ABSTRACT

Modern library services can be incredibly complex. Much more so than their forebears, modern librarians must grapple daily with questions of how best to implement innovative new services, while also maintaining and updating the old. The efforts undertaken are immense, but how best to evaluate their success?

In this groundbreaking new book from Routledge, library practitioners, anthropologists, and design experts combine to advocate a new focus on User Experience (or ‘UX’) research methods. Through a combination of theoretical discussion and applied case studies, they argue that this ethnographic and human-centred design approach enables library professionals to gather rich evidence-based insights into what is really going on in their libraries, allowing them to look beyond what library users say they do to what they actually do. 

Edited by the team behind the international UX in Libraries conference, User Experience in Libraries will ignite new interest in a rapidly emerging and game-changing area of research. Clearly written and passionately argued, it is essential reading for all library professionals and students of Library and Information Science. It will also be welcomed by anthropologists and design professionals working in related fields.

chapter |8 pages

Uncovering complexity and detail

The UX proposition

chapter |17 pages

Embracing an ethnographic agenda

Context, collaboration, and complexity

chapter |11 pages

Holistic UX

Harness your library's data fetish to solve the right problems

chapter |10 pages

Identifying the barriers

Taskscapes and the social contexts of library UX

chapter |5 pages

WhoHas?

A pilot study exploring the value of a peer-to-peer sub-lending service

chapter |13 pages

User experience beyond ramps

The invisible problem and the special case

chapter |16 pages

Changing the dialogue

The story of the award-winning Alan Gilbert learning commons

chapter |10 pages

Understanding our students and ourselves

Transformative library instruction through an ethnographic lens

chapter |18 pages

What makes an informal learning space?

A case study from Sheffield Hallam University

chapter |5 pages

Spaces for learning? using ethnographic techniques

A case study from the University Library, Edge Hill University

chapter |6 pages

UX in libraries

Leaping the chasm