NARRATIVE
On February 6, 2012, librarian R. David Lankes tweeted:
“Bad libraries build collections. Good libraries build services (of which a collection is only one). Great libraries build communities.”
In this statement, Lankes compels librarians to remember that libraries exist not just to store books but to serve people. That service responsibility is more complex than ever now due to the range of resource types available and the myriad ways that community users can engage with the library. Users who are primarily interested in online services may have different needs than those who visit the library in person or than those receiving services in their homes. Add to this the diverse demographics of users and frequent expectations for immediate resource access, and the user design challenges facing librarians become clear.
As an MLIS student, I have learned key considerations and principles to keep in mind when designing library services: accessibility, diversity of user needs, community engagement, availability of resources, and partnership building. Beyond this, librarians must, as Stephen Abram has noted, try to forecast future trends (p. 42). Furthermore, librarians need to assess the effectiveness of the services they offer to ensure that they actually meet the needs of their patrons (and if they do not, tweak the service design accordingly).
In my future work as a library and information professional, I plan to design classes and programs that will attract a broad range of users to the public library, particularly people from marginalized and underserved communities who may not come to the library on a regular basis. When designing offerings for these and all communities, I will be guided by the user design principles I learned as an MLIS student.
On February 6, 2012, librarian R. David Lankes tweeted:
“Bad libraries build collections. Good libraries build services (of which a collection is only one). Great libraries build communities.”
In this statement, Lankes compels librarians to remember that libraries exist not just to store books but to serve people. That service responsibility is more complex than ever now due to the range of resource types available and the myriad ways that community users can engage with the library. Users who are primarily interested in online services may have different needs than those who visit the library in person or than those receiving services in their homes. Add to this the diverse demographics of users and frequent expectations for immediate resource access, and the user design challenges facing librarians become clear.
As an MLIS student, I have learned key considerations and principles to keep in mind when designing library services: accessibility, diversity of user needs, community engagement, availability of resources, and partnership building. Beyond this, librarians must, as Stephen Abram has noted, try to forecast future trends (p. 42). Furthermore, librarians need to assess the effectiveness of the services they offer to ensure that they actually meet the needs of their patrons (and if they do not, tweak the service design accordingly).
In my future work as a library and information professional, I plan to design classes and programs that will attract a broad range of users to the public library, particularly people from marginalized and underserved communities who may not come to the library on a regular basis. When designing offerings for these and all communities, I will be guided by the user design principles I learned as an MLIS student.
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Assessing Needs
In his video “The Community is Your Collection,” Lankes talks about the academic library practice of inviting students to the library for pizza in the hope that they will stay and take advantage of the library's resources. He stresses that this is not the best approach to outreach because it does not directly address the needs of the user population. Truly responsive service requires thoughtful needs assessment. While this idea was emphasized in several of my MLIS courses, there were two in particular where I was able to put the principle of responsive service into practice.
In Foundations of Library and Information Studies, I was tasked with approaching a nonprofit organization to determine how the library could serve their needs. When I asked the nonprofit representative how the public library might support the organization's work, she could not think of anything right away but asked that I provide some suggestions. When I explained the librarian’s competency in helping people formulate research queries, she immediately mentioned how useful that service could be to her clients. This is a good example of how proactive engagement can lead to increased awareness and strengthen a library's relationships with the community.
In my international librarianship course, we discussed how well-meaning international development associations often provide donations that are of little use to people abroad, such as books that are outdated or that are unintelligible to the local populations due to language barriers. When completing my mock sister library proposal for this class, I made sure to identify a library abroad that was actually looking for a partner library, so as to make the proposal as close to authentic as possible. In the proposal, I highlighted a number of ways in which the sister library partnership could benefit the schools of both of libraries, such as by creating cultural exchange opportunities for students and strengthening professional ties between the students of both countries.
Closer to home, I conducted needs assessments in my work as an admission communications specialist. After noticing that some graduate department staff were having trouble using the admissions database, I recommended to my supervisor that we create training videos to assist them with their work. In a survey I administered to identify the staff's needs, I asked whether such videos might help them and, if so, what topics we should cover. Based on their feedback, I created three videos in which I walked through the steps for using the database's main features.
Conducting these assessments gave me an appreciation for the planning steps required to produce useful services. It also taught me how important it is to be proactive about soliciting feedback from people and responding to obvious needs that may not be articulated directly. This is especially true when the people being served may not be comfortable approaching library staff or coming to the library at all. My experience with these assessments has prepared me for the challenge of discerning user needs in diverse populations.
Designing Services
As evidenced by the training video project, targeted and effective service often begins with dialogue between librarians and their user communities. It does not end there, however. The service must also be crafted and delivered so as to ensure maximum accessibility among the user community. As a communications specialist, I had to make sure that any admissions informational videos produced using Google-based products were converted to China's Youku platform so that our Chinese prospective students could access them. I also worked with my school's communications strategist to get our videos captioned for the hearing impaired and to ensure that our website's PDF documents were properly formatted for screen readers used by the visually impaired. These experiences sensitized me to some of the accessibility concerns facing public library staff.
