ACRL’s First Fish Toss

March 16, 2009

One fun panel presentation ("If Fish Markets Can Do It So Can We") involved the first competitive fish toss in ACRL history. Unlike the huge salmon and halibut that the fishmongers at Seattle's Pike Place Fish Market throw around at each other (and sometimes at unsuspecting customers), these were plush fish toys that four hardy volunteers agreed to pitch dramatically into a receptacle. A Russian librarian (left, named Ekaterina, I think) won the competition. The whole point, as Temple Associate University Librarian Steven Bell explained, was to show that libraries need to fashion a memorable user experience (UX) in addition to providing essential information. According to Rutgers Associate University Librarian Valeda Dent Goodman, the UX involves psychological, interactive, and value-based components. "Starbucks sells coffee, but their success is based on something else" — customers value the experience because they remember the friendly or innovative interaction with the store's baristas. As the poster child for a successful user experience, Starbucks is in the same category as Google, Apple, and the BlackBerry in developing simple, trustworthy, and innovative products that focus on people's participation.

Bell commented that libraries need to concentrate on their Wow Factor (the fish-toss quality that makes users say, "Your service is awesome") and their Difference Factor (the user experience that can prove more valuable than a Google or Wikipedia search). There is also a Fidelity Factor that keeps users coming back to the library, instead of merely being wowed once then crawling back to their online searches. Bell said that library high-fidelity involves the totality of UX (web access, reference, the OPAC, systems, and circulation) that, when presented in a convenient and meaningful way, retains the user's loyalty.

Brian Mathews, user experience librarian at Georgia Tech, mentioned some of the ways his library did usability testing on library spaces as they prepared for a recent renovation: "We tried storyboarding, psychodemographics, mapping, and decision trees to find out why the user experience works for some people and not others." When users complain, you have to listen, Bell emphasized, but you have to go beyond their recommendations. Henry Ford said that if he had asked people how they wanted to improve their transportation, they would have said "faster horses," not an affordable new car like the Model T.

Ira Glass and the structure of storytelling

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Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
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Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
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Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9

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ACRL’s First Fish Toss

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