During the first week of May, I attended the SLA conference. This was fifth time attending this conference and my first time in three years when I wasn't on the conference committee. I attended the RegLIN session, Virginia Wilson's session on C-EBLIP, Shannon Lucky and Jaclyn McLean's UX session, as well as the Mary Donaldson Memorial Lecture with Lindsay Knight, Joseph Boyden's Keynote and the SLA AGM and Banquet.
Lindsay Knight shared her journey as an Aboriginal Hip Hop artist, mother and scholar. She also encouraged us to celebrate, support and archive the history of the First Nations and Metis people of our province.
Joseph Boyden's keynote address blew me away. Starting with an introduction by Eugene Arcand and an honour song performed by the Young Bucks. My key take-away from his lecture is that "nothing on this land needs us for its survival, but we need everything". Because of this we have to be aware of the fact that we are taking more from the planet than we need. A month and a half later I am still thinking about this point and what it means to our planet, the environment, our culture and our very existence. I had the great privilege of meeting Mr. Boyden after his address.
Virginia Wilson (U of S) shared her experiences with evidence based practice which is used to make the best possible decision. EBLIP combines evidence, user preferences and professional expertise. The lack of which can lead to the continuation of the adage "we tried that and it didn't work". She also introduced the C-EBLIP Research Network (http://library.usask.ca/ceblip/c-eblip-research-network/About.php). I am intrigued. Hopefully I can join the party, the research party that is - sometime soon!
Shannon Lucky and Jaclyn McLean (U of S) discussed UX which stands user experience which is not about usability, but that all touch points between our community and the library are important. UX considers users thoughts and feelings as well as interactions. We need to ensure that what we are offering is useful, desirable, and usable. From the research that they conducted, they recommend that you test between 4-8 users. Fix what is broken, improve what needs improving and then test again. This is an iterative process, and should improve at each step based on the feedback. They stressed: unobtrusive observation of users using the space, listen to their feedback even in cases where there is nothing that you can do to solve the issue or problem and library websites are not for library staff.
No comments:
Post a Comment