A fresh look at the library homepage

The Robert Goldwater Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas is the first library I’ve looked at that seems to have fully embraced the changing face of technology. The library’s homepage is actually the Robert Goldwater Library Online Resource, a blog. This format allows the homepage for the library to be updated easily and regularly, and to include comments, trackback and other blog features. This site, with all its peripheral features, epitomizes the current prospects of “Web 2.0.”

One reason I think that the Robert Goldwater Library turns the idea of the library homepage on its head is that the OPAC is not the main feature. All of the other libraries I have looked at here (and indeed every library homepage I’ve ever seen) focuses on the catalog, searching, and collection access as its main purpose. Links to library events, library news, services, blogs, etc., are secondary in some way. If there is is a search bar anywhere on a library homepage, you can usually guess that it will search the catalog and not the web (unless is specifically says otherwise). For the Goldwater Library homepage, there is a link to the catalogs, but it is below the links to the Goldwater Library Wiki, the goldwaterlibrary’s del.icio.us page, and the Robert Goldwater Library’s flickr photostream.

The catalog is listed under the category of “Goldwater Library Resources” with these other tools. This seems to put it on the same level as these other tools. This seems both astute and self-fulfilling. Internet users are using “Web 2.0″ tools alongside, and instead of searching the library catalog. Because the tools are right there with the catalog, they will be used more frequently. For users who are unfamiliar with the blog format, the homepage would be fairly easy to navigate. The catalog link may take a bit to find, but once found, the user could use the catalog as she or he would any other OPAC.

The goldwaterlibrary’s del.icio.us page categorizes the list of tags. This is a handy feature since the actual site links on del.icio.us are ordered temporally. After doing a keyword search in the catalog (yes, “fudge”), I found that the entries do not have a link to add the finding to del.icio.us. The catalog is surprisingly “Web 2.0″-free, in fact. The same issues of usability for new users that I’ve mentioned in previous posts (MIT post, K-State post) would be an issue here, too. The classification of the tags might help a new user to understand their purpose or at least their organization.

The library’s flickr photostream is also heavily classified. Some categories only contain one image. The images range photos of pieces in the gallery’s collection, to photos of crews in the process of setting up exhibits, to photos from art openings and events. A new user to flickr would have a fairly easy time navigating the site since the images are put in well-labeled categories, and are titled in descriptive, plain language. Since the only real purpose of the flickr photostream seems to be to store, make available, and tag museum photos, the only real purpose to the user would be to browse or search the photos for interest or research. This can easily be done with the help of the categories and titles.

I would use the del.icio.us account that the library has set up to access the sites that the library (and staff) think are relevant to the field and the collections. I would also browse the flickr site, although not likely for the purpose of tagging photos. I like the idea of revisioning the library homepage. It seems that the web hasn’t even been around long enough for libraries to be too attached to the way homepages are being done. Maybe it’s time to rethink.

Hennepin County Library steps up

The Hennepin County Library uses the flickr photostream differently than the Library of Congress or the NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center do. (See my previous post on the NCSU for more on what I think of their use of flickr). Once again, after searching through various areas of the entire Library website, I can find no mention of the flickr photostream and no link to the photostream itself. I find this very frustrating. I only know about the flickr project because Susie gave a link to it in her WebCT module for Web 2.0. Otherwise, I’d never find it. It makes me wonder what other interesting, interactive tools that the Hennepin County Library is using that I can’t find from their site.

Even though I never would have found the flickr collection without outside information, I’m intrigued by the way the library is using this tool. Rather than uploading photos from the library’s collection of images (assuming that there even is one), it has uploaded photos of events that involve the Hennepin County Library in some way. There are photos of various officials associated with the library and its parent associations, photos of events supported by the library in the community, photos of author visits, and many more.

Looking through the photostream, it seems that the purpose of it is to compile photos that the library might use for the media in one organized place that is accessible to multiple staff members whenever it’s needed. The purpose does not seem to be to make this photostream available to all library users. This explains why there are no links to (and no mention of) flickr on the library site. Click on the screenshot for a link to the page and take a look at some of the photos that the HCL has made available.

It is interesting to see the library staff using flickr internally as a way to organize promotional materials. I think that some of the photos here would be of interest to the users. Perhaps the library could put a link to the flickr photostream in the “Events” area of the site, making only those photos that it wishes to share in that way public. I think it would be a benefit to the library community to have an accessible record of the events that its library has contributed to.

The HCL Bookspace is an interesting collaborative space for library staff and users. The Bookspace is accessed from the homepage through a prominent link in the top-of-page tabs. The homepage for the Bookspace boasts a lot of information about books in the library, featured booklists, book clubs, author information, and more. What I find interesting on the social software front are the readers’ lists.

Similarly to the reviews at the EPL (as discussed in a previous post), these are lists created and updated by users. According to the HCL eNews page, only one year after the inception of the personal profiles feature for readers’ lists, the feature boasted, “more than 400 reader-contributed book lists, 12,000 comments and 90 profiles.” It is clearly a popular tool on the site. Each book on the lists is linked to its catalog entry, but there is no link available to other readers’ lists that contain that same book. I would use this service of the library for book selection. I’m impressed that there is a separate teen readers’ list area, although I wonder if there would be more crossover of books on these and the adult lists than warrants the separation. I think a reviewing, or book selection tool like this one fits right in with any library website that has an OPAC and a significant online presence. If users are commonly using the library from the web, these library community services should exist there as much as they do in the physical library itself.

