Making it Happen?
This is is the hardest question asked this quarter. How do we take these great, forward-thinking usability ideas and implement them in the libraries we work in?
Since I don’t currently work in a library, this is a hard one for me to answer. I know the culture is different, but where I work now as a computer lab assistant at John Stanford International School, I can say that when I have ideas and present them in fully realized form, these ideas are often used by the teachers. Sometimes I get to teach “my ideas” to the kids, and this is really rewarding. I know that just having ideas and presenting them doesn’t always get the instant adoption you want. But when you present the ideas in such a way that colleagues or management can clearly see the “value-add”, I know this reduces friction to new ideas.
I think the more easily adopted ideas would be low budget ones like using better design principles with library signs. The harder sells would be the big revamps, like adopting Bibliocommons as an OPAC or going with a new paradigm like roving.
Increasing library usability is a worthy goal but can be quite a battle ground (i.e. Dewey versus Subject Browsing Neighborhoods). Being someone who is more interested in seeing both sides of an argument rather than becoming entrenched in one position- I find myself not the best of “salespersons” when the stakes are high. I just don’t get that invested in drama. But I do care, very deeply, about libraries sustainability, growth and usability. My interest in sci fi has me always dreaming and speculating about the ways libraries could go in the future. Wish I had a better answer for this, but I’m a dreamer, not a builder. But I don’t know, maybe that’s ok. Maybe the passion and ideas and the dreams can originate from one place, and the implementation in another. I know it happens that way in web development groups. One person does not wear all the hats. Everyone plays a different role. Guess I’m content to be the dreamer.
