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Peterson discusses how to deliver a library service via an intranet or the Internet, using her library as an example. The main emphasis is on setting up a service to suit an online environment, designing user-friendly pages to ensuring acceptance of the new service and training users to make full use of it.
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Keywords
Library services, Internet, Design, Library users, Training, Intranets
Abstract
Discusses how to deliver a library service via an intranet or the Internet, using our library as an example. The main emphasis is on setting up a service to suit an online environment, designing user-friendly pages to ensuring acceptance of the new service and training your users to make full use of it
Electronic access
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Introduction
When three libraries on our campus amalgamated in January 1999, it was decided to produce a comprehensive Web site to deliver as many of our services as possible to our clients via our intranet. This task fell to me, and prior to setting out I looked at as many documents on Web site design for service provision as I could find. I quickly discovered that an intranet site can be quite a different animal from an external Web site, and my search therefore focussed on intranet development. I found several helpful sites on general Web site design, but I was unable to locate anything specifically dealing with intranet delivery of library services.
The production of my Web site was therefore a journey into new territory, and in this paper I would like to sketch out the stages by which the site was planned and developed.
What you want your site to do
One of the best pieces of advice gleaned from my reading was to plan the site outline before beginning to build it. The first thing was to decide what it will be used for. It might include:
Bringing the library service to your patrons' desktops.
Being a vehicle for delivering the catalogue or the library's databases.
Reducing the number of routine trips your patrons have to make to the library for things like collecting forms, delivering forms, checking the journal display etc.
Providing an alternative to paper newsletters or notices.
Reducing paper use.
You will probably think of more.
Differences from a traditional service
Web technology offers flexibility. Live links can be made from the "brochure" by using mailto (links for contacting staff). Links can be made to library forms, the catalogue can provide links to Internet resources and hence transcend the library boundaries.
An added bonus is that a Web service is also available around the clock.
What to put on your site
Most libraries' intranet or Internet sites include what I would call brochure information - opening hours, contact details, location, library rules and so on. You can also include library forms either in a printable form as a Word or PDF document or as interactive forms which users can complete and submit online.
We started with our forms in Word format. We thought we were safe here - all our patrons worked with the MS Office suite, so there would be no problems associated with differing software or hardware capability.
However, Word files can be quite large and slow to download. We also discovered that we had been incorrect in our assumption that our users would be working with uniform versions of software. Our printable forms were therefore turned into PDF format to enable our patrons to print them - and all get the same result! If you do this, remind users that they will need a PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat to view the documents. If you are not certain that your users have the software, it is a courtesy to provide a link to the Adobe site (www.adobe.com), with information about downloading it.
Interactive forms are more difficult to design, but we developed an online interlibrary loan request form. This brought its own set of problems, since we needed to ensure that we complied with the requirements of copyright legislation. However, it is worth the effort since online request forms are very popular.
While mounting a library catalogue using a Web interface is not exactly easy, most library management programs have the capability. Library patrons value the chance to check whether an item is held by the library, but even more useful is the ability to see whether the item is on the shelf or on loan, and so avoid a fruitless journey.
Know your users
You are designing your intranet site for your users, so you will need to know
who they are;
where they will use your service;
when they will use it; and
why they will use it.
Identifying your users is easy if you are in an organisation with a discrete staff or client group. It becomes more difficult if you are in a public library, or if your site is to be mounted on an Internet site rather than an internal one. In either case, the type of organisation might mean that your users are varied.
In our case, we serve the staff of the hospital, as well as the research scientists and laboratory staff of the institute. The hospital staff include clinicians such as doctors, nurses and allied health professionals and other groups such as medical scientists and biomedical engineers. The hospital covers several campuses, and the diagnostic laboratories of the institute are spread statewide.
Where your patrons will use the service also depends on the nature of your organisation. Workstations might be on the factory floor, in a private office, or in an open-plan office, shared by several employees.
We knew that our workstations covered nearly all these possibilities - if you can call a workshop a factory floor - moreover, many of our staff like to work from home.
Since intranets are not available externally, we needed to find a way to accommodate the habits of our users. Our agency's policy did not allow external access to the intranet, so we mounted a mirror on the Internet site and provided access to it with user-IDs and passwords. Files are simply uploaded to the two locations after updating.
