Awesome new library website, Part 2: The multiple stakeholders challenge

One of the biggest challenges of a library website project (maybe any website project) seems to be figuring out what gets top billing. Top billing in this sense usually means front page.
Our library website has many different types of users and a seemingly endless number of stakeholders. One of the best and most common ways to account for multiple users/stakeholders is to develop personas, which we did early on in the project.

Developing the right personas is only half the battle, though. The real challenge is figuring out how to balance their sometimes conflicting needs. There is simply not enough room on a website (at least not on a well-designed one) to put all your users’ main needs on the front page.

Screen shot of ribbon, with Collections panel highlighted

One really clever and elegant way our awesome design team came up with to meet this challenge is the central ribbon on our new site. Clicking on any of the central ribbon items does not take you away from the homepage – it simply changes the content on the bottom half of the homepage. It basically allows us to have multiple views of our homepage — 5 different views without scrolling, but we can add as many panels as we want after the scroll. I love it.

Of course, the real test will come once we go live and start to get actual user behavior and feedback, but I’m feeling very confident that our folks came up with a really smart solution to an often vexing web design challenge.

Our awesome new library website, Part 1

Screen shot of new site: August 21, 2012

There is so much awesome in our new library website, that I know it will take more than one blog post to talk about them all; so consider this installment 1.

We will be officially launching our new site next week, although it has been live as a “preview” for many months now. The official launch basically consists of redirecting almost all traffic from our old/current site to our new site (see the difference in awesomeness?).

First, all credit goes to the rock stars who made this all happen:

• Stu Snydman
• Jennifer Vine
• John Bickar
• Katherine Kott
• Sarah Lester
• Ray Heigemeir
• Ellie Buckley
• Rebecca Pernell
• Mike Nack
• Katie Young
• Gail Truman
• and the awesome team at Chaper 3

Libraries redesign websites all the time, so what’s so special about ours? Here is a quick run-down of awesome — off the top of my head and in no particular order:

• Integrated search results from SearchWorks (our catalog), selected databases, and the website.  Some of my current favorite examples are: Herbert Matter, Feminist Studies, and Lost Books.
• It has been based on massive amounts of user testing and feedback from the very beginning, and throughout the redesign process
• We started out with some pretty straight-forward goals, and referred back to them throughout the project.
• Although it is a top-down redesign, focused first on the homepage and lots of top-level content, we will eventually have over 100 staff members creating content and pages on the site. The end result is a delicate balance between standardized design and distributed authorship.
• We tried from the start to place as much (or more) emphasis on content as we did on the technology. To that end, we are developing an extensive Content Creation Guide, covering topics such as writing for the web, providing image attribution information, capitalization of library names, and how to fill out your People Page.
• Much of our progress and guidelines for web authors has been posted publicly on our Library Website Redesign Blog. We also have developed an internal Training for the Library Website site within CourseWork (Stanford’s course management system).

Bottom line, when asked to describe what is newsworthy about our site redesign, my off-the-cuff response was “Teaching, learning and research at Stanford will be easier now because our website rocks.”

Stay tuned for future posts about specific features of the site, including our Places to Study database, People Pages, Guides, Collections, and more.

Stanford already thinks like a startup

On Saturday morning, I’ll be part of a panel discussion at ALA discussing Brian Mathews’ white paper “Think like a Startup: A white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism.” (pdf) It’s a very good paper, full of fresh thinking and great ideas and examples about how to encourage innovation in libraries. I decided to jot my pre-discussion notes down here.

My first thought (and I’ve struggled with how to say this without sounding like an arrogant jerk), was “Great ideas .. but we’ve been thinking like a startup here at Stanford for years now.” My second thought was that I’m proud to work at a university described as “the germplasm for innovation”, and in a library described as having been “a juggernaut of innovation over the last 20 years”. So I’ve decided that I can take the panel as an opportunity to share with others what has worked for us at Stanford and what lessons we have learned along the way; and hopefully I won’t sound like an arrogant jerk while doing so.

I think Stanford’s success in producing innovation is a great example of Mathews’ assertion that real innovation requires a “strategic culture instead of a strategic plan”. Mathews rightly emphasizes the role of library administrators in fostering and inspiring an entrepreneurial spirit. I would add to that the fact that the Stanford Libraries have benefitted from a university administration and a general university culture that encourages and supports strategic innovation.

One major factor that supports innovative thinking and action at Stanford is the fact that we have the resources to innovate while also maintaining excellence in core services and resources. For example, although we deployed SearchWorks, our next generation discovery environment based on the open-source platform Blacklight out of UVa, in Fall of 2009; we have continued to maintain our legacy catalog, Socrates. Because we have the resources to maintain both systems, we can add innovative features (like the ability to load non-MARC metadata for digital objects and an image view for example) more quickly in SearchWorks, while not worrying (yet) about making sure that SearchWorks replicates essential functionality in Socrates.

