Those of us who attended the first plenary session at this summer's AALL annual meeting were treated to an inspirational talk by Roy Tennant, User Services Architect for the California Digital Library, who challenged us to give our users the libraries they deserve.
Mr. Tennant began by discussing Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, companies that also serve the information needs of our users. While we should continue to hold these companies up to the same standards that we hold other information providers, we should also recognize what they are doing well and when they can be helpful tools for our clientele. We should also pay attention to the tools and protocols that are being used by others to provide interactive, personalized services that work.
For example, Open WorldCat allows Google, Yahoo, and other search engines to access abridged WorldCat records, which then appear in search engine results with links to the websites of libraries that have cataloged the item. Another good example is RedLightGreen (www.redlightgreen.com), a project of RLG designed for undergraduates, which uses a simple search box and relevance ranking for search results; provides controlled vocabulary links for users to narrow their search; adds thumbnail images of book covers and links to book reviews; links to libraries and booksellers having the item; and provides citations in the format of the student's choice. Both of these projects work because they focus on the users' needs and abilities, rather than requiring users to learn to search like librarians.
Mr. Tennant also talked about the fact that much of the information our users need isn't even in the library catalog. In order to provide access to other information, we subscribe to a growing number of “disparate databases, most with indecipherable names and inexplicable interfaces,” which users must search individually, using different search interfaces and search results displays for each of them. Of course, this is a problem with which law librarians are all too familiar.
He challenged us to provide better finding services for our users by focusing on our particular audiences and their needs; building tools that maximize the power of our licensed databases while minimizing the pain our users have to go through to access them; listening to what our users want to find and how they want to find it; and using our own knowledge and experience about what is available and possible.
Mr. Tennant closed his talk by summarizing what our users deserve: a library that is focused on their needs; a library that understands that librarians may enjoy searching, but users prefer finding; a library agile enough to work with players like Google and Yahoo when helpful, yet offering focused, tailored, and effective solutions for users needs when appropriate; and a library staffed with professional up-to-date staff conversant with appropriate technologies and able to deploy those technologies effectively. In other words, users deserve modern professional library services.
Roy Tennant's credits include: