This is my input to:
- The Frederick County Public Libraries (FCPL) 2023-2025 Three Year Plan, and
- An effort in an unnamed Virginia public library to "update and reinvigorate Technical Services"
It's a coincidence that these two things happened to drop at the same time. I'm able to address them both at the same time because my interest and focus in public libraries is in Technical Services. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure what is Technical Services and what is not. I'll be looking at:
- the online catalog
- the web site
- wayfinding and signage
When I need to refer to these three things in a bucket, I'll call the bucket "Non-interactive services", meaning services that don't entail interacting in person with a librarian.
What follows is just what I've been thinking about lately. I couldn't hope to be able to specifically identify the top two or three things that will drive change in technical services.
You can't do more with less. In fact, you probably can't do what you think you're doing now with the resources you think you're allocating to technical services. (In case it's not absolutely clear, "you" means a public library). You can only do more with more.
Library workers need to be unionized. This could help with a number of problems, including vocational awe, precarity [1], and various kinds of bias.
This note can be found online at https://github.com/lagbolt/library/blob/main/TechServices.md
The license is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Graeme Williams
Las Vegas, NV & Frederick, MD
[email protected]
github.com/lagbolt
There are three threads running through this note:
- different organizations within the library should work together
- the quality and ease of service a patron experiences shouldn't depend on whether they interact in person with a librarian; it shouldn't depend on whether they're visiting the building or the web site
- patrons should be educated in using library resources, specifically the catalog
This last comes down to teaching patrons to fish in addition to giving them fish.
More than a tag line, every campaign needs a button. I suggest two:
- It takes a Library
- Together We Can
I like the second a bit better than the first since it brings in the community as well as the library — as long as you remember that different parts of the library should "work together" as well as the library and the community.
I want to be very clear that Non-interactive Services, Technical Services, are services. Let's look at some ways patrons use the library:
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A patron goes to the web site or catalog and borrows e-media;
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A patron goes to the library and borrows an item without interacting with a librarian;
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A patron attends a non-library event at the library;
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A patron sees a tweet or email message or display in the library and adds a new book to their TBR list;
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Based on something a friend says, a patron checks the catalog and discovers a new book by a favorite author.
If you regard non-interactive services as no less than interactive services — and I do — you have to treat non-interactive services as self-sufficient. "If you have a question, ask a librarian" undercuts that commitment by turning a non-interactive service into an interactive service. Committing to non-interactive services staying non-interactive has obvious implications for, e.g., online documentation or signage.
Here's a brain dump, or if you're inclined to be charitable, a mind map:
I'm going to talk about the elements in the upper left of the diagram before we jump into the deep end of the catalog.
I hope we can agree that the web site is a service. We just have to figure how to improve it.
One speed bump is that "web site" means two different things. From the outside, it probably means "the library on the internet", which includes the catalog and calendar; from the inside it probably means "the thing our web site builder builds", excluding the catalog and calendar. For convenience, I'll use the latter meaning, but that's probably not how patrons think of it.
I'll give a small example of how these silos affect patrons using an imaginary site that combines features from a few different libraries and OPACs.
Because the Samuels Public Library [2] only has one location, the web site gives the telephone number and hours right on the front page. On the other hand, the Frederick County Public Libraries (FCPL) has multiple locations, so you have to navigate to a "Branches" page to see the hours of each branch. Suppose you could tell the FCPL web site which branch was your local branch, so it could display the hours on the front page.
The FCPL calendar allows you to choose which of the eight branches you want to see events for. Suppose you could tell the calendar which branch was your local branch, so it could display just events for that branch.
Some OPACs allow you to specify a branch where your holds will be delivered. BiblioCommons also indicates (e..g, in search results) when an item is available at your favorite branch(es).
It would be great if a patron could specify their local branch once and have it apply to all three of these cases. That this is manifestly impossible just underlines how separate the silos are. We'll take this limitation as a given, since here we are chasing the possible.