Another lesson we have learned is that innovation has to be context-specific. For example, Stanford isn’t likely to adopt demand-driven acquisition models anytime soon (if ever); not because we aren’t innovative, but because we’re committed to collecting and preserving the scholarly record as broadly and deeply as possible. And 3d Printing isn’t something we are likely to start doing at the library, because Stanford has an innovative Product Realization Lab that has that covered. On the other hand, we’ve been doing visualization services for a while now, in part because we have faculty across many disciplines doing ground-breaking research with visual components.

I like what my boss says in the American Libraries article about why we innovate:

“The big idea isn’t innovation for its own sake, but rather, the question that we ask ourselves everyday is: ‘What opportunities and assets do we have that can make scholarship and learning better?’”

The focus on leveraging our assets is really key. When we make choices about what ideas to pursue, we look for places where we have unique talents and resources to offer. Rather than shifting away from what we have always done well, we build and expand on our traditional strengths in ways that support new research efforts. The Super Enlightenment Project is a great example of an innovative project that tapped curatorial expertise, traditional collections, technical expertise, and faculty interest.

When you have been thinking (and acting) like a start-up for as long as we have, you also have to find ways to sustain those innovations that continue to support research and teaching. One key aspect to that is making sure that our efforts are integrated, coordinated, and complementary. We are a big complex organization, with innovations happening in all corners, so making sure we build on each others’ successes rather than reinventing wheels is important. Making sure that we innovate openly helps, and our Library Concierge Project is definitely designed to promote collaborative innovation across the organization.

Hope to see y’all at the Think like a startup panel.

Report from Libraries Rebound

Stanford Rebounds. Credit: flickr user Han Shot First

As with most conferences and events, the best part of the OCLC Libraries Rebound event was meeting new colleagues and reconnecting with others. The event was live-cast and had a surprisingly active twitter stream (#LibRebound).

My official role at the event was as a reactor to the panel on Directly Supporting Researchers. Three others gave prepared presentations, and then three of us reacted. I rather liked the format, and the three of us who reacted agreed a few minutes before we started that we would each try to be interactive and at least mildly controversial in our reactions — with the goal of spurring a conversation with the larger group. I’m pretty pleased with how well that worked. I tried (and mostly succeeded) to stir up some conversation by asserting that subject librarians in research libraries need an advanced degree in the discipline (or a closely related one) that they support. Another comment I made that picked up some traffic on twitter was that we need to stop worrying about saving libraries and focus instead on supporting research (a theme I have surfaced here before).

The other fun debate that sprung up was around the notion that the value of Special Collections rests on their use. While I am sympathetic to the fact that we all face resource constraints and in some cases pressure to justify our very existence, I want more of us to stand our ground on the idea that libraries (especially research libraries) must collect for not just current scholars, but for the future. As I tweeted, if our predecessors collected only stuff that was of interest to scholars of their time, then our archives of women’s history, african american history, queer history, etc. would be even sparser than they are now. If we believe that history remains a relevant discipline, then we owe it to future scholars to collect more widely than current use would dictate.

Once I catch up on my real job, I hope to return to some of these topics more fully here — especially the idea that subject librarians ought to have advanced disciplinary degrees. Until then, let me just say that Libraries Rebound was a great event — well organized, good topics, fantastic discussions. Thanks to the folks at OCLC RLP for pulling it together.

Libraries: We’re actually not all the same

I love that ars technica is doing a series on Future U, and that their recent entry on Libraries 3.0 (hate the title) gave me a chance to brag about cool things my colleagues are doing (namely Orbis and SearchWorks). But, as I narcissistically went back to read the comments, I got increasingly frustrated at the level and content of discourse there (Note to self: Reading comments on the internet is almost always a bad idea). Most of the comments seem to revolve around the tired old argument of “now that everything is online, who needs a library?”, with a real focus on the role of public libraries.

Now let me be clear right from the get-go: I LOVE ALL LIBRARIES. I love public libraries, I love school libraries, special libraries, small libraries, big libraries, liberal arts libraries, community college libraries, rock-n-roll libraries, baseball libraries… you get the picture. But we are not all the same. Although you might argue that we all have the same overarching mission of providing access to information; there are tremendous differences in the types of information we provide and the types of patron needs we serve. At a time when one thing all libraries share is a struggle for resources, I think it is critical that we figure out how to make clear and compelling cases for what we do and what value we add to our communities. That task is made all the more challenging by a lack of nuance in public understanding of the different missions of different libraries, and in that sense I fear that the ars technica piece doesn’t do us any favors.

I love the Sunnyvale Public Library.

