Let's turn to our first new topic in this our third year of existence -- "Fitting Systems to Users." Dave Drummond, our guest editor, has been director of the Safety Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for six years. He has 30 years experience as manager, professional, and faculty member in several research universities. His library experience comes as a user in a cross-disciplinary field.
Dave has a master's and Ph.D. degree in environmental health from the University of Minnesota and an undergraduate degree in biology from Cal Tech. He is board certified in comprehensive practice of industrial hygiene. He maintains professional interests in management, laboratory ventilation, science facilities, and computer applications. Outside of work he enjoys distance bicycling (with a helmet), music and being outdoors. By the way, he freely applies his comments on professional service units to his own field.
Please join us in a discussion of "Fitting Systems to Users."
A discussion of "Fitting Systems to Users" has to start from the paradigm that users know what they want and their wants are important. Our job is to provide the best service, judged from the user's viewpoint. We must also provide service that meets high ethical standards. The move to a "user-centered" or "customer-centered" viewpoint has been difficult for many of us; nonetheless, let's assume it has happened.
Some questions to consider based on your knowledge of user wants:
Feel free to focus on any aspect of library services. By the way, answers that require a lot of new budget, except perhaps for seed money, are discouraged -- this is the real world, after all.
This discussion may build, in part, on an earlier discussion "Surveying User Needs: Do We Really Want To Know?" The discussion is available for review at http://www.si.umich.edu/cristaled/postings/V35.html.
Cheers!
I want to make two short points.
The first is simply that "fitting the user" becomes simpler as the users needs are better expressed and content localized. I once ran a corporate R&D library for Masonite Corporation, which made heavy use of database searching in the subjects of organic chemistry and wood/paper technology. These were, relatively, narrow concerns and made it, again relatively, easy to focus on a particular concept of mission. I now run a public library, where the cluster of needs is hardly as precise (nor, truth be told, as vocal since the users frequently cannot express what they want).
This calls into question the paradigm that the user knows what he wants. The question may be "what should be available for mission X" rather than "what do folks think they want in order to accomplish mission X' in those cases where the mission is poorly described or, perhaps, fluid.
The second point is based on my knowledge of user needs (not necessarily perceived wants). This is that many of us need access to subject expertise in order to satisfy the user whose request cannot be filled at the local level because it is poorly understood (either by the user or the librarian). This is not access to larger collections (God knows we are all getting that, and to spare) but to a person who can do a reference interview that is beyond the competence of local staff.
From the librarian perspective, this issue of satisfying user information needs is very frustrating. Many times reference librarians, on the front line of customer service, often encounter users who truly do not know what they want or at least cannot adequately articulate what they need. The reference librarian's skill at interviewing is really tested in these situations. It is also frustrating because the library staff never really know when users are satisfied. Often, it is later in the day when the user realizes all the information is in place or there is still a gap; this realization can often come away from the library place. I think the trend toward scheduling the librarian's time as in an interview for a term-paper topic helps fill the satisfaction gap; considering the user as an ongoing client is an important first step in gaining better understanding of user satisfaction.
The reference experience prompts library directors to remind staff that we not only must provide what the user wants but also lead them to consider new sources and new means of satisfying their own needs. Leadership is the key here. And often users will tell us that they do want leadership. The challenge in this age of information is for librarians to show their leadership skills and raise the standard in satisfying user information needs.
In terms of system improvements my best guess here is that this area is where users want the professionals to show leadership. Often insightful users will point out subtle improvements to existing online systems (database interfaces, etc.), but on the whole they want librarians to deliver systems that work best for the them. The user will take the new systems and use it according to how it should work based on the instruction the librarian provides. After some experience, they will start to suggest improvements. Most users, I believe, also have a high tolerance for bad systems, i.e., something is almost always better than nothing. Again, librarians gain stature when they prove they can deliver just what the user wants before they have to ask for it. I think this is just human nature -- we are always pleasantly surprised when someone gives us what we are thinking -- but it is important to constantly learn from the user what is important to them, and we need to learn anyway we can. We just have to keep reminding ourselves to be open in attitude and mindset about the users' perspective.
