Reflection on Weedman’s View of Information Systems: A Mini Case Study

My professional focus has been in information publishing and, therefore, Chapter 11 of The Portable MLIS was very interesting as it provided a customer perspective of the information publishing field. (Weedman, 2008). In my reflection, I will provide some specific examples of how the information publishing company I work for has intersected with some of the issues Weedman raises in her design and search sections.

Weedman states that when designing a system one should focus on “learning everything you can about the people who will be using the IR system”. (Weedman, 2008, p. 115). We use inexpensive, somewhat expensive and very expensive methods for learning more about our customers in support of design efforts. One inexpensive technique we have used is to employ information gleaned from customer interactions with our phone support staff to determine if our market requires new products or features to augment existing offerings. In the more expensive category, I have participated in market research sessions where we share a database design and then conduct qualitative and/or quantitative market research to determine if the features meet or exceed the market’s needs. Other sessions have examined customers’ experiences with our systems by capturing their mouse clicks and eye movement on the screen. This helps us determine if the design of our system is intuitive and efficient. Our most expensive approach is embedding ourselves in our customers’ offices observing how they search, when they search and why they search in our content. This laborious method has resulted in some of our most innovative and successful new products.

Design is engaging, challenging and inspiring work. Many times, though, working within our legacy systems’ search constraints is draining. As Weedman shares, “How the document is represented affects the ability to retrieve it”. (Weedman, 2008, p. 124). We hadn’t had a major infrastructure overhaul from the 1970s until a few years ago. As a market leader, we were a victim of our own success and did not have a driving force encouraging us to redesign our platform. As our market became more technologically sophisticated and Google searching ubiquitous, we struggled making our now archaic information systems seem not so archaic. Customers were frustrated because in order to find an on-point document, the customer first had to know which one of the tens of thousands of databases it resided in. This seems ridiculous by today’s standards but until the recent past, this was still considered industry-leading legal research.

Our recent major investment in a platform redesign has facilitated customer searching greatly. As Weedman states, "a user's need has to be represented in a way that the system can process." (Weedman, 2008, p. 125). The redesign was successful because the embedded market research enabled us to experience first-hand our customers' frustrations and then use this information to create a system that enables very efficient searching.


References

Weedman, J. (2008). Information retrieval: Designing, querying, and evaluating information systems. In K. Haycock & B. E. Sheldon (Eds.), The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts (pp. 112-126). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

Reflection on Evans’ View of Information Service Collections: A Practical Perspective

With years of collection development experience in different librarian settings, G. Edward Evans provides important insight to students of librarianship in The Portable MLIS. (Evans, 2008, p. 87). His discussions on information collections versus book collections, vendor relations and media dependence were most interesting to me as an information publishing professional.

His statement that he experienced “a curious resistance to the idea that libraries are in the information rather than book business” resonated with me. (Evans, 2008, p. 91). Although my employer has been a legal information publishing technology leader with our flagship electronic product released in the 1970s, until very recently there was a strong need to offer all of our content in print as well. My interaction with customers at conferences and research sessions revealed that while they valued the efficiency of online searching, they would often use the results of the search to locate the appropriate title in their print library. Print was the preferred medium for reading. The print percentage of our business, though, has been in a steady decline as the next generation of customers focuses on searching, browsing and reading their information in electronic format.

With my aforementioned customer contact viewed as a valuable part of my work, I was disheartened to read that vendors are sometimes viewed as “’the enemy’”. (Evans, p. 94). I have participated in office visits, market research and direct phone calls with our customers to learn their needs first-hand. The same is true of many of my colleagues. We glean something (and often more than one thing) every time we meet with our customers. I do recognize that many want our information to be inexpensive, but we create significant value-add for our products including many that require attorney analysis. There are other considerable improvements in infrastructure that customers would only notice if they were not there (and a search took minutes instead of seconds).

Reading this chapter, I'm reminded that the author, as a librarian, represents one of my industry's customers. His frustration regarding the numerous purchases of Grieg’s Holberg Suite that are required as a result of audio technological advances, puts me into publisher mode. (Evans, 2008, p. 92). How can we alleviate this inefficiency Evans identifies? What if publishers sold the content and then upcharged a relatively small incremental fee for media delivery? Customers would not have to pay the full price for content they already own, and publishers might see that customers upgrade to new media earlier than they did under the traditional model.


References

Evans, G. E. (2008). Reflections on creation information service collections. In K. Haycock & B. E. Sheldon (Eds.), The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts (pp. 87-97). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.