When will the service be used? Our agencies run a 24-hours a day, seven days a week service, so we expected around-the-clock use. Traditionally, elective surgery is not performed over the Christmas-New Year break, so we expected things to be quiet then. You will probably be able to pinpoint times of peak activity in your own library which will depend on the type of organisation you serve.
We were initially surprised to find that there were two daily peaks in the bibliographic database use. They were around 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. (visiting hours) and around 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., reflecting the quiet times for the staff when they could concentrate on their searches. On discovering this, we put together a series of fact sheets covering the main aspects of database searching, designed to be printed out on a single page.
Why your service will be used will reflect the nature of your clients' information seeking patterns. Based on our knowledge of how our user groups work, we came up with several likely demands for our service:
Urgent need for information to answer specific clinical questions.
Need for comprehensive literature review as part of ongoing research and its concomitant grant applications.
Need for information to answer administrative/budgeting questions. These would probably come from the executive services, and require prompt attention.
Once you have answers to your questions about your clients and their work patterns, then you can put together the content of your site. That said, nothing beats asking your users what they would find most useful. Our initial thoughts were that our users would want to see:
links to databases; our catalogue;
links to online journals;
our journals holdings list;
library forms; and
library staff contact details.
We had the content right, but the priorities proved to be different. Our users told us that they needed access to:
databases;
full-text journals;
forms - especially an interactive
document request form;
our journal holdings list;
staff contact details;
our catalogue.
Well, at least we were more important than the catalogue!
With the basic content questions answered, you can now concentrate on building your site.
Making your site easy to use
The most important page in your site is the front, or index, page. It is the page which is responsible for giving users a sense of the design of your site, as does the navigation system. There are several tips which can help you achieve a site that can easily be understood and navigated - even if it is a large one.
Make your style fit your organisation's image. If your pages are part of a wider intranet or Internet site of which the overall management comes under another department, there will probably be a set style you should conform to. Our library pages, being part of a larger site, have the same look and feel of other departments' pages.
Keep the same layout between pages. Users will respond intuitively to each page if they do not have to make a conscious effort to find the navigation buttons. You need to provide clear answers to a user asking the questions: "Where am I?" and "Where do I go from here?"
Make your navigation buttons clear. If you use graphical navigation buttons, include an "alt text" option for those users who may have turned off the graphics. Keep navigation buttons the same size and colour, and put them in the same place on every page. It also helps to have a "Back to main page" button on every page - you should have one if the page is more than two clicks away. Managing links. Links can be made obvious by using colours and/or "hovering". In the early days of Web use, it was common to ask users to "Click here" to go to a linked page. This now looks a bit "clunky", unless you are asking a user to click on one of a series of buttons.
Make links from site names, not their URLs. It is not really necessary to include the URL in the text of your page at all if you are making an active link to it. Never make a link from a URL without including the title of the linked page. It is meaningless for most users.
If you make a link to an external site, it is a courtesy to mail the Webmaster of that site. Should the page's address change, you may be notified. If Web site creators know that their page is being linked to from other sites, they are less likely to change the URL, and your users will be spared the dreadful 404 "not found" screen.
It follows that it is bad practice to change the location of your own files which others may point to - especially on an external site.
Managing images
A picture is worth 1,000 words. It can also take 1,000 seconds to download, by which time your user has clicked somewhere else. Many an otherwise good site has been spoilt by bad use of images. There are a few tricks which you can use to ensure that your chosen images enhance rather than detract from your site.
Do not use large images as background wallpaper. Your page will take an age to load. If you want a special effect or colour for the background, take great care that its colours and/or textures do not impede the legibility of the text. If your page is to be mounted on an intranet site, you may know that all your users have the same type of machine. This cannot be assumed when creating an Internet site your viewers may have any type of platform. Look at your page using as many browsers as you can - at least use Netscape and Explorer to check their appearance.
Give height and width tags to images. This enables the browser to pre-assign that space for them on the screen, and begin displaying the text more quickly.
Give images names which reflect their content, e.g. "picture of library staff". This will help people who have their images turned off to decide if the image is worth looking at. If you use images as navigation buttons, the "hover" box which appears when the mouse is pointed to the image gives the user confirmation of what the button means.
