Inspiration Architecture: The Future of Libraries (Academic Library Directors Symposium)

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Inspiration

Peter Morville, Academic Library Directors Symposium 2014

ArchitectureT h e Fu t u r e o f L i b r a r i e s

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6“I say we fight for and maintain our very long-term and hard-won

connection to books and what they represent.” Joseph Janes

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The structural design of shared information environments.

The organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems in websites and intranets.

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#dtdt

“Where architects use forms and spaces to design

environments for inhabitation, information architects

use nodes and links to create environments for

understanding.”

Jorge Arango, Architectures (2011)

10The Library of Congress

“To further the progress of knowledge and creativity.”.

FragmentationFragmentation into multiple sites, domains, and identities is clearly a major problem. Users don’t know which site to visit for which purpose.

Findability Users can’t find what they need from the home page, but most users don’t come through the front door. They enter via a web search or a deep link, and are confused by what they find. Even worse, most never use the Library, because its resources aren’t easily findable.

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1. One Library

2. Core Areas

3. Network Intelligence

Web Strategy

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Interfaces• Portal• Search• Object• Set• Page

Caveats• Visual Design• Starting Point

Wireframes

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15Source: Search Patterns (2010)

Search is a Complex, Adaptive System

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Web Governance Board

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22Technology + Pedagogy

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“When I was playing baseball, most of the time I wasn’t playing full-scale, four bases, nine innings. I was playing a perfectly suitable junior version of the game...But when I was studying those shards of math and history, I wasn’t playing a junior version of anything. It was like batting practice without knowing the whole game. Why would anyone want to do that?”

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The MOOCs must first compete with nonconsumption by meeting demand outside the schools (e.g., developing countries, home-schooling) and then within (e.g., letting students take courses not offered by their district). Later, this self-paced, student-centered model may gain sufficient momentum to become the dominant paradigm.

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The Architecture of a Class

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Regardless of all the time and effort libraries put into providing a variety of research tools and resources on their websites, the literature suggests that students still prefer to start their research using Google or some other form of search engine.

It is clear that there is an overwhelming preference for easy to use, familiar search tools that transcend education level, discipline of study, and student demographics.

Discovery Layers and the Distance StudentJessica Mussell (2012)

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Strengths• Fast, easy, familiar• Cross-disciplinary searching• Links to citing and related articles

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Weaknesses• No “advanced search” functionality• Limited, inaccurate metadata• Inconsistent coverage across disciplines• No transparency (coverage, algorithms, usage, monetization)

• Not customizable or interoperable

Information Literacy

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Employers claimed that college hires rarely conducted the thorough research required of them in the workplace.

At worst, some college hires solved problems with a lightning quick Google search, a scan of the first couple of pages of results, and a linear answer finding approach.

“I had a new graduate hire who only searched for papers on Google. I said, you’re missing things, you need to use PubMed, and he responded, ‘Well, I did this quick search, and that’s what I got.’ But that’s not good enough.”

Project Information Literacy: Learning Curve by Alison J. Head (2012)

32Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies by Roger C. Schonfeld (2010)

Faculty rate importance of library roles

“The academic library is increasingly being disintermediated from the

discovery process, risking irrelevance in one of its core functional areas.”

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Federated“Bento

Box”NCSU

StanfordDartmouth

VirginiaColumbia

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Aggregated“Faceted”

CornellDuke

McGillNorthwesternU. Washington

36Face

ted

Nav

igat

ion

37Ada

ptiv

e Fa

cets

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Gross and Sheridan conducted a usability study that examined how Summon (“web-scale discovery”) was used for common library search tasks.

Summon was positioned as the primary search box on the library’s home page for the study.

They found that the single search box was employed for 80% of the assigned tasks.

How Users Search the Library from a Single Search BoxLown, Sierra, Boyer (2013)

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Use of full-text online content dramatically increased in the year following implementation.

Librarians found they could focus instruction less on choosing a database or catalog and more on refining a search, research as an iterative process, and other high level search skills.

The Impact of Serial Solutions’ Summon on Information Literacy InstructionStephanie Buck and Margaret Mellinger (2011)

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63% didn’t use any Internet resources, other than the Guide, to complete their assignment.Embedding LibGuides into Course Management SystemsStephanie Brown (2012)

Embeddable Search Widget

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Inquiry Learning

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Information LiteracyThe ability the find,evaluate, create,

organize,and use information

from myriad sources and

media.

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“70 percent of humans experience severe back pain…and in the U.S. this results in tens of thousands of surgeries each year.”

“There’s a secret about MRIs and back pain: the most common problems physicians see on MRI and attribute to back pain – herniated, ruptured, and bulging discs – are seen almost as commonly on MRIs of healthy people without back pain.”

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Why is Medicine a Mess?

• Our minds/bodies are complex.• Patients want a quick fix.• Doctors hate saying: “I don’t

know.”• The AMA is an advocacy group.• Relentless and insidious

advertising.• Industry-funded research.• $2.7 trillion per year.

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“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henry David Thoreau

“Our government is corrupt. Not corrupt in any criminal sense. But corrupt in a perfectly legal sense: special interests bend the levers of power to benefit them at the expense of the rest of us.”

50The relationship between information and culture

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“It is now my suggestion that many people may not want information, and that they will avoid using a system precisely because it gives them information…If you have information, you must first read it…You must then try to understand it…Understanding the information may show that your work was wrong, or may show that your work was needless…Thus not having and not using information can often lead to less trouble and pain than having and using it.”

Calvin Mooers (1959)

The limits of information

52“We shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us.”

53The order of food influences choice by as much as 25 percent.

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Some habits have the power to start a chain reaction.“Success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.”

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“Willpower is the single mostimportant keystone habit

forindividual success.”

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Paul O’Neil as CEO of Alcoa

“I want to talk to you about worker safety…I intend to make

Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries.”“We killed this man. It’s my

failure of leadership. I caused his death. And it’s the failure of all of you in the chain of command.”

58“A culture of

generosity.”Josie Parker, Ann Arbor District Library

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“A library, like a national park, teaches us that we all benefit when our most valuable treasures are held in

common.”Peter Morville, Inspiration Architecture

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KeystoneA central stone at the summit

of an arch locking the whole together.

62Polar bears are a keystone species in the Arctic ecosystem.

The library is a keystone of culture.

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“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”

Andrew Carnegie (1889)

65“Too many people think that we don’t need libraries when

we have the Internet.” John Palfrey, DPLA (2012)

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“Libraries have a mandate to intervene in community life.”

Lee Rainie

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The library is an act of inspiration architecture.

68IA Therefore I Am Inspiration Architecture by Peter Morville

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” John Muir