Never Mind, I’ll Just Buy It: Why Library Users Won’t Jump Through Your HoopsJoelle Thomas & Galadriel Chiltonjoelle.thomas@lib.uconn.edu galadriel.chilton@lib.uconn.edu

AbstractVia an entertaining compare and contrast, presenters will explore disconnects between e­books and streaming video available via library resources compared to “real world” resources such as Netflix and Kindle e­books. The purpose is to illustrate how library resources and commercial resources aim to meet user needs in radically different ways.

Image Talking Points

Intro #erl14nevermind

For example...

You don't need instructions, usually, but in case you do: three steps!

Anecdotes with Joelle: Options for Video! Response #1 Is it YouTube? * Response #2 ­ Pay Options?

Galadriel

Galadriel

Galadriel

GaladrielHere’s another example of how library access to e­books is absurd and inflicts significant pain…

Note that this video assumes that one already has an EBSCO account.

GaladrielA couple of things to highlight about this awful experience include…

That you must authorize your computer to be able to share an EBSCO e­book amongst multiple devices. If you skip this tiny print, the e­book is only available one computer and going back to authorize a machine is complicated.

Galadriel And then it gets even better….

Once your e­book expires, even if you remove it from Adobe Digital Editions, it still takes up space on your hard drive.

How does this make your feel?

GaladrielHere’s another example of complicated instructions required due to the interfaces we offer users.

Why is this?

GaladrielIt results in telling our users “No” and results in inconvenience at a most spectacular level and utterly defies expectation.

A faculty member’s response when being shown how to use Ebrary was why is the library even paying for stuff that is so hard to use>

Joelle’s student story Buy it instead of e­book

Galadriel The reality is that…

...and we haven’t even mentioned the poor MARC records provided that inhibit discovery and access to e­books.

< Joelle enter stage left >

Ok, next up...

I teach ARTstor, and students do not use it, ever. Why?

Google Images...

<play video showing ArtStor access>

Anecdotes with Joelle! Students do not want to use ArtSTOR if they can possibly help it.

Clicks in defiance of all expectation. Why double­clicks? Why? :(

What do users expect vs. what we offer ­ it’s a problem.

Vendors who sell to end users work with very different assumptions from vendors who sell to libraries

1998 ­ 2012

From 2004 onward, consistently something with an electronic user interface.

Yet, we not only give poor interfaces, but a hefty user guide to go with it.

And it's not just because these commercial products are simpler. Netflix is not a simple product. Amazon ebooks are not simple products.

One way to reduce complexity is to reduce choices and offer smart defaults. We seem to prefer offering complex guidelines for navigating an interface rather than streamlining the interface; we put all options up front rather than creating a useful hierarchy. We are trying to meet all needs equally and not meeting any of them very well. We need to know our users and their aspirations better.

GaladrielYet people want e­books and they wouldn’t mind getting e­books from libraries, but...

Galadriel

Galadriel

Joelle "Clayton Christiansen had a theory and he called it disruptive innovation. What this theory states is that disruption happens from the low end. New products come on the marketplace and even though they’re not better, even though they don’t work as well as their high­end predecessors, even though they are made of cheaper materials and they are, pound for pound, more expensive in a sense for what you get, they do one thing and they do that one thing really well. They do that one thing better than anything else on the marketplace. They create an entirely new market for that technology, for people who could never have had access to it before. Because there are so many more of these people who now have

access to this technology, eventually, the technology gets good enough, and it disrupts the market for the higher­end products. It wipes away their larger competitors." ­Karen McGrane

tl;dr Perfect is the enemy of good, your perfect, complex product is not going to win.

Joelle

Interview about doing business in Russia­­now Steam's second­largest European market

Joelle

If it's convenient and cheap, people will pay for it­­where restrictions fail, added value and being easier than piracy prevails.

Joelle

DRM reduces value, makes buying inherently less attractive.

Galadriel

Galadriel

Joelle

We're trying! Just not very well.

So, what do we do?

Here’s what we’re doing...DDA 2.0

What are you doing, what do you think we should do?

March 18, 2014This work is licensed by Joelle Thomas and Galadriel Chilton under aCreative Commons Attribution­Non Commercial­Share Alike 4.0 International License.