you why she finds using your library intimidating! It certainly raises a number of questions for us here at PVLD –

Why didn't someone on staff notice she needed assistance and come to her aid? Most likely because our staff still mostly sit at the service desks (Circulation, Reference, Young Readers) and wait for people to come to them to ask for help – and whether we think we are intimidating or not, many people do find asking for help at a desk intimidating. We really need to move forward in our goals of (1) getting people out from behind the desk and (2) training and empowering staff at all levels to offer "first level" assistance (such as looking up a book) to customers rather than making that the exclusive purview of the librarians. As Melissa Little, the Assistant Manager in the Customer Service Department and one of our newest employees asked the other day – Does it make sense to have two people at the Reference Desk helping a line of people many of whom just want to look up a book while four employees wait at the Circulation Desk for someone to come check something out? Wouldn't those Circulation employees be better used out on the floor helping customers?

How can we make our catalogs more intuitive and user-friendly for casual library users? This is something that is getting a lot of energetic discussion at PVLD as we design our new web site and new catalog. I think our new systems will be much easier for people to use than what we have now, but I worry that it will be very difficult to overcome our reputation, well-earned over a long period of time, of being "intimidating" .

What will it take to convince someone like my table-mate this morning that we are no more difficult to use than the Borders book store at the mall up the street or Amazon.com – both of which I am sure she navigates with ease?  Once the fear factor is in place how do you overcome it?

It's a tall challenge!

Comments

[Rosario Garza]

Wow, this is certainly an eye-opener! How does one go about changing how non-users see us? This is a question we need to tackle head on!

[effing]

people will never be comfortable with library catalogs no matter how many federated search programs you layer on top-- people use amazon because they need to buy that book/hammock/action figure, and they won't give up until they get it.
let's say the amazon page is 1002 X 719 pixels, the search box is only 581 x 27 pixels, which is what? 50 times larger than the search box?? (I'm terrible at math.) it's just that there is a real incentive to keep searching until you find what you want to buy; the urge to shop trumps any initial intimidation.
what is the goal of using amazon? to shop. what is the goal of using google? to find what I want and (accidental) pictures of naked people. but there are none of these incentives to learn to use the library catalog, so it will always be out of the reach of most people.
the librarian should be the search engine, and libraries should be designed around her.
we also value privacy, so many of the things companies use to deliver better searches are anti-privacy... cheers.

[jinx]

I strongly disagree with the previous commenter. Many libraries are intimidating precisely BECAUSE they are designed around the librarian, whose expertise is developed for reasons and in ways that bear very little relation to the needs of users.

When I walk into most of the local (county) libraries I use, it's generally difficult to find the sections I'm looking for. The children's room may be downstairs, around the corner, on the other side of the building, or behind the wall of magazines, but -- and I'm assuming this is the major reason for the lack of maps or signage -- since the people who work there (or who have come there often before) already know the location, all they have done is to put up a small sign on a desk or in the dim light at the top of an archway, or no sign at all.

This is a small physical detail, but it's representative of pretty much everything else. The computer screen start page isn't designed to show a new user what to do first; the search engine is balky and not intuitive; the stacks are discreetly labeled, on one side only, without arrows to show which way they proceed; the quiet study areas are poorly labeled and only describe what behaviors are forbidden inside, rather than explaining the purpose.

It's easy to imagine that each bit of the library was designed to replace a previous bit, and then created by professionals (the computer guys, the graphics guys, or whoever) who were interacting ONLY with evaluators who already knew the library's systems.

You won't get a user-friendly library unless you actually sit down with a series of users and walk through a pretty wide range of potential scenarios involving those users looking for information ON THEIR OWN, using the tools of the library as tools.

And that needs to include the communications systems that are created by other people -- the computers, the graphics, the physical plant layout & design workers.

One reason why commercial sites like Amazon.com or a grocery store or a Target store become the yardsticks that ordinary people measure user friendliness against is that retailers MUST court the external user or else go broke. Believe me, if they treated me like most libraries do, I would never shop at any of them again.

[jinx]

I strongly disagree with the previous commenter. Many libraries are intimidating precisely BECAUSE they are designed around the librarian, whose expertise is developed for reasons and in ways that bear very little relation to the needs of users.

When I walk into most of the local (county) libraries I use, it's generally difficult to find the sections I'm looking for. The children's room may be downstairs, around the corner, on the other side of the building, or behind the wall of magazines, but -- and I'm assuming this is the major reason for the lack of maps or signage -- since the people who work there (or who have come there often before) already know the location, all they have done is to put up a small sign on a desk or in the dim light at the top of an archway, or no sign at all.

This is a small physical detail, but it's representative of pretty much everything else. The computer screen start page isn't designed to show a new user what to do first; the search engine is balky and not intuitive; the stacks are discreetly labeled, on one side only, without arrows to show which way they proceed; the quiet study areas are poorly labeled and only describe what behaviors are forbidden inside, rather than explaining the purpose.

It's easy to imagine that each bit of the library was designed to replace a previous bit, and then created by professionals (the computer guys, the graphics guys, or whoever) who were interacting ONLY with evaluators who already knew the library's systems.

You won't get a user-friendly library unless you actually sit down with a series of users and walk through a pretty wide range of potential scenarios involving those users looking for information ON THEIR OWN, using the tools of the library as tools.

And that needs to include the communications systems that are created by other people -- the computers, the graphics, the physical plant layout & design workers.

One reason why commercial sites like Amazon.com or a grocery store or a Target store become the yardsticks that ordinary people measure user friendliness against is that retailers MUST court the external user or else go broke. Believe me, if they treated me like most libraries do, I would never shop at any of them again.