libUX:
Improving User Experience
in Libraries within the
Higher Education Sector
Mark van Harmelen
Hedtek Ltd
Ethnography by
Dave Randall
Unique Adequacy Ltd
November 2011
Commissioned by SCONUL
Hedtek Ltd
http://hedtek.com
1
info@hedtek.com
Executive summary
This report surveys some of the changes that are affecting or will affect users’
experience of library systems (libUX) within Higher Education.
Factors germane to libUX are surveyed in a changing landscape section of
the report. These include hardware and platform issues; most importantly,
library system use will be changed markedly by adoption of mobile
technology, in part driven by decreasing cost and increasing hardware
capability. Discovery is a problematic issue for future libraries; their
traditional role in providing search facilities is being undermined by global
search services including Google and Google Scholar. Further, the increased
prominence of electronic resources (including e-books, online serials, and
Open Educational Resources) will change the ways libraries need to operate.
It is proposed that various measures need to be put in place to ensure
that libraries can respond to these changes. These measures include
implementing libUX roles within libraries, including providing training to
develop staff placed in these roles, meaningful involvement of users in the
development of future library systems, and appropriate funding.
Results of a small ethnographic survey of school leavers and university
students and their perceptions of reading, study, and university libraries are
included as an appendix.
The report was commissioned by SCONUL, with funding from JISC.
2
Table of contents
Executive summary
2
1 Library user experience
4
2 The changing landscape
5
2.1 Hardware and platforms
2.1.1 Smartphones
2.1.2 Tablets
2.2 Discovery
2.3 Publishing models and delivery
2.4 The rise of e-books
2.5 Open Educational Resources
2.6 Reading, social environments, annotation and learning
7
7
10
12
16
18
20
3 Placing libUX on a firm foundation
22
4 Conclusions
23
Ethnographic survey:
A student perspective on the
constraints and affordances of e-libraries
24
21
Acknowledgements28
Authors29
Licence29
Click on any on-screen URL to retrieve the associated page
3
1 Library user experience
This report surveys some of the changes that are affecting or will affect users’
experience of library systems (libUX) within Higher Education in the UK.
In this report, libUX is interpreted broadly as:
The user experience that is engendered when users interact with
interactive library systems.
Various factors contribute to a user’s experience of the library system.
These include:
• Basic hardware and software platform capabilities
e.g. is mobile access supported?
• System scope
e.g. are short loans managed via the library system?
• Functionality
e.g. can I use the system to reserve a loanable item, can I use it to borrow
an e-book?
• User interface
e.g. the quality and ease-of-use of the user interface in providing
functionality.
• The nature of the socio-technical system formed by the users and the
library system
e.g. the extent to which library users interact with each other in the
pursuit of their educational goals.
4
2 The changing landscape
Library users exist in an information infrastructure that comprises the
physical library, including its holdings, library information systems and the
resources of the Web accessed through both wired and mobile connections.
Notably, most library users exist in the wider informational environment of
the Web, rather than that of the physical and electronic library.
Given this, there appear to be two responses to the question of increasing
the utility and relevance library IT systems:
• To provide the user with library information and services in the user’s
natural habitat; through co-option of existing web services in that habitat
e.g. by ensuring that library resources can be found with Google.
• The second is to make the library of such potential (and obvious) utility to
users that the users makes it part of their scholarly habitat
e.g. by specialised recommender services; by mobile services and
in-library mobile services.
In making the library of high utility, it is wise to remember user expectations;
that the standard against which library IT systems will be compared is that of
the most usable systems on the Web.
The landscape of the Web is changing as new platform capabilities
are developed. For example, smartphones and tablets are driving the
development of new kinds of Web-based applications. This changing
landscape increases the challenge to libraries in remaining relevant.
However, this changing landscape offers opportunities for increasingly rich
interactions between users and libraries, where new device and platform
capabilities offer the potential to offer users new kinds of services and
functionality.
For institutional libraries the context outlined above is further complicated
by an institutional need to enhance the student learning experience, in part
by augmenting the facilities of service and learning support systems.
Further, the role of the physical library may in certain institutions become
de-empahsised. The Open University (OU) Library is already, because of
its distance learning remit, in such a situation. More generally, libraries are
becoming disintermediated from their discovery function. Enabling access
to electronic sources through the VLE, and changing delivery in an age of
library e-resources, will further de-empahise the physical library.
Some statistics of interest in the current landscape are provided by the
following charts, which show the breakdown of the annual expenditure by
UK HE libraries, for books and serials (see Figure 1 on the next page).