I won't have anything more to say about the calendar since I think it's a lost cause. I'm going to discuss the web site part of the web site here, and the catalog later.
I'm going to go through the FCPL Home Page row by row.
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The top row consists of a logo / home page button, a search box, and Help and My Account buttons;
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The second row is a menu bar with four buttons: Visit, Learn, Download and Participate;
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The third and fourth rows are six images of "What's New At Your Library";
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the fifth row (we're now below the fold) is a hero banner for the Building Bridges resource page. The banner consists of book cover images;
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the sixth and seventh rows are images for virtual events;
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the seventh row is a menu bar with four buttons: About, Account, Contact and "❤️ Support";
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the eighth row is a row of icons for social media, such as Facebook and Instagram.
I've described the front page in mind-numbing detail to make the point that even a simple web page like this one has quite a lot of complexity that has to be carefully wrangled. The challenge in using "soft" categories like "Visit" and "Learn" (as opposed to hard categories like "Branches" or "Digital Media") is that it's not always obvious what goes where. Actually, I think FCPL has a pretty good set of categories, but let's pick at it a little anyway.
Where does Inter-Library Loan go? It's under "Visit". Information about the Bookmobile? It's under "Visit". Newsletters? Ditto. These don't seem natural to me.
But it doesn't matter what I think, or how I would re-organize this menu bar. What matters is how easy the library patrons in Frederick find it — particularly new patrons, patrons that speak languages other than English, or patrons using screen readers. This is a UX/UI question that you might address using card sorting, for example. Whatever techniques you use to improve the patron experience on the web site, this is not a trivial amount of work, so it fits well within the context of a three-year plan.
Documentation is just any part of the web site where you're explaining how to do something. It's not easy; one reason it's prone to errors is because the writer can miss details.
For example, on the FCPL web site, the FAQ for "Changing the Pickup Location for Holds" sounds as though you can set a default location for holds. But you can't. The procedure described in the FAQ is for changing the pickup location for a single hold.
This is the sort of small error that can accumulate if nothing is done. I come from a computer science background with a spattering of software engineering, so I naturally think in terms of techniques like "pair programming", code reviews and dedicated testing time. It's possible that you can eliminate this kind of error from the web site with good intentions, but — depending on the quality you want to achieve — it might require process changes at a structural level.
For digita media, like Hoopla, libraries don't really attempt any documentation, just linking to the product's web site and help. That's unfortunate, in my opinion.
Suppose you have library cards at two different libraries. How does Hoopla handle that? How do you find out what to do? One important clue is that you need separate email addresses for the separate accounts, something that doesn't seem to be explained anywhere.
What if you move from one state to another? It turns out that this is "explained" in one of the Hoopla FAQs, if you can find it. Searching the Hoopla FAQs by "moving" yields nothing useful; you have to search on "moved" or "changing".
I don't want to beat on the Hoopla documentation; there's not a lot of point, but this is too good to miss: "However, operating systems do not always perfume this task well ..."
Libraries can wish that Hoopla had better documentation — or they can start writing it themselves.
It's no different with searching the catalog. As far as I can see, there's no documentation anywhere on searching the FCPL catalog, other than a couple of bullet points on the advanced search page.
I discovered, with a little luck followed by a little experimentation, that the FCPL OPAC has a whole undocumented query language which you can use in the search box. For example, you can type:
subject:oceans -title:oceans
into the search box and get all the books about oceans that don't contain "oceans" in the title. Better, you can search for:
(tortoise OR turtle) AND habitat
something you can't do on the Advanced Search Page.
On the Advanced Search Page, I believe you'd have to do two separate searches:
tortoise AND habitat
turtle AND habitat
and combine the results. It's too bad that none of this is described anywhere on the web site.
And I have so many more questions ... Does a title search search the title of short stories in an anthology? Does an author search search all the contributors to an item or just the "main" author? Does a subject search for "turtle habitat" find items with "turtle" and "habitat" in any subject heading, or the same subject heading?
