Comments on: If Your Patrons Continually Use Your Catalog the Wrong Way the Problem Isn’t Them, It’s You

By: sylvie

sylvie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:09:47 +0000

“Wow. Really.” YES!

and then we ask them “did you find what you were looking for?” and we don’t see how often they hear it as “were you smart enough to crack our code?” and so they say sure, and walk away (and often never come back…

By: On Weakness: Identify, Cope, Accept Mistakes Will Happen, Acknowledge, Correct, Apologize, Learn and Move On. | Librarian by Day

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:08:41 +0000

[...] should have been a happy occurrence for me, the retweeting of my blog post, instead felt like public humiliation. As soon as I’d posted it to Twitter I saw the error [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:12:54 +0000

Yes. Emphatically YES. OMG – YES!!!

By: freemoth

freemoth — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:47:38 +0000

“The ILS companies need to have conversations with our customers in order to provide better search capabilities.” This is very true and makes me think that these are not really our catalogues, they are our vendors catalogues …

By: Bobbi

Bobbi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:41:09 +0000

hey look at us agreeing for a change!

By: Bobbi

Bobbi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:40:40 +0000

Marie I agree we need to include an option for our “power users” It should be intuitive how to narrow or redefine or expand your search, unfortunately most often it is not.

By: Bobbi

Bobbi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:38:53 +0000

Winnie – I’m not saying the customer is always right (I actually don’t believe that)

You’re right we do have a wide range of skills sets among our patrons. We do need to adjust for that and it is possible. Google allows for the most basic search functions but there is also and advance option for people who want them.

If a tool isn’t achieving the task it was designed for the tool is a failure. In this case the catalog is designed to allow patrons to more easily locate items in our collection. If that is not happening something is wrong and it most likely isn’t your users.

As for other Italians thinking he makes a bad ambassador – (I think this reaction unlikely, but its hard to argue probability in this case) They aren’t his audience/client/customers. His primary concern is not what the few Italians who might come in to the store think. Others can and will always find fault with something, but if he is meeting his goal, providing something his customers can easily and successfully identify then he is succeeding.

By: Winnie

Winnie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:25:41 +0000

While I understand the issue your here – the customer is always right – the problem really is the variety in our patrons. Who do you adjust to? Imagine Italian imigrants/tourists walking into that man’s store and thinking he was a bad ambassador for their country because he didn’t know a vase from a glass.

By: Marie

Marie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:15:46 +0000

This is a great point, though we should keep in mind that the small percentage of users who *do* use the catalog to its full functionality are important. I think there is no reason that the catalog can’t function for all kinds of users: If the metadata is strong, the interface should be flexible enough for users to perform the kinds of searches that are most useful to them. Novice or casual users should be able to perform more complex searches, too, whether by a guide in the OPAC (I’m thinking in public libraries) or library instruction (in academic libraries).

By: mlibrarianus

mlibrarianus — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:53:58 +0000

Amen, sistah! I think the biggest problem in our profession is the assumption we KNOW what our customers want. Time and time again my communication with our customers have busted old myths we have about what they are doing with our catalog. The ILS companies need to have conversations with our customers in order to provide better search capabilities. I’ve yet to see a catalog that gives me the results I’m expecting. However, Google gets it right much more often. Hmm….now there is a thought (actually we did explore the idea of using Google Search with our catalog at one point).