5
Expenditure on print and electronic books
Expenditure on print and electronic serials
As a % of the total UK HE library spending on books
in each year 04/05 - 09/10
As a % of the total UK HE library spending on serials
in each year 04/05 - 09/10
hard copy books
e-books
hard copy serials
dual format purchase; e- and hard copy serials
e-serials
Produced by Hedtek Ltd from data supplied by SCONUL
Figure 1
Changing patterns of UK HE expenditure for serials and books
As can be seen from Figure 1, expenditure on electronic resources in UK HE
libraries has been increasing markedly since 2004-5. Since then:
• Expenditure on e-books has increased by 580% to account for 14.5% of
all expenditure on books in 2009-10.
• Expenditure on electronic-only serials has increased by 186% to account
for 50.5% of all expenditure on serials in 2009-10.
Expenditure on dual format serials decreased slightly by 13% to account for
27% of expenditure on serials in 2009-10.
In following sections, we will examine the diverse topics impinging on the
changing libUX landscape, and illustrate some of the kinds of advances that
may be made in the libUX area given a progressive investment strategy.
6
2.1 Hardware and platforms
Platform capability (the sum total of communication channels and the kinds
of services that can be offered over those channels) is a major determinant
of user experience: All user experience is predicated on what developers
can build given available channels, their underlying hardware and their
exploitable functionality. For this study we are mostly interested in enduser devices and system capability as determinants of user experience. In
this context, increasingly sophisticated smartphone capabilities and the
increasing adoption of tablets are of particular interest.
2.1.1 Smartphones
For smartphones, four hardware improvements are of relevance:
• Better screen technology: Enables better interaction and reading
experience, although still limited by screen size for reading.
• Dual core processors: This step change enables a general improvement
in interaction speed, transforming interaction speeds from tolerable
to reasonably usable, and allowing the use of more computationally
intensive apps.
• GPS and assisted GPS: These enable location aware services.
• Real time on screen video and directional sensors: These enable
Augmented Reality (AR) applications where computer-generated
information is superimposed on a real time video view of the world on a
mobile device screen.
The use of smartphones in libraries presents the prospect of an easy win in
developing library system capacity. While evident in some libraries, OPAC
mobile interfaces and accompanying basic facilities (search, reservation,
renewal) should become standard. It is a small step to bookmarking search
results (via either a mobile or wired platform) with subsequent use of those
bookmarks in an mobile app that guides users to the bookmarked items,
via a library map system. (Or for the more adventurous institution, via an
AR system where GPS positioning is augmented with near field positional
devices.)
Is in-library mapping worthwhile? Proof is needed, but certainly this would
seem to have bearing on the first-contact library-use experience and in
subsequently helping students to transition to a reading culture.1
1 The current JISC Mobile Library initiative (part of JISC Grant Funding 12/11: Digital
Infrastructure Portfolio) will attempt to create an evidence base of how students use
mobile services in libraries together with student’s expectations of mobile services in
libraries.
7
This kind of application exists already, as exemplified by the use of the
Meridian system at Powell’s Books in Portland.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
meridian_ready_to_take_on_world_with_map-based_app.php
http://mashable.com/2011/03/22/meridian
Search
Available items
Figure 2
Meridain in use
8
Work level results
Map to item
In itself GPS is not sufficiently accurate for in-library use. Assisted GPS with
sufficient positional accuracy is available via several technologies (including
external devices and image recognition technologies). For example,
Meridian uses locational data obtained from a Cisco MSE installation at
the American Museum of Natural History. This sysem tracks the location
of individual mobile devices that use the Museum’s mobile mapping
application and enables device location on maps that are shown on the
device.
http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-102209-164024/
unrestricted/Indoor_Navigation_System_for_Handheld_Devices.pdf
http://paul.rutgers.edu/~nravi/wmcsa06.pdf
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/10/indoor-navigation.html
Google has announced that it is extending Google Maps to be able
to provide maps of the interior of buildings, thereby extending their
positioning technology on mobile devices. This is potentially a game
changing development.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
google_maps_opens_the_door_to_mobile_maps_inside_b.
Figure 3
Indoor position displayed using Google Maps
9
2.1.2 Tablets
Tablets are the second technology of interest. In this report we include
e-readers in this category.
“Tablet adoption is occurring at an even faster pace than the historic
rates set by peer devices such as smartphones, computers, mp3 players,
game consoles, and DVD players”
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/01/prweb4985134.htm
In the US the tablet market is predicted to grow by an average of 42% p.a.
until 2015, shipping 20.5M units in that year. Given population growth
predictions, that is one tablet shipped per sixteen of the US population.
In 2015 tablets sales will claim 23% of the PC market, second after laptops
and notebooks (42%), and ahead of netbooks and mini PCs (17%) and
desktops (18%).
http://www.itpro.co.uk/624418/tablets-to-outsell-netbooks-within-a-couple-of-years
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php
Similar trajectories may be followed in the UK.