With the same conclusion as before: Libraries can wait for TLC or Bibliocommons to write documentation on searching the catalog, or they can start writing it themselves.
In "landing pages" I include true landing pages like Bulding Bridges as well as child pages like Building Bridges - Adult Titles. Let's look at the latter.
There are 40 books on this page. It's a pretty good list, but the library probably has hundreds of similar books. For example, the list includes three cookbooks. By clicking through to each cookbook and clicking on subject headings, I found 35 Chinese, 27 African American, 22 African and 5 Philippine cookbooks.
Let's suppose we want to help patrons find these 86 extra cookbooks — assuming for the moment that they don't already know what to do. There are a couple of ways of enhancing the page to help patrons.
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Just add some text, "To find books similar to one listed, click on the book and then on the subject headings on the book page";
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The page could be re-organized into topics with links at the bottom of each topic, such as "Click here for more books about cooking".
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You could, with some JavaScript, add a pop-up which appears when the patron hovers over a book cover. (See the example below from Goodreads.) The pop-up could include a link to "Books like this".
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A simple enhancement would be to just add a link to a documentation page for searching the catalog.
I want to compare the page we've been looking at with a similar — but not identical — page on Goodreads. It's a page of forthcoming Fantasy and Sci-Fi books.
One thing to notice is that this page is obviously fresh. It's date of publication is noted, and the entries start with the current month.
Also, underneath each book cover there are two widgets: one for "I want to read this book" and one to rate the book after you've read it.
Finally, if you hover over a cover, you'll see a pop-up which includes clickable links for the author and title, a description of the book and in some cases a clickable link for a preview of the book.
Comparing the FCPL and Goodreads pages, it's clear that the Goodreads page is more active, with fresher content, inviting the user to interact with it. It also, incidentally, advertises a few key Goodreads features, like the ability to add books to lists and the ability to rate them.
What service does a web page provide? Is it limited to displaying some information, or can it teach patrons something. A page can be more than a display of cover images if it teaches patrons something about the catalog, even something as simple as a search. This really depends on what patrons already know about the catalog and what they would find useful to learn. That's obviously step one in any enhancement project.
Accessibility isn't anywhere in my diagram because it's everywhere.
In What Can A Body Do? [3] Sara Hendren makes the point that disability is a function of the built environment. That is, a person is disabled not as an intrinsic characteristic, but because the built environment has disabled them. The built environment naturally includes web sites.
Here's the FCPL home page:
The page has a lot of images. Some of the images include alt tags and some don't. Alt tags are needed for screen readers to "read" the image. By omitting alt tags, this web page has disabled patrons who use screen readers.
Don't do this! Every image on the web site, or in an email, tweet or post should include an alt tag. And the alt tag should include as much information as the image.
You can't make your web site accessible and then stop. Having an accessible site requires the sort of deliberate engineering and regular maintenance that I mentioned above.
A public library is not an e-commerce site. It doesn't have to worry about click-throughs and conversion rates. But it still makes sense to build the best possible web site (i) to provide the best possible service, and (ii) to reinforce the value of the library at budget time, or election time.
Critically, the web site is one particular channel for delivering non-interactive services.
When a new patron walks into a library, they may already be anxious, in a hurry, or nervous about their ability to communicate in English. They may not be comfortable approaching a librarian for help. Their experience finding what they want depends to a great extent on how clear the signage is in the library.
Even a patron who has been to the library many times may be lost finding a new part of the collection, such as biographies or large print non-fiction.
In effect, the building is providing — or not providing — a navigation service.
Mark Aaron Polger has written a book on signage called Library Signage and Wayfinding Design which you can buy from ALA. My general comments on signage, and specific comments on the book, can be found here.