Assessing Needs
In his video “The Community is Your Collection,” Lankes talks about the academic library practice of inviting students to the library for pizza in the hope that they will stay and take advantage of the library's resources. He stresses that this is not the best approach to outreach because it does not directly address the needs of the user population. Truly responsive service requires thoughtful needs assessment. While this idea was emphasized in several of my MLIS courses, there were two in particular where I was able to put the principle of responsive service into practice.
In Foundations of Library and Information Studies, I was tasked with approaching a nonprofit organization to determine how the library could serve their needs. When I asked the nonprofit representative how the public library might support the organization's work, she could not think of anything right away but asked that I provide some suggestions. When I explained the librarian’s competency in helping people formulate research queries, she immediately mentioned how useful that service could be to her clients. This is a good example of how proactive engagement can lead to increased awareness and strengthen a library's relationships with the community.
In my international librarianship course, we discussed how well-meaning international development associations often provide donations that are of little use to people abroad, such as books that are outdated or that are unintelligible to the local populations due to language barriers. When completing my mock sister library proposal for this class, I made sure to identify a library abroad that was actually looking for a partner library, so as to make the proposal as close to authentic as possible. In the proposal, I highlighted a number of ways in which the sister library partnership could benefit the schools of both of libraries, such as by creating cultural exchange opportunities for students and strengthening professional ties between the students of both countries.
Closer to home, I conducted needs assessments in my work as an admission communications specialist. After noticing that some graduate department staff were having trouble using the admissions database, I recommended to my supervisor that we create training videos to assist them with their work. In a survey I administered to identify the staff's needs, I asked whether such videos might help them and, if so, what topics we should cover. Based on their feedback, I created three videos in which I walked through the steps for using the database's main features.
Conducting these assessments gave me an appreciation for the planning steps required to produce useful services. It also taught me how important it is to be proactive about soliciting feedback from people and responding to obvious needs that may not be articulated directly. This is especially true when the people being served may not be comfortable approaching library staff or coming to the library at all. My experience with these assessments has prepared me for the challenge of discerning user needs in diverse populations.
Designing Services
As evidenced by the training video project, targeted and effective service often begins with dialogue between librarians and their user communities. It does not end there, however. The service must also be crafted and delivered so as to ensure maximum accessibility among the user community. As a communications specialist, I had to make sure that any admissions informational videos produced using Google-based products were converted to China's Youku platform so that our Chinese prospective students could access them. I also worked with my school's communications strategist to get our videos captioned for the hearing impaired and to ensure that our website's PDF documents were properly formatted for screen readers used by the visually impaired. These experiences sensitized me to some of the accessibility concerns facing public library staff.
The importance of accessibility, which was stressed in nearly all of my MLIS classes, was an especially critical aspect of my work in Professor Daniel Martin's media production services course. In this class, I learned how to use the alt-text feature for website photos and practiced using visuals in place of text to create a story. I also studied the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which stresses responsiveness to differences in individual learning styles. I drew on the UDL principles for my final class project, an oral history training module comprised of a short video lecture, an in-depth lesson plan, and a website of oral history training resources.
The design principles I learned in Professor Martin's class were ones that I applied while creating projects for other MLIS classes. I will most certainly apply them to my future outreach work when teaching people with visual impairments or people who benefit from a multi-sensory approach to learning.
Evaluating Effectiveness
One lesson I learned as a communications professional was the importance of surveying people to determine whether a particular service or approach is working and using the feedback to drive future efforts. This lesson was reinforced in several of the readings I did for the MLIS program. Most memorable to me was a book chapter by Christie Koontz in which she stressed the importance of survey evaluations in gauging "user satisfaction" and justifying funding requests (p. 265-266). The oral history training module I created included a feedback form that learners could use to provide suggestions.
Sometimes the best evaluations take the form of a conversation. One important point made in the textbook Information Services Today was the one articulated by systems librarian Tara Robertson, who explained how looking at quantitative data alone can lead a librarian to misinterpret the reasons why people may not be using a resource (as cited in O’Brien and Greyson, p. 125). In doing outreach and other types of work, I have found conversational assessments to be essential, particularly in cases where varying literacy proficiencies might limit full survey participation. Koontz's and Robertson's advice regarding evaluation will guide my assessment work with diverse community members.
LEARNING ARTIFACTS
- R. David Lankes' "The Community is Your Collection"
- Oral History Resource Website
- Oral History Training Module
- Database Training Videos
- Atheism LibGuide
References
1. Abram, S. (2015). Librarianship: A continuously evolving profession. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today, (41-52). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
2. Koontz, C. (2015). Managing communication, marketing, and outreach. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today (325-333). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
3. Lankes, R.D. (2014, March 27). The community is your collection. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://davidlankes.org/the-community-is-your-collection/
4. O’Brien, H. and Greyson, D. Information needs: Understanding and responding to today’s information user. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today, (119-129). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
5. rdlankes. (2012, February 6). Bad libraries build collections. Good libraries build services (of which a collection is only one). Great libraries build communities. [Tweet]. https://twitter.com/rdlankes/status/166525664319639552?lang=en