Add a tag. It is another way of letting a user know roughly how long it might take for a large image to download. Where you need to use a large graphic, provide a thumbnail copy and let the user click on it to see the full size image.
If you use graphics as navigation buttons, make it quite clear that they are buttons. You can also use the JavaScript trick called "rollover" to make your buttons change appearance as the mouse hovers over them. Provide conventional text hot links as well in case your users have their graphics turned off.
There are many useful tips on creating navigation buttons to be found in http:// www.Dmitry's Design Lab. (Kirsanov, 1997).
More useful hints about Web site design for public sites can be found on "Things I learned the hard way" (Greenspun, 1996) and "Web site Design Guidelines for Public Libraries" (Sylvan, 1997).
Once you have done the work and have developed your site, you need to let your users know it is there. So you will need to develop a marketing strategy to pull them in.
Marketing your site
Marketing your site is the next most important thing after its content. Of all the marketing "Ps", the most important for a Web site is promotion. After all, you want your users to know it is there - once they do, all that effort you have put into designing an attractive and easy-to-use site will ensure that they keep coming back to it! Promoting our site was vital for us, as our intranet site was the only way our patrons were able to access several core aspects of our service, including our catalogue, newsletter, forms and helpsheets.
Use e-mail - send letters with a brief description of your site, making sure that your users know what is in it for them, and include a hot link to it.
Go to meetings and tell participants what your site has to offer them. Demonstrate it at the meeting, if possible, but remember to target your audience. For example, I would show nurses and physiotherapists links to the allied health databases, fulltext and Internet links, rather than medical ones.
Send out and display printed flyers or brochures. If you can, use the same graphics or symbols as your site to give users advance visual clues as to what to expect.
Grab people in corridors, the cafeteria, the car park.
Once you have made them aware of your site, you may well need to train them how to use it. Training people to use an electronic service has a few surprises in store for the unwary!
Training your users
In our case, we were using our intranet site to link to our suite of bibliographic databases and full text journals which were vital to our clients' work. They knew that they had to learn how to use them, so our job of encouraging them to come for training was made easier.
However, not all adults - especially highly-qualified professionals - like to be told that they do not know something, and must go to a class to learn it. If "training" does not go down too well, try saying "familiarisation". After all, you are offering a new service, and your users have to get to know it. Play on the vital nature of the information contained in your site - we had the added incentive of fulltext journals which our users had been wanting for months.
What is the best method to use? If your site is not large and follows a style or pattern of an already existing intranet, demonstrations might fit the bill. You will need to do a demonstration which uses your site in the same way that your users will - think of the questions which it can answer for them, and show them how your site will help them to get the answers. (What do I get out of it?)
If your site provides links to databases, you will need to see to it that your users can use the databases on their own. This is crucial for us, as we aren't at the end of the phone at 3 a.m. In this case, you will probably need to set up formal training sessions, and there are a few things to remember to ensure your users come away from them confident that they have mastered their new skills.
Accepted principles of adult education are that adults learn by understanding what they are doing, and expect full explanations of each task they need to learn. The reality of teaching computing skills to adults is somewhat
different. It can be likened to learning to drive - one need not know how the engine works to be a good driver.
First, we must accept that most people over 35-40 are still not fully fledged computer "whizzes". If your users are professionals in their own right, it is likely that their computing skills are basic at best - many will have secretaries for that aspect of their work. So you must break down any fear which may be lurking below the surface, even if it is just a fear of being shown up as ignorant.
Be aware that teaching your users how to use your databases may cover only some of their needs - you may need to schedule basic Internet training, or training in how to use a Web browser. After all, your users' acceptance of a Web-delivered service will not be high if they cannot use the delivery medium. We started scheduling Internet courses about six months after we launched our intranet site. Do not wait this long. The demand from our users was overwhelming, and we are still running full courses 18 months later.
There are a few things you can do to make your training sessions more effective:
Keep your class sizes small. If one person is doing the training, do not have more than six in a class, as you may need to provide lots of prompting for those who are not up to speed. For larger classes, we try to train with two trainers - one to do the teaching and provide help during the exercises, the other to demonstrate on screen.