I've reviewed the wayfinding and signage at a number of branches of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District. My review can be found here
I'm going to show a couple of examples from the Frederick County Public Libraries system, specifically the central, C. Burr Artz branch. I'm showing these examples because I happened upon them, not because either the branch or the system is particularly weak in some way.
The shelving upstairs in the library is laid out sensibly, and the signage is clear. The signs are color-coded: one color for fiction and one for non-fiction. And then there's this sign:
One side of this shelf holds the beginning (AA-BA) of the fiction section. The other side of the shelf holds Large Print Biography, Large Print Non-Fiction, and the end (ST ??) of the Large Print Fiction section. (By the way, you can click on the image to see the full-size version.)
The person who wrote this sign tried to get all this information into a sign that's exactly the same size as all the other signs. It's too much! In addition to simply making the sign bigger, it probably needs a graphic designer to do something clever.
Most of the shelves are perpendicular to the main aisle, so the signs on the ends of the shelves are quite visible, like the one I jsut showed. On the other hand, the Science Fiction shelves are against the wall on the right, parallel to the aisle. Here's one of the signs for Science Fiction:
Can you see the sign? Nor can I. Let's zoom in:
The problem is that this sign, like all the others, has been placed on the end of the shelf. There's almost nowhere along the central aisle where this sign is readable.
What's missing is a sign at what Polger calls a "bump point", a place where the patron has to be "bumped" in the right direction.
Signage needs maintenance, something that Polger mentions but I don't think stresses enough. You can assign signage maintenance to someone, but more important is noticing problems — or bug reporting, if you like — something that all staff should be involved in.
What use is the catalog?
If the catalog has value, it will add value whenever the collection is relevant to another library activity. The activity doesn't even need to be book related. If a local potter is doing a pottery demonstration, the promotional materials could include a QR code to search the catalog for materials on pottery.
There are three threads running through this section:
- using other library functions to promote the catalog
- using the catalog to enhance other library functions
- using other library functions to drive catalog enhancements
Let me start off with a reductio ad absurdum: Libraries put a lot of effort into informing patrons about different library services and events, and none into how to use advanced search. What would it look like if the entire library was helping people engage with the catalog?
Let's start off with two places where that might happen: social media and readers advisory.
I think it's critical to give up the idea that the purpose of social media is just to support programming. Social media is a channel to patrons (and non-patrons!) to support all of the library's activities, including technical services.
Look at this tweet. It recommends Alice Walker's The Color Purple without a link to the catalog. (Also, the image has no alt tag.)
A variation is to promote a list of books, like this LVCCLD tweet for AAPI Heritage Month, which leads to a list of books in the catalog, but doesn't provide a way to find more, similar books.
There's no reason book-promoting tweets can't include a link to the catalog, either to a single item or a search.
Suppose the person in charge of social media wanted to help patrons learn about searching the catalog. How would they do it? I don't know whether it would be effective to tweet weekly hints about advanced searching, but it think it's worth a try.
Here's another idea ...
Let's go back to the Building Bridges - Adult Titles page.
I've already observed that FCPL probably has hundreds of books that are similar to the forty shown here. What if several hundred adult books were tagged "Building Bridges"?
First, this would allow you to add an "Even More" link at the bottom of the page which linked to a search on tag:"Building Bridges" (which would have the pleasant side-effect of showing patrons an example of tagging). You could also include this link in tweets.
Second, this would provide a pool of books to use to freshen the page.
Third, this would provide a record of the books used for this page in case the page was temporarily retired.
The catalog and the collection provide a service to patrons, and tagging provides a way to enrich that channel using terms that are logical for patrons.
Before I get to the mechanics of readers advisory — something, I want to make clear, I know nothing about — I want to talk about pamphlets.
Public libraries love pamphlets. There are pamphlets for Hoopla, for ebooks, for Summer Reading, for Popular Crime Fiction and on and on. And if a pamphlet isn't suitable, perhaps a set of bookmarks is. I'd like to see a pamphlet — or a set of bookmarks — on searching the catalog. (I pointed out above that there's no online documentation for the FCPL "search language".)
