Signed, a former library software company employee

As Jeremy and Steve have pointed out, and I very much agree with, the C4L community tends to be very savvy about user needs. But I still think that someone with Karen’s experience may have a lot to say from which we can learn.

I wanted Karen to apply her unique perspective to the challenges and opportunities that we share and in so doing inspire and challenge us to do better. I regret that if in trying to challenge ourselves to do better it comes off more as an insult or as an “us vs. them” situation. That is not the way in which I intended such questions to be perceived, and I apologize for that.

I also have great fondness for good developers. I really grooved on the developers at Siderean that I worked with. Nice product, nice people. I also worked well with our CMS developers, once we got some awful middlemen vendors out of the way.

You may wonder where the questions I developed came from. Actually, not from me. I asked what I could say that could benefit this crowd, and this is what was suggested.

It’s pretty clear, Karen, that you don’t have much faith in software of *any* stripe, nor in the people who create it. How did that happen? Why is it widespread in librarianship? (‘Cuz you’re hardly the only one.)

Crucially — what can librarians who are also creators of software do to earn your trust (and by extension, the trust of librarianship in general)? What about creators of software who are not librarians, and who (often with justification) feel shoved aside by the MLS crowd?

It’s a sticky subject (she wrote, as the bucket of litotes overflowed in a glutinous mess on the floor). I’m very likely the wrong person to bring it up in this context, as it’s well-known that I completely lost confidence in code4lib as a force in librarianship some time ago. But I think it’s a valuable topic, one you could speak to very effectively, and one that might allow both sides to get past some defensiveness and start thinking and talking together.

(*resists near-overpowering urge to sing “The Refdesk and the Techies Should Be Friends,” Oklahoma-style*)

I got my ALA-accredited degree 10 years ago and have mostly been working in the area of user experience design since then. I can’t write the even most basic script from scratch.

But I’ve found the code4lib community pushes the envelope in terms of user-centered design in libraries. There is no LibraryUX conference or community (only a low-traffic USABILITY4LIB listserv) but my experience via last year’s conference and the mailing list (I don’t do the IRC channel), is that code4lib fills that need quite well.

I may be wrong, but the way you phrase your post sounds very ‘me vs. them’, and I’m a bit worried about that.

It would also tie in nicely, in my opinion, with code4lib’s collaborative thread (essence? being?) After all, sometimes we give and sometimes we take… being able to recognize the importance of each and shift contexts successfully (as givers or takers in different environments) certainly is a great skill… one most people (myself included) would do well to develop and refine.

I also agree that being able to listen is a key component to being able to successfully and gracefully shift contexts. And, of course, you can’t go wrong with, “BE NICE!”

That a little trust can go a long way. We are not all idiots who need a locked down computer. Let us prove our worth and do not make rules that constrict us because of one User and their User Error.

Specifically, I’d paint two scenarios of library users that remind the audience that their customers’ customers are their customers – that the quality of the experiences of ordinary library visitors is their ultimate concern as developers. One scenario would show how something about library software made for a excellent experience and the other would show an unsatisfactory one.