Figure 4
Forrester Research end-user device market shares to 2015
http://www.inquisitr.com/76157/
tablets-to-overtake-desktop-sales-by-2015-laptops-will-still-reign/
Tablets become particularly interesting when thought about in connection
with the rise in online content, particularly e-books. This is because the
tablet form factor solves the problems inherent in smart phone screen sizes
for reading, while avoiding the clumsiness of netbooks, notebooks, and
10
desktop PCs.
We have discovered some bias against students reading material
electronically, preferring the facilities offered by paper copies (see the
ethnographic survey that starts on page 24). However, we wonder if this
might change given changes in publishing models, the rise in OER and the
use of sophisticated reading software.
What if a student could have a tablet with 500 relevant books and 500
significant OER resources for her course, with the ability to search,
bookmark, annotate, summarise, and potentially undertake these activities
collaboratively with other students? Would this provide the student with a
significant personal library that makes the institutional library irrelevant?
Or would provision of an infrastructure and its content properly be part of a
future library function?
Given large-scale adoption of electronic texts on tablets by students, there
are opportunities available to libraries. For example, there is evidence that
students undertake work more collaboratively than we conventionally
assume (see 5 in the ethnographic survey, page 26). They do so in very
informal ways, using friendship networks to share resources, annotate and
share notes, point to useful texts, and so on. There may be significant gains
in the support of similar learning activities through collaborative annotation
and discussion facilities that work in conjunction with (or are implemented
within) e-book readers.
Some implications of tablet adoption are:
• Libraries may have to adapt to supporting functionality on a range of
personal hardware owned by students themselves. This may involve
considerable cross-platform support. The easiest way to achieve this is via
cross platform application generators that leverage HTML 5 capabilities in
mobile platforms.
• As mentioned elsewhere, student library users will have high
expectations as to the usability, functionality and visual design of tablet
apps that they use. Here the competitive standard is high, and will be
measured against best of breed iOS and Android apps, e.g. Flipboard on
the iPad.
11
2.2 Discovery
Libraries are forced to compete in an already-changed landscape where
a user’s default information discovery and acquisition habits may often
sidestep libraries.
In this context we note the pervasiveness of Web search via major search
engines, particularly Google, noting how the verb google has been adopted
by English-language speakers (and, presumably, by speakers of other
languages). In this respect, the Ithica Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic
Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies states:
“Basic scholarly information use practices have shifted rapidly in recent
years, and as a result the academic library is increasingly
being disintermediated from the discovery process, risking irrelevance
in one of its core functional areas.”
http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/faculty-survey-2009
For example, most students and academic staff do not currently use any
library facilities (apart from benefiting from electronic journal subscriptions)
when accessing journal articles: Google and Google Scholar provide
hyperlinks directly to publishers’ pages, sidestepping library discovery
facilities.
Figure 5
Use of Google search services within HEFCE Shared Services
Diagram, with slight layout modifications, from Kay, D. et al, HEFCE Shared Services SCONUL
Feasibility Study – An Introduction, PowerPoint, private communication
12
The recommended responses to this are:
• Co-opt existing search services, using the approach shown in Figure 5,
prepared as part of the HEFCE Shared Services SCONUL Feasibility Study.
• Also migrate, wherever possible, to other places in students’, teachers’,
and researchers’ ecosystems. These may include VLEs, PLEs, Facebook,
SMS and mobile platforms. Perhaps also consider if a presence in other
environments is possible; for example, Medeley is attracting more UK HE
traffic than otherwise thought, currently running at 12% through Edina’s
OpenURL Router (see Figure 7, page17).
Providing users with relevant recommendations to augment search-based
discovery is within reach. Recommender functionality is being addressed in
the JISC Activity Data Programme. Here there are positive results from, e.g.
the Open University’s RISE Project.
http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2011/01/28/the-activity-data-programme
http:/www.activitydata.org
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/RISE
For recommenders, the long-term position to work towards is to provide
personalised recommendations that are as good as might come from a
combination of a subject librarian and a lecturer, using privileged data
that is only available within the institution. Recommender results are easily
embedded in search result and catalogue pages, less easily in VLEs. Other
uses are imaginable, for example providing recommendations in a medium
such as Google+, thereby sharing recommendations with immediate peers
via Google+’s circles.
At least three sources of data can contribute to recommendations:
• Patterns of user activity, what the students and staff do on the university
intranet, in the institutional VLE(s) and, when accessed from the campus
network, on the Web. This activity data can be augmented with OpenURL
and consortium sourced activity data.