Being open to users reminds me also of the need to support research in how users use information. Librarianship is an applied profession, but we need research to give us evidence on how best to improve our systems.
I hope this opinion contributes to the discussion.
There are today numerous Internet Web sites where search engines, library catalogs, reference sites, E-mail addresses and lists have been gathered together with a single interface. To many librarians, and certainly to many users, this is a wonderful thing. Yet other librarians worry about becoming too invisible. Will they still fund us if they don't have to physically walk in our doors?
If we are truly service-oriented, as we say we are, is it not a violation of our high ethical standards to refuse to provide a service (assuming we have the funding, staffing and technical know-how to do so) out of fear that "we won't be needed anymore?" If librarians as we know it today (or perhaps yesterday) become obsolete, maybe that means we will evolve into something else in response to user needs, rather than ceasing to exist. We already are evolving, and it will be up to us whether we will still be called librarians when that evolution is completed. The concept of a librarian even twenty years ago was different from a librarian in Melvil Dewey's day. And the world is changing that much faster. Still, the day of not needing to walk in our doors is a long way off. What do we fear?
If we truly desire to be responsive to user needs -- to serve -- we must be prepared to go wherever that takes us. We must ask ourselves those questions that Dr. Drummond brings up: what systems should be merged, what systems should be eliminated?
Perhaps we have met the system improvement "and he is us."
I think our discussion of "fitting systems with users" involves two aspects: improving interface design and guiding users in fitting their needs to the appropriate system. As information professionals, we must keep abreast of technological development, specifically in interface design, and make an effort to provide database systems that take into account user perspectives. Unfortunately institutions cannot always provide state of the art systems because of budgetary constraints. However, librarians' awareness of technological developments leads to recognition of the shortcomings in imperfect systems. Knowing these shortcoming, librarians can develop good teaching techniques to ease the communication gap between users and imperfect interfaces.
As systems become more consistent, users will no longer need as much help in interface manipulation, but the librarian's role as information intermediary remains. Librarians and other information specialists play an important role in matching user needs with the most appropriate system for a specific need. Even advanced researches can easily get lost in today highly competitive database marketplace. Clearly no medium fits every information need. We should not confuse a librarian's professional knowledge with arrogance. Users may know what they want, but that does not necessarily translate into knowing the availability and capability of those resources which can best fulfill their needs.
Virtual, digital or electronic publication types comprise discussion lists, newsgroups and ejournals but also "electronic books", conceived as hyperlinked fragments of knowledge. The sector of these "dematerialized" publications is expanding very fast and offers lots of opportunities to customer-centered information professionals. Besides systems development, user teaching and navigation or retrieval support, one could imagine for instance:
But if we keep abreast with new developments, combined with a discriminating glance on them, we have the real chance to maintain, or to earn even more, professional legitimacy in the assumed "electronic age."
Participation this week has run to quality over quantity. I'd like to pick up on several thoughts and invite others to join in.
One thread is the question whether customers really know what they want. This is where we all have to watch out for professional arrogance. It is true that no customer walked into a store around 1970 and asked for a pocket calculator; that, like the Sony Walkman was a revolutionary product that succeeded. The failures never get out of test markets.
Nor did customers walk into Toyota dealers and ask for a Lexus. But market researchers could study what people liked and disliked about Mercedes, Cadillac, etc. Engineers with a clean slate could evolve a car with all the good and none of the bad. Why can't librarians do the same for library services? Then use organizational clout to make it happen?
Hold that thought for a moment and consider another customer-oriented issue.
Does McDonald's have better food? Probably not. Does Wal-Mart succeed only because of low prices? If so, why doesn't Crazy Charlie's Warehouse Outlet win the day?