Now I suppose the Reference Desk sees several kinds of questions, and so produces several kinds of answers. Some questions won't have anything to do with the catalog, like "When are you open?" or "How many DVDs can I borrow at once?". For others, there'll be an opportunity to educate the patron about the catalog. For example, if a patron asks for help locating books about a topic which is not a "legal" subject heading, the librarian could show the patron a number of different search strategies for finding what they want, and even save the searches to their account.
I want to mention something here and expand on it later. Emily Drabinski says [4]:
"Queer theory invites a shift in responsibility from catalogers, positioned to offer functional solutions, to public services librarians, who can teach patrons to dialogically engage the catalog as a complex and biased text, just as critical catalogers do."
The catalog is not something you solve or perfect, but the subject of dialog between patrons and librarians.
Looking back to my mind map, there are three goals in enhancing the catalog:
- increasing catalog quality for better search results
- enhancing the catalog to better support library programming
- enhancing the catalog to better support the community
One way or another, errors and omissions in the catalog mean that patrons will see incorrect results from a search.
Almost anything you do in this area, other than paying a third party to do it, is going to involve a combination of automatic and manual checking. There is no magic bullet.
In 2005, Jeffrey Beall wrote a column for the ALA's American Libraries magazine giving "Ten Ways to Improve Data Quality" [5]. The reason I'm mentioning this here is that his tenth point was that everyone in the library should be involved in finding catalog errors. This is part of what elevates catalog quality from a sticky note to a part of strategy.
I've written about catalog quality for Technicalities [6]. That article has several interesting examples of data I've collected from the LVCCLD (Las Vegas) catalog.
I'm interested in three different, separate standards for catalog quality:
- Assessing catalog records against a standard, either internal or external
- Effectiveness in supporting the community
- Effectiveness in supporting library programs
Well, that's a good place to start! How many of your catalog records have errors? If you wanted to know what percentage of your patrons were taller than 6', you'd take a random sample and measure them. It's the same with catalog records. You need to take a random sample of, say, 100 records and check them.
I've done this once [ibid]. The most common "error" was missing series information, which I put in quotes since it's not clear that series information — however useful it is for patrons — is required by any cataloging standard.
I also have plenty of anecdotal data to suggest that in public libraries authority control of names and subject headings isn't very good. Errors in authority control translate directly into patron-visible errors.
For example, a short while ago the Library of Congress changed the "authorized" form of V. E. Schwab's name to Victoria Schwab. In the FCPL catalog, some books are cataloged with one form and some with the other. That means that if someone searches on "Victoria Schwab", they won't see all her books.
Also, in the FCPL catalog there are 8 books and a DVD with a subject heading of "supsense". Those items simply won't appear in a search for "suspense". Typos like this aren't actually very common. I collected data for a handful of typos from 100+ public libraries in the US and for any given typo the median number of times it occurred was zero.
Most technical errors, such as "A is for Activist" with an incorrect 245 second indicator, have no visibility in the OPAC and no effect on patrons.
My strong recommendation is that you check a random sample of records so you have some idea what your error rate is, and that you check your authority control against the original thesauri (e.g., the Library of Congress) on a regular basis.
There are two problems with Lesbian Visibility Day (April 26). First, lesbian visibility shouldn't be limited to a single day. Second, it shouldn't be limited to lesbians. As the University of Wisconsin Platteville says, "It is essential that Lesbian Visibility Week is a voice for unity and lifts up ALL women, especially those who come from marginalized communities."
Lesbians should always be able to find themselves represented at the library, on the web site and in the catalog. Let's take a look at the catalog. One of the things I like to do is to compare the results of a keyword (i.e., anywhere) search with a subject heading search.
A keyword search on "lesbian fiction" (no quotes throughout) returned 244 items; a subject heading search returned 6 items. What's going on?
