Wildly Appropriate

Talk I'm Doing at SLA Seattle in June

Apr 24, 03:14 PM

Shopping 2.0 - A New-Old Model for Optimizing Library Web Portals

By Dan Klyn*
Information Architect, Flannel
Lecturer, Univ. of Mich. School of Information

Probably you’ve heard a colleague or a patron remark that the library should be more like Amazon.com. Or that a new public library branch is really great because they have a coffee shop and colorful end-cap displays of new and featured titles just like they do at Barnes & Noble. The extension of ideas and tactics from retail worlds into the setting of the library is nothing new. And in some ways the work of applying retail and merchandising concepts to the library has been made easier by the fact that the biggest retailer on the planet started out as a bookseller. The metaphors and models line up so nicely when we’re talking primarily about books and CDs and DVDs. Just add to cart...

From my perspective as an e-commerce information architect with a background in librarianship, I’m concerned that these tidy comparisons between bookselling and booklending have had the unintended consequence of narrowing and prefiguring our perspectives on what we might or could or should do to optimize library web portals. Instead of asking “what does Amazon.com do” when we plan our online strategy, what if we asked “what does Etsy.com do?”

In this session we’ll examine website navigation and product findability concepts from some of the most innovative and effective online retailers. Attendees will see how special libraries can look beyond the 800lb gorilla that is Amazon.com and find inspiration, ideas, features and functionality from online retailers whose tactics and techniques aren’t confined to or built primarily around books and music and films.

*Dan Klyn is an ALA-certified librarian who’s never worked in a library