• Student registry information, including course, progression, grade and
pass information.
• Knowledge about aspects of learning activities, e.g. course content,
Personal Development Plans.
Personalised recommendation should not be limited to OPAC search results,
but should also be incorporated into other platforms and environments (for
example in learning support systems).
While recommender functionality is being developed, useful
recommendations can be provided by as simple a mechanism as accessible
publication of reading lists. In a small CERLIM survey of undergraduates,
most students rated reading lists as important or very important (see
Figure 6). Given the importance of reading lists to students, it is surprising
13
that reading lists are not a standard feature of HE OPACs.
Figure 6
The importance of reading lists: In small survey of undergraduates most rated
reading lists as important or very important
http://www.sero.co.uk/mosaic/
100212%20MOSAIC%20Final%20Report%20Appendices%20FINAL.pdf
It is possible that the library starts to adopt a more pedagogic (rather than
informational) purpose as electronic systems are increasingly interlinked.
For example, learning analytics is a nascent field showing early positive
results, and one where the library can play a role. Learning analytics seeks
to compare and correlate historic student activity data with the results
achieved by those students in order to identify patterns of behaviour
that can be used to identify students who are likely to perform badly
in the future. Thus the aim is to find behaviour and data sets that will
differentiate between achieving and under achieving students. Using these
measures, once students in the current cohort are identified as being at
risk of performing badly, lecturers and support staff can make positive
interventions to help the students engage more fully in academic life and
improve their academic results, thereby increasing student retention.
Recently, the JISC Activity Data Programme‘s Library Impact Data Project
(LIDP)1 analysed library activity data from seven UK universities and
demonstrated a “statistically significant relationship between both book
loans and e-resources use and student attainment” across all universities
supplying data. While this does not prove a causal relationship, it does
demonstrate that activity data can be used to predict students at risk.
Because learning analytics relies heavily on activity data, much of which is (at
the moment) library specific, it might be argued that the library is the natural
place to perform learning analytics, particularly if the library has already
been providing activity data based recommendations and has gained
expertise in handling activity data.
1 LIDP was a collaboration between seven several universities, including the University of
Huddersfield. The latter has though projects like LIDP and earlier work become a center
of expertise in learning analytics and its applications.
14
Not all discovery activities depend on technology: Returning to search, it is
advisable to bear in mind the importance of search skills to contemporary
learning practices (these skills importantly include the formulation of search
strategy and evaluation of search results).
However, our small-scale study found that students are not always effective
in their search behaviour. There are doubts about student competence in
performing more advanced searches, accompanied by anecdotal evidence
from university lecturers that all too often students do not properly evaluate
the resources they choose from search results. Because of the importance of
these skills, it is felt that they should be addressed at institutional level for all
incoming students and then be repeatedly reinforced in course practice.
15
2.3 Publishing models and delivery
We can expect to see disruption to traditional publishing models and a
rise in alternate channels for content distribution. The role of the library
as a source of information may well be threatened by these changes. For
example, libraries may loan less as OER texts1 and external textbook loan
services become more popular.
Already we are seeing the seeds of disruption in publishing and distribution
models are offered, inter alia, by:
• Self-publishing via Lulu.com which is made available, inter alia, via
Amazon.
http://www.lulu.com/services/distribution/extendedreach-distribution
http://www.lulu.com/services/distribution/globalreach-distribution
• Self-publishing and distribution via the Kindle store.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
self-published_author_sells_a_million_e-books_on_a.php
• The rise of Mendeley Web and Mendeley Desktop as PDF distribution
mechanisms.
http://www.mendeley.com/
• New models of providing content that move from written documents,
e.g. the OpenCalais-based DocumentCloud.
http://www.documentcloud.org/home
• Textbook rental schemes, both physical and electronic,
e.g. Amazon offers electronic textbook rental at up to 80% off the cost of
purchasing a textbook.
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/amazon-offers-us-students-textbook-rental.html
Distribution models for written material are poised to change as profoundly
as in the music industry (Spotify. Last.fm, Pandora) and the film industry
(Hulu, Netflix).
Further, there is evidence that savvy but far less than copyright-respecting
students and staff are using content sharing sites that completely ignore
copyright concerns and side-step the library.
E.g. http://www.textbooktorrents.com
1
16
For example, Living Books about Life provide an interesting collection of OER texts.
http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/
Interestingly, in side-stepping library distribution mechanisms, the statistics
for one month’s use of Edina’s OpenURL Router includes 11.7% of traffic
going to Mendeley, neither a library nor a publisher, but rather a PDF-sharing
and academic activity centered social network.