It turns out the the correct subject heading isn't "Lesbian Fiction", it's "Lesbians--Fiction" with an 's'. Given that the OPAC will punish errors rather than helping, is it the patron's responsibilty to know the Library of Congress subject headings? After all, there's only 400,000 of them.
The problem is those six hits. If you look at one of those six books, "Lesbian -- Fiction" will appear as one of the subject headings. You can click on it and get back to the list of six books. It looks as though you've done the right thing.
Here's another example. A subject heading search on "bisexuality" returns 30 items, "bisexual" returns 18, and "bisexuals" returns 16. And there are 54 more items returned by a keyword search for "bisexual". I'll leave it to the reader to draw a Venn Diagram.
And now this:
This is disastrous! Overdrive have invented their own subject heading, "LGBTQIA+ (Fiction)"; there are 338 items (ebooks and audiobooks) that use this heading. First, these items will be invisible to a search using the "official" subject headings. Second, if you're looking at one of these items, you'll see this subject heading and can click on it, but what will be returned will be these 338 ebooks and audiobooks. You might possibly conclude that FCPL has no physical books of LGBTQIA+ Fiction at all.
To be completely clear, there's nothing wrong with subject headings from a thesaurus other than LCSH. It's not even so bad that Overdrive has made up their own code for the $2 subfield, although it's technically incorrect [7]. The problem is that the invented "LGBTQIA+ (Fiction)" subject heading is only included in some of the items it applies to, with the result that search results will be incomplete.
Can tagging — tags added to the catalog by patrons — enhance the catalog?
In the abstract to "Transcending Library Catalogs" [8], Adler says:
"While folksonomies are democratic and respond quickly to shifts and expansions of categories, they lack control and may inhibit findability of resources. Neither tags nor subject headings are perfect systems by themselves, but they may complement each other well in library catalogs. Bringing users’ voices into catalogs through the addition of tags might greatly enhance organization, representation, and retrieval of transgender-themed materials."
Adler contradicts herself in the space of three sentences, going from "inhibit findability" to "enhance ... retrieval". But she's not wrong.
In "Queering the Catalog", Drabinski locates the work to be done in addressing bias in the catalog at the interaction between the librarian and the patron [4]:
"Defining the problem of biased classification and cataloging as queer and analytic shifts the burden of engaging and struggling with that bias from catalogers to reference and instruction librarians working with patrons at the desk or in the classroom."
Although Drabinski mentions tagging only in passing, I think it's fair to locate tagging in the same place, in the interaction between librarian and patron. Although I insist that the catalog provides a non-interactive service, enhancing the catalog is surely a joint project between librarians and patrons.
I don't want to over-specify the solution, but I love the idea of tagging parties, like a quilting bee or barn raising. Imagine the trans community getting together under the guidance of a librarian to develop a set of tags as subject headings and working through the collection adding tags.
For example, a search of the FCPL catalog returns 675 items with the subject heading "Indians of North America".
OCLC has just issued a report on this topic, Reimagine Descriptive Workflows [9]. It's worth reading the whole thing, but I want to pull a few sentences out of the report.
The report clearly advocates adding subject headings from alternative (i.e., non-LCSH) controlled vocabularies. It gives an example of a record from the State Library of New South Wales which includes First Nations subject headings [9, p21].
Talking about the tension between local variation and network standardization, the report states, "It is likely that future systems will need to accommodate elements of both." [9, p13]. To me, this is a rejection of Library of Congress control in reaction to the time taken to respond to the "illegal aliens" heading. Something other than, or in addition to, the Library of Congress change process is clearly needed.
The question of power and control is central to any discussion of alternative subject headings, and the OCLC report spends a significant fraction of the report considering it. As a patron and not a librarian, I'm comfortable with the idea that patrons could select subject headings, but I understand that professional librarians might not be so sanguine.