The readers’ lists could be improved by (once again, I plug the use of tags in the library) adding a tagging feature. The users could tag the books in their lists and then these tags could be used to link the different lists of different users. Links connecting all users who have added a given book to their lists would also improve the service.

For users who are new to the service, very little computer literacy would be necessary to understand the user-friendly navigation. The format is in a list that can be easily understood. The creation of one’s own list requires no more than a library login.

In their article, “Library 2.0: Service for the next generation library,” in Library Journal (9/1/2006), Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk mention how libraries area already changing, and how we can change libraries to improve services and keep up with the changing technology. From their article:

To increase both your library’s appeal and value to users, consider implementing customizable and participatory services. The Library 2.0 model seeks to harness our customer’s knowledge to supplement and improve library services. User comments, tags, and ratings feed user-created content back into these web sites. Ultimately, this creates a more informative product for subsequent users. Your library customers have favorite titles, authors, and genres. Allowing them to comment, write reviews, create their own tags and ratings, and share them with others through a more versatile OPAC interface will enhance your catalog. Customers want to know what their neighbors are reading, listening to, and watching. Hennepin County Library, MN, has taken this step by allowing users to comment in the catalog.

I couldn’t agree more. I think that the HCL is on its way to fully integrating “Web 2.0″ and “Library 2.0″ applications into its existing interface. Overall, I like the ways that the Hennepin County Library is using technology to make the online library experience richer for its users. However, I’m always excited to see a library catalog that is integrating tagging, and on this point, I was disappointed once again.

What’s on flickr at the NCSU Libraries?

The library at North Caroline State University, NCSU Libraries, has put photos from its Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) on flickr for people to access and tag. I started on the NCSU Libraries homepage and navigated to the Special Collections Research Center from there. Then I looked for the link (or any other information at all) that might take me to the flickr photostream. There are prominent links under “Community” from the SCRC page to the Wolfblogs and the Wolfwikis for students, staff, and faculty, but nothing mentioning the flickr project.

I would say, unless you already knew that the flickr project was there (and even if you did), you’d never find it on the NCSU Libraries site. I think it’s too bad because I think the flickr project for the digitalized images from the SCRC fits right in with the Libraries’ blogs and wikis services. Both of these are collaborative with opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to start blogs, comment on other blogs in the NCSU community, and participate in existing (or start new) wikis. It only makes sense that there would be a flickr photostream that invites tagging and further participation.

The problem I see with the flickr photostream is that with no explanation of the project on the NCSU Libraries site or the SCRC site, and none on the flickr page itself, I’m not sure what the project purpose actually is. Is the SCRC planning to add tags to their catalog for the whole collection? Is there going to be links from the flickr images to their physical place at the Libraries in the future? Does the SCRC have plans for how researchers might use this service? I can’t seem to find any answers to these questions. I like the idea of having a flickr photostream if it’s being integrated into the library’s traditional classification scheme, to complement it in some way, but this photostream seems to just stand alone. I’m not sure what purpose it’s serving.

It was big news when the Library of Congress launched their project of putting digitized archival images on flickr for the world to tag. The LC homepage has a link on it that opens a page explaining the flickr pilot project. The page includes a link directly to the flickr photostream as well as an explanation of the purposes of the project, and and invitation for public participation. This seems to make more sense to me. I know why the images are on flickr and I understand what I’m supposed to do about it. I think I’d be more likely to tag the LC images on flickr than the ones the SCRC has up. I might browse through the SCRC ones, but I wouldn’t likely bother to tag them.

One improvement to the flickr tool at the SCRC would be to add in information page on the site that explains the nature, intentions, scope of the project. Adding a link to the flickr photostream would be helpful, as well as a brief explanation of the SCRC on flickr. I’m interested to see if the SCRC is planning to do with the flickr project, if anything.

Added note:

After writing this post, I was reading through posts on “Library 2.0″ on The Ubiquitous Librarian, the blog of Brian Scott Matthews. I stumbled across his post, “Social-enabled Library Websites? The Post-It Note Concept.” Matthews outlines his suggestion for adding more interactive options to the NCSU Libraries site:

I pitched an idea last week that didn’t meet resistance, but didn’t have a big bandwagon either. Here is the gist of the story.

[...]

Basically you take your mega forum, which works like all other message boards with threaded conversations all on one page—but then also embeds select threads or topics onto appropriate web pages. Students have questions about the equipment we rent out, here is a way they can post questions, get answers, see what others have said, etc. Or what about printing or events or workshops? Everything would be more social and at least there will be an offer of interaction.

Another example: With a recent environmental display in the library, a student used a post-it note to comment about the information on the wall. We took it down, but this type of interaction would be ideal for a message board environment because individuals could have a dialogue about the display materials and it could result in a larger community discussion.

Yeah, I know there are issues with “appropriateness” and “security” and “identity” and “moderation”—that’s all to be worked out over the summer, but I think the concept is worth a shot. Imagine a pile of post it notes neatly arranged in a digital format expressing opinions and feedback relevant to the web page they are viewing… we’ll see what happens.

I love this idea. I love that Matthews doesn’t get hung up on the technicalities of a proposal like this, but instead suggests what he would ideally like to see with the intentions of ironing out the details later. This is what I think librarians and other library staff need to be doing more of. We need to look at how we can improve the interactivity of library sites, how we can optimize services to library users. “Library 2.0″ and “Web 2.0″ applications are a big part of this.

Matthews’ approach of, look at what we need, see what’s out there to fill the need, then figure out how it can work for us, is great when looking at integrating things like tagging and social bookmarking (as well as other social software tools) into existing library platforms. I look forward to reading about how things get worked out over the summer over at the NCSU Libraries.