Figure 7
OpenURL Router traffic, April 2011
Central column is percentage traffic
http://hedtek.com/2011/playing-with-openurl-router-data/
The effect of changes in publishing and distribution models is unknown;
while there appear to be dangers to libraries, there also may be
opportunities that libraries can leverage, for example, increased provision
of electronic textbooks, possibly via pools of short loan textbooks as well as
standard loan period loans.
Whatever opportunities are leveraged, the nature of library systems will
need to change to support new activities by their users.
17
2.4 The rise of e-books
While disruption in publishing and distribution models is discussed above,
the role of e-books is worth specific mention. E-books are increasingly
saturating the market; in the last year Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s
volume sales of e-books have been larger than hardcopy books, and the
Association of American publishers reports, for the year, an overall rise in
sales of 168% (to £100M p.a.) of e-books, and a decline in sales of 25% (to
£270M p.a.) for hardcopy books.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2011/04/
bucking_the_e-book_trend.html
There is currently uncertainty regarding whether students will take to
e-books. Our small ethnographic survey revealed resistance; the students
we interviewed like paper as a medium, in part because of the easy note and
annotation possibilities offered by paper and in part, we suspect, because
those surveyed were not familiar as yet with the possibilities of tablets and
e-book readers, including their (future) possibilities for single-user and social
annotations.
We, however, have no uncertainty: A combination of economic factors and
the rise of increasingly sophisticated note taking mechanisms will, we judge,
drive students to e-book versions of textbooks.
Signs of future change are already here, e.g.:
• As above, Amazon has announced a Kindle textbook rental with up to
80% savings over hardcopy purchase, and importantly the ability to
access notes made on kindle.amazon.com after the rental period is over.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000702481
• Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and California State University (CSU) have
entered into an agreement where CSU uses NPG’s “Principles of Biology”
and its interactive lessons at a cost of $49 per student, considerably less
than a comparable non-interactive textbook.
http://www.nature.com/nature_education/biology.html
• The CSU view on this is revolutionary: “Our partnership with NPG is
intended not just to develop a new kind of textbook, but to transform
the traditional relationship between universities and textbook publishers.
The CSU and NPG have interacted from the outset, not as producer and
consumer, but as partners jointly designing a publishing model that
satisfies the long-term needs of both kinds of organizations. The resulting
set of product features, pricing, rights and permissions, and distribution
options is an ideal foundation for academic institutions moving forward
and a considerable advance over traditional models.”
http://betanews.com/2011/05/24/california-state-university-opts-for-49-e-book-overexpensive-biology-textbook/
18
Library responses to the growth of e-books and e-books as textbooks could
be varied, including:
• Purchasing large numbers of e-textbooks and making them available
through their own systems, and potentially their own reader apps that
connect with other university systems including VLEs.
• Supplying e-textbooks, but using publisher facilities to handle
downloads and loans to students.
• Joining academic versions of schemes akin to Amazon’s Kindle Library
Lending (that will allow Kindle owners to borrow Kindle e-books from
over 11,000 US libraries).
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1552678
• Simply leaving the general-purpose textbook loan market.
19
2.5 Open Educational Resources
A potential disruption that may affect library content is offered by the Open
Educational Resources (OER) movement. Joi Ito, interviewed for JISC Inform,
points to disruption
How disruptive will open innovation be to education? What are the global
implications?
I’d say it’s going to be very disruptive. We’re moving from a world where
an introductory textbook costs several hundred dollars and weighs
several kilos to one where that same book can be treated as a scaffold,
built entirely from free content for a few thousand dollars in curation
costs, distributed around the world instantly at zero additional cost,
translated, and mashed up into a local context without additional
permission. Globally, there are a lot of smart people out there who could
not participate in the old systems, and the digital commons lets them in.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/inform/inform31/Jol-Ito-Education.html April 7, 2010
This speaks to changes that reach beyond the effects of technology and its
use, to emphasise that library user experience is properly situated in user
participation in socio-technical systems, where people use technology as an
inherent part of changing social organisation; in this case for the production
and consumption of educational materials.
20
2.6 Reading, social environments,
annotation and learning
Meaningful learning activities occur when learners engage in social activity
in support of their learning. Can libraries assist in this process by making
content into a focus for social learning activities?