Tagging provides a way of beginning the work of eliminating offensive headings — without waiting for the Library of Congress. And a path onward is available via the progression tagging —→ local unregistered thesaurus —→ registered thesaurus.
Read this twitter thread.
This happens to be about Christianity and Judaism, but I hope you can see that this criticism applies to any attempt to package someone else's culture. Tread carefully!
Suppose a public library is going to celebrate AAPI (or AANHPI) Heritage Month. Readers Advisory will put together a list of cookbooks, there'll be a talk on Hawaiian history from a local author, and the children's department will hold an event where kids make canoes out of popsicle sticks, all of which will be heavily promoted on social media, including in the library's email newsletter and on the library's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds.
Teen Vogue has a good summary of AAPI Heritage Month with their usual critical eye:
"Supporting the AAPI community should go beyond just liking Instagram infographics during May. ... By supporting AAPI creators, you’re supporting the idea that AAPI voices deserve a place at the table in mainstream media."
It's not hard to translate this into library terms. A good way to expand a library's support for the AAPI community beyond a single month is to add more AAPI authors to the collection and make sure AAPI authors and AAPI materials can be found in the catalog.
If you're spending money — or time, which is money — on AAPI Heritage Month, it makes sense to consider spending some of that money on acquisitions, but really it's more cost effective to improve access to the materials you have.
AAPI Heritage Month is a good month to go through the AAPI materials in the catalog and check that the catalog records are free from errors and omissions, and to the extent possible ensuring that the records can be retrieved using the terms that patrons actually use.
One of the reasons I like comparing public libraries is that it's endlessly enlightening. The Las Vegas system is four or five times the size of the Frederick County system, but they're not so different. LVCCLD tweeted dozens of times during AAPI Heritage Month; FCPL not at all. A search in LVCCLD for "aapi" or "aanhpi" returns nothing; FCPL has twenty items tagged "aapi". Of course this is only one data point, so you can argue that it's not fair or representative.
But still. If an FCPL patron does a search on "aapi" and looks at one of the books, they'll see that the "right" subject search is "asian american", which returns 52 items. The same search in LVCCLD returns 223 items, but you need to know that "asian american" is the right term, something that's not mentioned in any of the dozens of tweets.
Why hasn't FCPL mentioned AAPI Heritage Month on social media, not even once? (Asian Americans make up 5% of Frederick County, and the percentage is increasing.) I guess it's because Frederick County didn't do any programming for AAPI Heritage Month, combined with the unwritten rule that you can only tweet about programs, job opportunites and book recommendations.
There's no reason for the rule. A tweet is a tweet is a tweet. It could be as simple as:
May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. To see Asian American materials click on https://catalog.fcpl.org/?section=search&term=su%3A%22asian%20americans%22
A public library is an exemplary example of a multi-channel service organization. All channels should provide the same high standard of service and, where possible, work together for the best patron experience.
Non-interactive services are services. When a patron visits the web site, or visits a library building, the service they experience should meet the same high standard that you expect for the reference desk or story hour.
The catalog is problematic because its functionality is more or less fixed by the vendor. Reaching a high standard of service requires educating the patron using whatever channels can be enlisted.
How well the catalog serves patrons depends on the correctness and completeness of catalog records, and vocabulary that patrons are familiar with.
Programming shouldn't exist in isolation. Connecting programming, the collection and the catalog helps all three.
The work to be done requires resources and time. Like any enhancement effort, it should start with understanding patrons.
I think it's critical that a library compares itself to its peers. You might think that once a library has chosen an ILS, and with it an OPAC, that the patron-facing catalog is fixed until the next ILS purchase and migration, and so any evaluation and comparison can be put off until then. But vendors respond to competitive pressure, and pointing out features in other OPACs that are missing in your own can have an effect.
In reviewing the FCPL catalog, I noticed a couple of things that the FCPL (TCL) OPAC can't do that the Las Vegas (Bibliocommons) OPAC can. Of course, the opposite is also true.