Franchises flourish because first, they identify a product and a standard of service that people want. Second, they deliver the same standard of product and service everywhere, everyday. Conclusion: People will sacrifice a bit of quality to avoid the possibility of feeling cheated. People want reliability more than perfection.
How does these thoughts apply to library operations? Customers can define output quality with no knowledge of what goes into a product. They will accept impersonal service, even reduced quality, to get reliability.
If true, the first challenge of the librarian is to identify what the customer wants. The second challenge is to deliver predictable results in a predictable time in a form that satisfies the customer.
Bob Watson mentioned the problem of customer interviews in libraries. Health Maintenance Organizations now operate telephone triage centers that advise patients during nights and weekends whether to seek immediate care or wait until the next day. They use structured interviews with standardized questions and decision trees to gather information and make decisions. Is this model adaptable to libraries?
Another thread of discussion is that work is changing and an implied fear that librarians may not be needed. A half truth! Work changes for nearly all of us. Remember the supermarket clerk who could run a cash register like Artur Rubenstein on a Steinway? In the day of scanners and warehouse stores, those talents are no longer needed but the clerks are still there--and about as well paid in relative terms.
Who but a librarian can manage a collection, see that the catalog is current, train line workers, test new tools, solve the really tough user requests, etc? Who but a librarian should manage customer service?
Let the debate continue!
A recent Harvard Business Review article postulated that customers do not want their privacy as much as they want their privacy valued. Customers, then, seem to be willing to provide some information about themselves and their habits in order to receive products and services which add value to their lives. Obviously we can see this working in the private sector.
We need to find ways to collect customer information in library settings without compromising ethical and legal issues regarding privacy and confidentiality. The use of integrated management systems in libraries allows for the manipulation of tremendous amounts of data and an unprecedented potential for efficiently differentiating and customizing our products and services to meet the needs of our constituencies. We need to take advantage of available resources and develop new uses of existing resources to collect, control, and use information. In addition, we need to customize our services at the level of the individual, bringing awareness of our services outside the library and into the homes of our consumers.
To do this, we need to think differently about the information we collect. Realizing that their may be legal ramifications of using specific types of information in certain ways, we need to adopt the concept similar to that of proprietary consumer information -- not to sell -- but to use strategically in the creation of new products and services.
Mr. Drummond raises some interesting issues, but we cannot think that quality can be sacrificed for reliability. A recent Wall Street Journal article actually reported on fundamental changes to the McDonald's hamburger because quality was a major factor for a diminishing market share. How did they know -- customer information.
I began studying library science in 1991, and find this an exciting time for the field, primarily because we are entering an era of competition -- we are no longer a secure information "monopoly." But this also means a change in focus -- an outward change in focus. This is something we have given lip service to, but have we really faced the challenge? Library service has depended on its reliability -- it's always there when you need it. However, quality and differentiation are key strategic factors in a competitive environment. How are we faring there (and how can we do better)? I think we need more information.
The essence of determining what customers want is to ask them what they want, and then deliver it to them (when they want it, at a price they can afford).
Did your customers tell you that they wanted to be taught how to use your system? Did you really ask them?
I transferred today from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award conference to the ALISE conference in Washington, D.C. My ears are ringing with stories of businesses which succeeded, and made radical changes to their services because they actually found out what their customers wanted, and provided it.
The problem, of course, is that the customer may say (s)he wants something other than what we are providing now. And then we'd have to do something about it. :-)
As it happens, I know a little something about these triage centers since my wife, an RN, works a phone at Access Health -- the nation's largest.
It is important to realize that health is such an important issue that the people manning the phones are professionals, RNs. In this case the questions asked at the low level decision tree are made by well trained personnel, with referrals made as needed to more highly trained personnel (doctors) on an as-needed basis.
The key here, though, lies in realizing that the decision tree only works because the nurse can ask probing questions (like, how much does it hurt?) and coax out something proximate to truth.
(One might say that a problem for the library profession is that no one gets sued for giving out the wrong answer. At what point do we insist that a professional, rather than a casual student, ask the questions needed to work a decision tree?)