Hellman discusses the use of biblio-social-objects, where readers annotate
these objects (containing e-books, e-journal papers, PDFs, etc) with
questions, answers, and comments and use them to discover and engage
with other users. Hellman provides as examples: Copia, Mongoliad, Medeley,
LibraryThing; discusses tight and loose coupling between bibliographic
objects, reader software and annotation systems; network vs object first
collaboration; and the centrality of bibliographic work-level descriptions in
enabling annotations.
http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/
biblio-social-objects-copia-mendeley-librarything-and-mongoliad-by-eric-hellman
In relation to this, there is encouraging progress on open annotation
standards. The necessity for this is made clear by openannotation.org:
“The importance of annotating as a scholarly practice coupled with
the real-world limitations of existing practices and tools supporting
annotation of digital content has had a retarding effect on the growth of
digital scholarship and the level of digital resource use by scholars.
http://www.openannotation.org/
However, there are major impediments to this. There is clear evidence that,
whatever the assessment regime, students orient to ‘marks’ rather than
to the overall learning experience. They do not share resources or assist
each other simply because they are instructed to do so. They are, however,
likely to engage in more informal collaborations, based around friendship
networks, in order to share discoveries, highlight what they have found, and
so on. Were there to be library-hosted systems that enabled social activities
to support learning around bibliographic objects in holdings, including
e-textbooks, the question of contributions would be moot unless, of course,
pedagogic practice changed appropriately and the media with which to
share discoveries appealed to students.
Unfortunately, the UK has no service that supplies unique work-level
identifiers and this lack would demand local solution for effective
annotations to take place, say within an educational institution.
21
3 Placing libUX on a firm foundation
In order to improve users’ experience of libraries through broad libUX
improvements there are four essential changes:
• Development of libUX roles within libraries. From interactions with library
professionals, we observe that there is no established and widespread
libUX role.
• Provision of design training for libUX professionals that emphasises that
libUX is far more than just ‘low-level’ system design, and properly includes
a broader consideration of the scope and functionality of library systems.
• Adoption of sound development methods. Here we include, and
promote foremost, understanding library users and their behaviours
both in the library and in the wider systems that they engage in,
including HE pedagogic systems.
• Funding. The game has changed. The business of library systems
is suddenly no longer the development of OPACs and retrograde
search facilities, but something much larger than that, within a highly
competitive commercial Web environment. Because of this changing
(and already changed) landscape in which libraries must exist, major
investment is now needed.
22
4 Conclusions
Institutional libraries are in a position that is privileged: They are tasked with
supplying and enriching information resources and services for learning,
teaching and research in their institution. This gives institutional libraries
both legitimacy and focus in pursuing these activities. However, the larger
ecosystem within which libraries exist is changing in threatening ways: Not
only technologically, but also in respect of increased user expectations and
greater financial constraints.
These circumstances demand some exceptional footwork in the
transformation of library systems to provide a compelling experience for
future learners. In the near term, subject to validation with users, fruitful
areas for exploitation appear to be:
• Exploitation of smartphone technology.
• Exploitation of recommender technology.
• Co-option of users’ natural habitats on the Web.
• Preparing for the changes that will be wrought by tablets and the
massification of electronic content and OER.
Of these, the first two present easy wins. However, in order to make progress
with any of the above, work with library users is essential. In our considered
opinion this work must include the performance of ethnographic studies for
design purposes and the involvement of users in interactive system design
and formative evaluation of developing systems.
To provide a compelling (or even a reasonable quality) user experience,
libraries need to realign the business of how they approach systems
development. Notably, there is no such person as a libUX professional in UK
HE libraries. This needs to change.
23
Ethnographic survey
A student perspective
on the constraints and affordances of e-libraries
In order to ascertain what student experiences of e-facilities in relation
to library provision are and might be, we undertook some small-scale
interviews. In two instances these were done as focus groups, and in two
other cases with individuals. Interviews were throughout unstructured so as
to allow participants to express views in a complete and thorough way.
The groups of participants were selected in accordance with a background
assumption; that there would be different needs displayed at different
periods during the educational career. For this reason, a group of late
stage ‘A’ level students were selected and interviewed (from a variety of
disciplinary backgrounds including Science, Maths, Foreign Languages,
English, History and Sociology) collectively (6 in all); secondly a group of
3rd year undergraduates (6 in all), all from various Humanities backgrounds
were interviewed collectively, and thirdly two postgraduate students (both
undertaking PhD research and both doing part-time teaching as part of their
work) were interviewed individually.
In all cases, opportunity samples were used. There can be no great claim to
representativeness for obvious reasons, notably the small sample and the
limited range of disciplines in the case of undergraduate and postgraduate
students. Nevertheless the results are at least indicative of a number of
issues.
It should be evident that e-libraries present a number of affordances that
are not possible with paper- based resources, not least that resources can
be accessed at any time and from (in principle) any location. Nevertheless, if
such resources are to be effectively realized, at least on the evidence of our
feedback, there are a number of issues to contend with.
1 There is a fashionable assumption, brought about by texts like those of
Tapscott on ‘Digital Natives’ and so on, that the current generation will
adapt easily and naturally to electronic environments of whatever kind.
