[WEB4LIB] Re: In defense of stupid users

[Beth A Reiten]

Fellow Web4Libbers -

This began as a quick comment to the previous posts, and has developed 
into my getting up on my soapbox.  Todd Miller's piece has really roused a 
number of thoughts and emotions that have been percolating in my brain for 
a while.  I apologize for this getting as long as it has.

<soapbox>
I find it interesting (and sad) how many people have developed a distaste 
for libraries because of the attitude displayed in the meeting Todd Miller 
attended.  Just last week, I stumbled across a blog entry titled "Here's 
why I like Amazon... and why I hate libraries" 
(http://dakotapundit.blogs.com/dakota_pundit/2005/04/heres_why_i_lik.html). 
  As you'll see in the comments this entry generated, she's not the first 
person who has encountered the "stupid users" mentality personally.  This 
is just a recent example of something I've seen a fair amount lately.

If we truly believe 1) in Raganathan's Law and 2) that we are here to 
assist our patrons, this poisonous attitude needs to be addressed.  That's 
part of why I so firmly believe in the importance of usability testing. 
And not just for our web-based resources; when was the last time you asked 
a patron if your checkout procedures actually worked from their 
standpoint... rather than yours?

On my application to library school, my answer to "Why do you want to 
attend library school?" was something along the lines of "because I like 
helping people."  To be honest, there are some bad days where I need to 
keep reminding myself of that.  And I know that I'm not the only person 
who could say these two things.  I suspect that very few of us gravitated 
towards this profession solely for the tech aspect.  If you don't like 
people at least a little bit, librarianship seems like a strange place to 
go.

But this dislike of people is what I hear and see around me at conferences 
and in conversations.  I suspect some of it stems from the endemic 
overworked, understaffed conditions all libraries face.  A lot of it, 
though, I think comes from the profession's eternal poor self-image.  We 
make ourselves feel better and more valuable by putting others down.  It's 
an easy fix... until we discover that people won't put up with that 
attitude anymore and go somewhere else for their information needs. Google 
isn't the only party to blame for our decline in prominence; we need to 
recognize our own culpability.  And then *do* something to counteract it.

As much as I *love* the power of the native interfaces for many databases, 
my patrons don't.  They shouldn't have to.  And with the development of 
more and better meta-searching tools, they won't have to work with those 
interfaces.  If their data needs are complex enough to need the power of 
the native interfaces, I'm here to help them with that.  It's finals week 
here, and I had a panicked student call me yesterday afternoon needing to 
get back to where he was in our resources on Friday.  Did he remember 
where he was?  No.  Honestly, should he have to?  No.  It took me over 5 
minutes to get him to where he wanted to be, because everything is still 
separated here.  Hopefully by the start of classes next August, they won't 
be.  And it will take less than 30 seconds to get this panicked student 
back to the information he forgot to write down on Friday.

I'd like to make a call for a profession-wide re-focus on the user. 
They're the one piece we've been forgetting recently.  I ask myself this 
regularly: Without my patrons, what point is there for me to be doing what 
I do?  Actions without value are empty.
</soapbox>

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OSU is currently changing the campus IT structure and my e-mail will 
continue to be extremely unreliable for the foreseeable future.  If you 
have sent a message which I did not respond to, please try to resend it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Beth Reiten, Asst. Professor & Librarian
Digital Library Services
Edmon Low Library
Oklahoma State University
Phone: 405-744-9109
Email: reitene at okstate.edu


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