I had to re-read the ars technica story a few times to understand why an article that is supposed to be about university libraries leads with a quote from the director of the San Rafael Public Library (the wonderful Sarah Houghton, aka Librarian in Black). The argument  is that
undergraduate students are the primary patrons of university libraries, so the expectations of today’s kids are the main force driving change in university libraries. And here is where things get muddy for me. Not only are public libraries very different from university libraries, but not all university libraries are alike either. For example, while we certainly love our undergraduates, they are not our largest user base, and their expectations are not primary factors in setting our priorities. We are an RU/VH: Research University (very high research activity) institution with nearly twice as many graduate students as undergraduates.

The main factors driving innovation and change at the Stanford libraries are the changing nature of scholarly research and communication. We are a research library, after all. As I said in the ars technica article, the main areas of focus for us right now are on developing tools for creating, collecting, preserving, and providing access to new kinds of scholarly objects. We are working on preserving born-digital materials (from video games to emails), and on collaborating with scholars to build interactive spatial-historical tools like Orbis. We’re collecting rare and special materials–all of which need processing and cataloging, and most of which we hope to digitize. We are working on Linked Data, International Image Interoperability standards, and web archiving. We provide GIS support, digital humanities support of all kinds, statistical software support, and “concierge”-level reference and research support. At the very real risk of sounding like an elitist jerk, worrying about whether the kids want touchscreens is just not that high on our priorities list. And, I wouldn’t think that any of the research services I mentioned above would be priorities for a public library, or even a less-research intensive university library. In fact, if the Sunnyvale Public Library was lobbying for funding for web archiving, I would not support it. That kind of service is simply not in their wheelhouse.

I have mentioned before that I think in these times of scarcity the differences between large research libraries and smaller libraries of all kinds is growing. I still think that is true, and I think that a big challenge facing all of us is to make it clear to our constituencies (especially those who control our funding) exactly what distinct services and resources our particular kind of library brings to our particular community. The days when all libraries were places you went to check out books are over. All of us are so much more than that now, but as we expand our services to meet changing needs, we are developing in different directions. And I think university libraries have to get better at explaining what we do and why it is important.

I think I’ve become a Feral Humanist

This morning, I had the pleasure of giving the opening talk at the ABLD/EBSLG/APBSLG Joint Meeting being hosted here at Stanford. I don’t often get the chance to give a “think piece” sort of talk, so it was actually both challenging and loads of fun to prepare for. The theme of the conference was Business Library ROI: Measuring Usage and Identifying Value, so I decided to talk about my concerns with the ROI framework, calling my talk How ROI Killed the Academic Library: A Cautionary Tale.

My final slide. Pretty hokey, huh?

A funny thing happened as I wrote the talk … I realized that I very well may have become a Feral Humanist. I ended up talking about books, and archives, and even serendipity. I blame my humanities colleagues, at Stanford and on-line. You know who you are. Feel free to read the full talk and judge for yourself. Or, just take a look at my concluding remarks:

Perhaps I have presented an overly romantic, even mystical portrait of academic libraries – and at a time when libraries and higher education are under the gun to get practical. But what I am suggesting is that if we don’t defend the hard to define and even harder to measure qualitative importance of libraries, who will?

And, I suspect that many of you probably agree with me, at least in principle, that universities ought to have great libraries, with expert staff and awesome collections and a range of services in support of teaching and research. But of course, we all face constraints in the forms of budgets, space, and competing priorities.

So, yes, by all means find good ways to measure our contributions to the aims of higher education. But also, please, take opportunities to evangelize on behalf of the immeasurable impact of libraries – make sure your administration knows that there is value in books that aren’t read, in data that hasn’t been used yet, in archives yet to be discovered, and in the mere fact of great libraries.

Proposal for Combined Sciences Library at Stanford

Stanford University Libraries has developed a Proposal for a Combined Sciences Library at Stanford (PDF). This library would combine the collections of Falconer Biology Library, the Swain Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Library, and the Mathematics & Statistics Library.

The combined science library allows for a stronger and deeper service program than is possible with separate facilities, as well as a collection more appropriate for faculty and students in these disciplines, who are primary users of digital collections. The library will provide a broad set of services and collections to support research and learning, with a focus on user services and outreach, and will embrace the move to digital collections and data services while providing access to physical collections. Perhaps most importantly, the library will foster a sense of community within the developing quad.

In the interest of transparency, we are sharing the proposal widely. Included in the proposal is a detailed, creative and data-driven vision for physical library spaces, as well as a great discussion of trends in use of online journals versus e-books. Some key points from the proposal:

• the three central elements of the new library program are collections, services and staffing, and user space.
• We anticipate a 75% reduction in on-campus physical collections in the combined science library.
• the use and acceptance of eBooks has been increasing, as more and more titles are available as eBooks.
• The reduction in on-campus physical collections and the consolidation of physical branches in the combined science library will allow a redesign of the staffing model, reducing the number of clerical and paraprofessional staff and increasing the number of professional staff. This change in staffing enables us to fundamentally change the nature of the library service, increasing the nature and extent of the services we can provide to faculty and students.
• Survey data, focus groups, usage data and comments from users all reinforce the fact that there is strong need for library space for quiet study and quiet small group collaboration.