Have your classes in a room devoted to training if possible, with a computer for each trainee. If you have shared machines, the more confident of a pair will usually dominate the action, so be prepared to swap the "driver" between exercises. If your training takes place in the library during library hours, set up some sort of visual block between the class and the rest of the library to minimise distraction.
Check with your users to find the most suitable times for them to come to training sessions.
Keep sessions to about two hours in length. If you cannot avoid having a longer session, schedule a break in the middle, and supply refreshments. Learning computing skills is tiring. The first few minutes after a break is a good time to go over what you have just covered with the class. It helps get focussed again.
As to the actual training - keep your verbal instructions minimal and step-bystep. It takes practice not to swamp your trainees with information - especially if you have studied adult education. Try out your session on your colleagues. As well as benefiting from the extra training, they will be your harshest critics. Speak slowly, say everything twice and do not proceed to the next point until everyone in the class is ready to go on. The fast ones will wait, honestly, and the worst thing that can happen is that they may start playing with their new skills. Take that as a compliment - you have just taught them how to do it.
Your class notes should be clear, but brief. Make the exercise instructions unambiguous (e.g. type this URL in the address box, and press enter).
Beware of jargon. Users' familiarity with it can range from knowing it well, to knowing the words but in different contexts ("default" for bankers, "security" for stockbrokers) to not knowing it at all. Be prepared to explain jargon as you go, and encourage users to interrupt if they do not understand a term.
If it suits your style, you might like to give out attendance certificates at the end of a course.
You will learn a lot every time you train, not only about training, but about the topic itself. Students can be the best teachers!
The most important thing about formal training sessions is to enjoy them. You have prepared a wonderful tool for your users, and are enthusiastic about it. Show your enthusiasm to your users, and they will soon pick it up, too.
Recapitulation and conclusion
When setting up your intranet service, consider what aspects of your service could be adapted to an intranet/Internet model and how it differs from a traditional service. The main advantages for us were identified as increased efficiency and the extended hours the service would be available, which alerted us to considering how and where it would be used, as well as who would be the main users of the system and why they would use it.
Fine-tuning the intranet site content is most important. Look at various options for Web page design, including doing it yourself and outsourcing the work both within the organisation and externally. Look at ways of adding value to products such as databases which are delivered via the Internet. Prioritize services to ensure that the most used services are mounted first - this requires consultation with your users so that you will get it right. The layout of Web pages is also crucial to ensure that they are easy to use.
Marketing the new service is also crucial. We found that the more involved our users were in the planning and implementation of our service, the more readily they used it. Your users may require training. We discovered that standard principles of teaching adults did not always apply for computer-based training.
The planning, development and maintenance of our intranet site has been an ongoing co-operative effort between us and our users. We have encouraged this, as not only does our site provide the service which our users need, but also they feel that they are part-owners of the service, and its production has become a real team effort. In turn, our service is seen as a central part of our organisation and our profile has been considerably enhanced.
Planning and developing our site has been a rewarding voyage of discovery for me. I am grateful to many colleagues in the library and our IT department for sound advice and goodwill.
References and further reading
Greenspun, P. (1996), "Things I learned the hard way (about running Web sites)", WebTools Review, available http:/Iphoto.net/wtr/random-lessons.html
Kirsanov, D. (1997), "Dmitry's Design Lab", WebReference, available http://www.Webreference. com/dlab/9705/index.html
Sylvan, P. (1997), "Web site design guidelines for public libraries", available http:/www.tiac.net/users/mpl/ guidelines.html
Yale Web Style Guide, http://Info.med.yale.edu/caim/ manual/sites/site_design.html
The author
Mary Peterson is Deputy, Library and Educational Information Services, Royal Adelaide Hospital/Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide, South Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Mary Peterson
Mary Peterson is Deputy Librarian at the Royal Adelaide Hospital/Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide, South Australia. After completing an MA and a postgraduate library studies degree at the University of Adelaide, she worked in several special libraries before moving to the Royal Adelaide Hospital Library Service. When the library service merged with that of the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in January 1999, Mary was offered the position of Deputy, which involved the establishment and maintenance of the library's intranet site and its user education programmes. She can be contacted at [email protected]. au
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