That this will be unproblematic is unlikely. As our school leavers informed
us, very few of them (one in our sample) have much use for libraries at all
at this stage of their careers. They are, in their own terms ‘spoon fed’ and
tend to rely on a very small number of standard texts, or on specifically
targeted resources produced by teachers. Our sample had little or not
idea of what ‘reading’ at university is, and have no experience of reading
original sources. Surprisingly, although all are familiar with Google and, to
some degree, other search engines, their searching tends to be of a very
specific and targeted kind. Put differently, no one in our sample showed
any awareness of ‘browsing’ strategies. Again, somewhat to our surprise
24
– and despite the fact that university libraries universally ‘train’ or induct
students when they arrive in the university – students in our sample
reported that it was in their 2nd and often 3rd year that they became
comfortable with library facilities.
2 Neither they nor current university students are up to speed with Kindles,
Sony E-readers etc. This will no doubt change fairly quickly but brings
with it another problem with respect to the ‘digital divide’. It is unlikely
that all students will be equipped with readers in the near future and this
clearly implicates E- libraries in providing some E-reading facilities. Even
if they do, however, some of the anytime, anyplace advantages of the
e-library are lost to some students, failing a policy on loan provision or
similar scheme.
3 There is a current resistance to reading anything lengthy on screen, but
the range of devices used by the sample of students was limited. Also
surprising, although this may change quite quickly, only one of them
had any experience of reading using a device such as a Kindle or Sony
Reader, and none had ever used a mobile phone to look up academic
information. All expressed a preference for reading paper- based
resources rather than on screen. Students made reference to the way
their eyes got tired when reading online, or to the problem of a very
small screen interface if they were using mobile phones. Comments such
as ‘it makes my eyes hurt after a while’ were common. It is a feature of
the Web, arguably, that the amount of reading material consumed in any
one go is now reduced. Such factors meant that, if they were using any
of the devices available to them to read e-resources, students said that
such reading would be brief and they would be more likely to use mobile
devices to peruse catalogues or to ‘scan’ for material but not to read
substantially.
4 Students admit to particular policies in respect of searching for
appropriate material. Whilst our schoolchildren seldom did online
searches for academic material, our students did so regularly.
Their policies for the most part consisted of reliance on staff
provision of reading lists allied to the use of Wikipedia (despite their
acknowledgement that, in the humanities at least, they were discouraged
from doing so) as a first port of call. Third year students in our sample
claimed that they had learned strategies associated with firstly accessing
‘simple’ resources such as Wikipedia, then doing catalogue searches
for reading list material, in the transition from the 1st year of their
university careers. This was quite surprising. Most suggested that they
had had considerable difficulty adjusting to reading requirements and
had only really learned to do so from their second year onwards. They
also distinguished between books and other material (notably journal
articles). Again, it was surprising to have even able 3rd year students
comment on the difficulty they had in using services such as Athens.
The main reason given for this seemed to be the varying structure of
the portals used by commercial interests. In point of fact, it seems that
students were aware of various illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing services
25
which included E-books but were unlikely to use them because they
found the procedures they needed to follow too troublesome (surprising
given their willingness to use other peer-to-peer networks). There was
one exception - see below.
5 A seldom remarked upon issue has to do with the embedding of
resources in pedagogy. Where students are very familiar with the use
of readings and similar paper- based resources, they showed very little
awareness of the possibilities inherent in using, for instance, laptops or
mobile phones in class to access resources. More problematically, two
students reported that they had been actively prevented from doing
so by staff. As one said, ‘I tried looking up a book in the library from my
mobile in a seminar and she told me off! She wouldn’t believe me when I
told her I was looking up the catalogue. She thought I was on Facebook’.
While this may seem a trivial observation, it is not. If anytime, anywhere
resources are to become a reality it will require significant changes
in pedagogic practices. In our sample, students had never seen staff
access a library catalogue or other in-depth reading resource to assist
in teaching. Web-based resources were, when used at all, normally only
used for illustrative purposes or in order to demonstrate navigation. This
requires considerable additional research – it suggests that effective use
of E- libraries will rely on training of academic staff as much as students in
their appropriate use.