While we are aggressively soliciting feedback from Stanford faculty, staff, and students; I’m also interested in comments and reactions from colleagues and other Feral Librarian readers. What do you think?

Feeling grumpy about gender this morning

Photo by Gubatron. Creative Commons license

If you care about gender and scholarship, stop reading this and go read Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code by Miriam Posner. And then read all the comments. And then note that nearly all the commenters who say something like “oh yes, I agree, but the gendered culture of coding is part of a bigger issue that isn’t about gender, and I’m not comfortable talking about gender, so I’m going to hijack the discussion and talk about the bigger issue” are men.

And not to single anyone out, but when Ted Underwood says:

Miriam Posner has recently suggested that the culture surrounding “coding” serves as a barrier that discourages women and minorities from entering certain precincts of DH. I think that’s right, but I’m even more concerned about the barriers embodied in access to data. Coding is actually not all that hard to pick up. Yes, it’s surrounded by gendered assumptions; but still, you can do it over a summer. (emphasis mine)

he is speaking from male privilege. I don’t know Ted, and I don’t mean to imply that he is anything but supportive of gender equality in digital humanities and everywhere else — I choose to assume he is. But that paragraph just smacks of so much male privilege, it made me grumpy enough to write.

My point is, if you think Miriam has raised a good point and an important issue about the gendered culture of coding, then stop changing the topic. And stop asking the women for the answers. I would like to see more discussion of Miriam’s final point:

And unless you believe (and you don’t, do you?) that some biological explanation prevents us from excelling at programming, then you must see that there is a structural problem.

So I am saying to you: If you want women and people of color in your community, if it is important to you to have a diverse discipline, you need to do something besides exhort us to code.

And, no, I’m not offering any solutions myself right now — because I’m not a coder or a DH’er (or even an H’er), and because I think it is wrong to ask the oppressed group to take on the entire burden of ending their own oppression, and mostly because I’m too grumpy about the issue to do it justice.

Awesome Digital Humanities job at Stanford Libraries

We are looking for the right awesome person to join our Digital Initiatives Group in a newly created Digital Humanities Developer role:

Under supervision of the Head of the Digital Initiatives Group (DIG), the Digital Humanities Developer is responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining a variety of digital library projects and products for the humanities and social sciences. She or he will work closely with the entire DIG team (which includes librarians and specialists in assessment, digital publication, social science data, user services technology, and digital humanities) to select projects and set priorities collaboratively.

The Digital Initiatives Group (DIG) was formed just 1 year ago, and “includes librarians and specialists in assessment, digital publication, social science data, user services technology, and digital humanities”.  It is a truly awesome group of smart, dedicated and fun folks; so this is guaranteed to be an interesting, rewarding and awesome job.

Did I mention how AWESOME this is?

Apply at the Stanford Jobs site, Job ID  46583.

An adventure in blended serendipity

I subscribe to over 60 blogs via Google Reader, and I try to scan through the headlines a few times a day. Dan Cohen’s blog is one I almost always stop to read in full. Yesterday, I read his post Reading and Believing, and immediately went searching for the 2 books he mentions: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction and Thinking, Fast and Slow.

My first stop was SearchWorks, where I found an available copy of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction in the stacks just two floors up from my office. (Alas, Thinking, Fast and Slow is on reserve at the Law Library, and on order for the Business Library, so I might decide to download the Kindle edition).

I texted myself the call number from SearchWorks, and headed upstairs to get my book and start reading. As I was heading back down to my office, I start to skim the Introduction (only later realizing that reading and walking at the same time — on stairs no less — could have ended badly).

Right there on the first page, Jacobs mentions the Mortimer Adler classic How to Read a Book. I haven’t read Adler since my first year of teaching at USMA in 1994, so I immediately decided I wanted to re-read it.

SearchWorks results on iPhone

I stopped halfway down the stairs, pulled out my iPhone, opened up iStanford, clicked on the Library app, found the record for How to Read a Book, and headed back to the stacks to retrieve it.

I was not planning on checking out any books yesterday, but a combination of RSS feeds, blogs, iPhone apps, and words in a printed book led me to two books to take home, and one to download.

For me, yesterday’s adventure in blended serendipity is a very good reminder not to get sucked into the either/or debates about serendipity and online vs. physical browsing/discovery. It doesn’t have to be just one or the other … in this case a nice combination of tools and methods worked just fine.