Cart before Horse with Aquabrowser in Columbus

They recently installed the Aquabrowser at the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML). This is how the head of IT over there explained it to the Columbus Dispatch:

"We're accommodating what people are used to seeing -- people who just want to plug in a search term and get their list." [h/t Lorcan Dempsey]

What people are "used to seeing"? That animated tag-cloud doohickey?

Unless they really do things differently in Columbus, I can't imagine anyone (other than library staff) ever seeing one of these things or knowing the least what to do with it.

I mean, you can almost predict that the color-coding of the whirlin', spinnin' topics will be totally lost on the average user. Equally as bewildering is why they bothered to include what suspiciously looks like instructions (instructions?) on the main search page that attempt to explain enigmatic terms such as "Search", "Discover" and "Refine".

Confused yet? The newspaper article quotes one user as calling it "distracting" while another thinks it may not be "as intuitive as they think it is".

Touchée. Like Second Life and the Kindle, we have the implementation of a technology that has yet to receive the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" from the public. In other words, there's no indication of widespread acceptance or adoption on the part of our users. This is precisely the wrong approach to take.

Lastly, it doesn't help that a keyword search on "Treasure Island" only turns up the book by Robert Louis Stevenson on Page 2 of the search results.

Maybe they were focusing on the wrong thing?

P.S. In contrast, check out the results for Google and Amazon.

The First Thing to Learn is to Forget the Technology

We all have our moments of epiphany. John Blyberg had his recently regarding Library 2.0. In a post called, "Library 2.0 Debased" he pulls no punches:

It's very evident in the profusity of L2-centric workshops and conferences that there is a significant snake-oil market in the bibliosphere. We’re blindly casting about for a panacea and it’s making us look like fools.

He goes on to warn against "arbitrarily introducing technology that isn’t properly integrated into our overarching information framework". Our choice of technologies needs to make sense, he argues, ultimately to our end-users.

This of course is completely true. As a survival tactic, if for no better reason, you'd think we'd all be trying to work out our core competencies long before shopping around for technologies.

Unfortunately a lot of what passes for "L2.0" seems to go in the opposite direction.

All too often it's how to build our libraries around blogs, wikis and social networks -- rather than the other way around. Add to this a level of individual affirmation and self-discovery more appropriate on occasion to a revival meeting than a PD, and you have a picture not of innovation but of its caricature.

Worse, there seems to be a certain element of one-up's-manship in play, at least among the more ambitious, with whoever adopting the largest number of 2.0 technologies in the least amount of time being perceived as most "cutting edge".

This isn't going to work. You might as well have a chicken with its head cut off picking technologies. At least the results would be harder to predict.

[h/t Blake]

Congressional Campaign Site: DebbieHalvorson.com

I'm still kind of knocked out -- been working 24/7 on this for several weeks. That said, I'm pleased to announce the availability online of DebbieHalvorson.com .

Debbie's running for Congress in the 11th CD of Illinois.

The site is fully automated using Drupal for content management. Campaign staff can add images to any content type (eg. press release, blog post, etc.) They can also designate any post as "spotlight" for the 'In Focus' section on the front page.

Even the main slideshow which is meant to present broad campaign themes, can be changed simply by uploading new images to the site. Resizing is done automatically.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results.

New Sony eReader Ad: 'Smarter than a Doofus'

 Advertisement near the escalator at the Clark & Lake El Stop in Chicago:

"Smarter than a doofus who bought one of these things (your doofus may vary)."

The Moment

I don't watch television very often. In fact, I watch it so infrequently that I keep the set hidden away in a closet for most of the year. It only comes out at times of national disaster or an election. In this case, it was the latter -- happily -- as I wheeled the thing out to catch Barack Obama's speech in Iowa with the memorable words, "This was the moment when it all began".

(NYU) ITP AlumniBlender Blog

I got a nice note from Rob Faludi saying he had added me to the ITP Alumni Blog, 'ITP AlumniBlender'. I thanked him and told him I thought it was a great idea.

I graduated from ITP in 2000. I think the best thing I got out of it was the contact with my fellow students, some of whom were easily the most talented designers and software developers in NYC.

The graphic by the way, goes to a spoof I did of ITP's website at the time. The thing really suffered from an overdose of black (yeah, I know, everyone was doing it) and sans serif fonts.