User-Centered Interface Improvement in Libraries

Libraries are optimally positioned to lead user-centered interface improvements, especially in the now-ubiquitous areas of search, discovery, and retrieval of information resources. This book delves more deeply into why that might be the case, as well as how to create those transformative changes. Modern libraries are concerned with improving the experiences our users have with the resources we provide. We operate in a technologically complex environment, however, where we are integrating many diverse resource providers that we have much less control of into our portfolio of services. How do libraries' competing interests, for example, those of standardization and interoperability versus those of personalization and context-awareness act to "intertwingle" across our user interfaces?

Literacies Identity and Library Technologies

examines historical and contemporary library technology practices through several overlapping lenses. Why library technologies, in particular? Precisely because they are located in a complex, interconnected ecosystem of services whose loci of control are elsewhere, and so where there is a continued struggle to make good on promises like seamless resource access. The initial adoptions, integrations, and ongoing refinements of these technologies exist in what can be described as an information society whose undergirding values are essentially opaque. Despite immersion in this vast sea of knowledge/information/data, many of us who swim in it have no clear sense of its origins or mechanisms. In particular, the core of information navigation for most has become web-scale search, and though it is treated as a utility in nearly the same way heat and light are, even those of us who may teach its use to others often aren't sure exactly how it works. Similarly, users of these systems are impacted by the values underlying their construction in ways that are hidden or invisible to them, so they may not even be able to shift their strategies to more effectively work in these systems.