One significant issue is that there is no way to search for bilingual material [10]. There is a language facet, but you can only choose one language at a time, and it uses the MARC 008 leader field, which can only specify a single language.
You can try using subject headings: "spanish language materials -- bilingual" returns 220 results, but that doesn't seem to be complete, since a keyword search on "spanish bilingual" returns 284 items.
It does no good to plead, bribe or threaten your current OPAC vendor. What's needed, as Emily Drabinski would say, is collective power.
I can see this collective power coming either from libraries or librarians.
The most power a library has is when it issues an RFP. The functions needed for complete, correct and culturally appropriate cataloging, classification and search need to be wired into the RFP. One mechanism for drafting RFP clauses is for the state to take the lead.
For librarians, the obvious mechanism is the ALA. I'd love to see librarians name and shame both libraries and vendors. What would it mean for an ALA committee to give each public library a letter grade for their cataloging?
Some libraries have implemented a search page that is separate from the catalog and sits in front of it.
For example, the Tulsa City-County Library has a search box on their front page which returns results on a custom results page. It's easier to see than it is to describe, so click on the link and search for "computer". You'll see results from the catalog, the web site, and the events calendar. You can get to the full catalog by clicking on "SEE ALL RESULTS IN CATALOG", or you can do another search in this simplified environment.
Although Tulsa Library doesn't do it, the custom search results page could include links to help with searching.
It's obviously some work to implement custom searching with a custom results page, but the advantage is that you've escaped the limitations of your OPAC.
[1] For example:
or:
Fobazi Ettarh & Chris Vidas (2022): “The Future of Libraries:” Vocational Awe in a “Post-COVID” World, The Serials Librarian, DOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2022.2028501
[2] The library serves Warren County, Virginia (population 40,727) from a single building in Front Royal. So, a small library.
[3] Hendren, Sarah, What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World, Riverhead Books, NY, 2020. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1255977027
[4] Drabinski, Emily. Queering the catalog: Queer theory and the politics of correction. The Library Quarterly 83.2 (2013): 94-111. https://doi.org/10.1086/669547
[5] Beall, Jeffrey, 10 Ways to Improve Data Quality, American Libraries, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Mar., 2005), pp. 36-37
Here's the tenth entry:
"Involve all library staff in database maintenance. Have staffers report errors to a central person, preferably someone in the cataloging department. Many library staff make extensive use of the library catalog and are in a position to observe errors. Take advantage of their catalog use and ask them to report the errors they find.
"Library catalogs should be tools for research; we must not allow them to become barriers to retrieval. Libraries are obligated to to make services as error-free as possible. A coordinated effort to eliminate errors in online catalogs demonstrates a strong commitment to quality service. The reward of this work will be better access to library materials for our patrons."
[6] Williams, Graeme, Cataloging Errors and How to Find Them
Technicalities, V41, N1, January/February 2021. A PDF copy is online here
[7] Thanks to Ann Ryan for pointing out on Facebook that the $5 subfield which is included in the 655 field is not included in the 650 field. If Overdrive had an LoC organization code it could, With a second indicator of 4 and its organization code in the $5 subfield, "legally" put anything it likes in a 655 field — but not in a 650 field.
[8] Adler, M. (2009). Transcending Library catalogs: A comparative Study of controlled terms in Library of Congress Subject Headings and user-generated tags in LibraryThing for Transgender books. Journal of Web Librarianship, 3(4), 309–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/19322900903341099
[9] Frick, Rachel L., and Merrilee Proffitt. 2022. Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/wd4b-bs51
Related:
Culturally Safe Libraries: A collaborative step towards cultural change which notes "increased cultural labour for some First Nations staff". H/T to @shigekisasagawa
[10] I gave a presentation on language coding to ALA ALCTS CaMMS CNIG (now ALA Core CNIG) June 9, 2020. The slides (which include speaker's notes) are here.