6 Cut and pasting; group work; highlighting are problematic for
e-resources. Again, it was slightly surprising to hear students say that
they actually liked to read books where text had been ‘marked up’ in
pencil by other students. As one said, ‘it’s useful. It gives you an idea of
what someone else thinks are the important bits.’ Given that a significant
part of university work involves group assessment, there is an issue
about whether online resources are editable or not. Some evidently
are not since students expressed some dissatisfaction over their ability
to highlight, annotate, cut and paste, etc some kinds of PDF and other
electronic file. Although this is not true in every instance, it does highlight
a current issue in relation to e-documents, which is that they come in a
large number of different formats. Postgraduate students in particular,
who seems to be much more aware of the existence of e-resources,
comment on the problems involved in the vast array of file types. There
are several versions of PDF file, some editable and some not; DJVU
files; CBR files (sometimes used for visual materials, and derived from
E-comics); EPUB files and HTML files to mention a few. In some cases, the
use of these files requires specific readers and students are not always
well- equipped for accessing and downloading the software they need.
Transferring certain kinds of file on to standard e-readers seems to
sometimes pose difficulties: ‘I have a Kindle and it’s great, but sometimes
PDF files have to be turned into MOBI files so you can read them, and
sometimes you have to do things like adjust screen fit and orientation.
It’s not that difficult, but you’ve got to want to do it.” This kind of issue will
require a response from e-libraries.
26
7 There is some serious resentment about the state of existing university
libraries. Although university libraries are, for the most part, good at
providing up-to-date and relevant resources, the behavior of students
means that there are seldom enough paper-based resources available at
relevant times. Allied to this, library policies in respect of ‘short term’ loans
and so on are a cause of resentment, as are the fines associated with
this. E-resources, to a degree, make a difference here since they should
obviate the need for short-term loans.
8 There is a wide disparity between those who can cope and those who
can’t. Whilst more able students quickly adapt to new resources and,
with some guidance, can use E-resources with a degree of facility, others
cannot. Some students report their confusion with regard to access
protocols, software requirements and so on.
9 Problems for postgraduate students are distinctive. They, of course,
cannot rely on the kinds of search strategy adopted by undergraduates
since they are seldom if ever, given reading lists that are directly
relevant to their research interests. This means they rely on browsing
and recommendation to a much greater degree. Browsing e-resources,
they claim, is considerably more difficult than browsing shelves. The
two postgraduate students we interviewed here remarked on their ‘next
door’ policy. Implicitly relying on Dewey classification, they would search
shelves for material adjacent to books they were already familiar with.
Currently, that kind of policy would be impossible with e-libraries and
necessitates some thought appropriate indexing systems.
10Although searching strategies have changed a great deal, students are
not always effective in their use of search-engines. There are doubts as to
the competence of some of the student cohort in performing searches.
Few students in our ethnographic study ever used advanced search
capabilities.
11There is evidence that the students have become more adept users of
Google Scholar and Google Books, although their use of the functionality
supplied these services is limited. Google Books, in particular, is
frequently used, mostly to access a shortened version of whole texts.
None of the students had used it to maintain a personal library of
resources, although this functionality is available.
12Indexing of resources matters. Students (but postgraduate students in
particular) all made reference to the need for an easy-to-use and intuitive
‘keyword’ system that would allow them to judge whether e-resources
are relevant to their needs or not. For the most part, this can done quickly
and easily when paper-based resources are used. e-resources, however,
have to be downloaded before such judgments can be made. This can
add an overhead in terms of time. In discussion around e-resources
it became apparent that students trust material that is selected by a
member of staff, where the material is presented in easy ways to identify
topics. This topicalisation is something the students would strongly
favour.
27
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge and thank the following:
JISC and SCONUL for funding this work.
SCONUL, Ann Rossiter and Sonya White supplied
the SCONUL statistics that form the basis of Figure 1.
The main document benefited from
the discussions with and input from
David Kay, Graham Daniels, James Kay and Ken Chad.
Helpful commentary on draft versions was supplied by
Ann Rossiter, Ben Showers, David Kay and Graham Daniels.
28
Authors
Dr Mark van Harmelen is the Director of Hedtek Ltd, both a
strategy consultancy and a software house that develops
highly usable web-based services, including services for
libraries. Mark is also an Honorary Research Fellow in the
University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science.
Previously Mark has lectured and consulted broadly in
industry, been a Senior Researcher for Matushita Electric in
Japan, and a South African Cabinet appointee tasked with
formulating the establishment of the Meraka Institute in
South Africa.
Dr Dave Randall is the Director of Unique Adequacy Ltd, a
research consultancy specialising in ethnographic services
and currently working with Microsoft Research and Hitachi.
Dave was previously a Principal Lecturer in Sociology at
Manchester Metropolitan University. He retains a visiting
status there, and is a visiting professor at the University of
Siegen, Germany. Dave is the author or co-author of more
than one hundred papers on the relationship between
ethnography and technical and organisational innovation,
and several books on the area, including ‘Fieldwork for
Design’.
Licence
libUX: Improving User Experience in Libraries within the
Higher Education Sector is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence.
29