It is also important to understand that the nurse is required to refer the individual to a doctor at many points on the decision tree. This doctor then, acting with the patient, has another set of decision trees to navigate (some internalized, others available as "expert systems"). The process, at this point, become highly customized -- but this was always an implicate possibility imbedded in the assumptions of the process.
The original menu choices branch to extreme complexity due to the subject nature. I'd argue that the subject matters of librarianship (as a profession dealing with knowledge, not just with their packaging) are even more complex.
Thus, I see the telephone triage model as useful -- but only within the context of making a very complex subject more cost efficient. There's no limited menu here!
A very interesting discussion to date, and very worthwhile.
So, if we survey the customers and find out they (some of them) want:
Or, aren't we really discussing a mix of what the customer appears to need, says s/he wants, and what we perceive to be our moral/ethical/ professional role? And, consider the business literature pointing out that many very successful companies ignored market surveys to produce a new product (which met an unperceived need), such as the Walkman, or video games. And, what about needs that were invented to sell products, such as most personal hygiene products (cf. King C. Gillette and the safety razor).
The problem with the previous posting that customers really want to be taught how to get their own information, is that some do, some don't, and many have never given the issue any thought at all (i.e., their perception of their information need and of the library does not include the possibility that they could do it themselves and that the library could teach them). And, some do need to learn how, some know how and don't want to, and others don't need to learn how, at least today.
So, librarians aren't just missionaries or teachers, but they also aren't just market driven, either. That's the interesting problem: we've tended to be the former, rather than the latter, but we maybe ought to be, to some degree, the latter as well. The trick is to find the "right" mix, no?
Adopting Bob Watson's viewpoint, I would like to give some hints regarding this issue:
A possible approach would be to identify, from the librarian's perspective, a set of crucial interview queries and to assemble them in one comprehensive standard decision tree.
A different solution which I prefer is to construct, departing from the users' presumptive interests, several complementary model situations simulating inquiring users. These models are expected to form the basis for training actual practicing and future librarians. The goal of such a training would be to induce into the librarians the capacity to interview the customers in a flexible, appropriate manner.
Students may be confronted with simulated reference interview situations within the context of examinations. Such models or case studies can also serve employers to test or assess candidates applying for a job.
My thanks to you for stimulating discussion. I learned much and also see parallels to discussions within other service professions, including my own.
One of the hardest things we do is to define quality. There is an old, probably apocryphal, story about the carpenter who put a perfect finish on the underside of his tables as well as on the top. When asked why he put a perfect finish where no-one would know the difference, he said, "Because I know the difference."
In today's market, the same carpenter would probably lose business because people wouldn't pay extra for something that doesn't make a difference. The ethics of a carpenter should demand solid structure (where the customer is a poor judge in the short term). The same ethics should probably allow a finished appearance in accordance with the customer's wants and pocketbook.
A hearty debate about these issues is a sign of a healthy profession because the answer is rarely clear. Strong devotees of customer-driven service also leave space to shape customer opinions. We call it "Teaching people to be good customers." Great companies teach people what to look for so people will know how great their product is.
I encourage you to strengthen your professional organizations. In my profession (industrial hygiene), strong organizations have helped us define ethical service and set standards (later adopted by governments) to protect workers against many hazards. We define measurement methods; manufacturers design measuring equipment that simplifies our work. Result -- We're more productive because we used our organizational clout.
CRISTAL-ED contributors have complained about difficult, inconsistent search tool interfaces and search syntax. Librarians are the major purchasers of the tools, so you have clout. You can probably achieve minimum standards if you can define them.
Thanks to Bob Watson for first-hand insights on telephone triage. Personal involvement is important, and often expected, but good triage is a path to better use of scarce resources. It may be enough to meet some needs.
In closing, thanks for the memories and for your stimulating discussion. I have enjoyed these two weeks and I will continue to enjoy CRISTAL-ED.
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