Column Editor:  Daniel L. Huang-Talbot  (Library Resources Specialist, Lived Places Publishing;  and Acquisitions Librarian, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA) 

Against the Grain V38#4

Black cats are commonly known in fiction as a witch’s familiar, often portrayed as assisting in some form of magical pharmacology.  In real life, our black cat Sirius was the moral bedrock of Med Student Haus, the house occupied by himself and three third-year students from the St. Luke’s School of Medicine, where he provided emotional support through chirps, involuntary snuggling, and other feline qualities.  He’s really the star of this column and at this moment in history he is providing post-hospital shift emotional support by curling up on my future wife Brianna’s chest, shedding silky and glossy black fur just about everywhere on the couch. 

Sirius was the wisest of medical cats, in a way knowing exactly when he had dispensed enough warmth and cat hairs to the benefit of his patient.  He rose from his resting spot and did a panther-esque stretch and large pink and fang-displaying yawn before hopping onto the dining table to rub his chin on the top edge of Brianna’s laptop.  Brianna herself did a sleepy yawn and stretch and groggily followed Sirius to the table and sat down in front of her laptop:  time for evening studies.

With a soft mew, Sirius stopped rubbing his chin against the screen and instead studied the screen wisely while Brianna tried to log into the school’s library databases.  He turned and looked at me, squeezed his eyes and kept them narrow, as if chiding me, “See here, Mr. Librarian, I encourage the students to study in ways you cannot!”  His presence always helped encourage others, especially in this case when Bri found yet another library authentication error message impeding her search.

“I’ve tried all these different ways to log in! How am I supposed to look up the correct method to explain to a parent we’re going to involuntarily commit their child?” griped Brianna, who was currently on the inpatient psychiatry service at a hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania and wondering how to ask the attending physician how he resolved such moral quandaries.  Sirius turned his black head towards me and if you own a cat, you would understand the power of a cat’s judging stare, and in this case his eyes told me, “Foolish mortal!  You are the librarian, are you not?  Fix this!”

One of the other residents of Med Student Haus happened past and asked Bri if she was finding the same problem he had earlier looking up something similar:  how to handle the moral quandary of a patient leaving the hospital against medical advice and how to handle it in the heat of the moment.  If you recall my previous column, I made reference to the mystery of the under-resourced hospital library, which made little sense since years before in my time at Lehigh University, I had often been on the phone with the very kind and extremely dutiful hospital librarian, filling interlibrary loan article requests via fax and mail (I understand that this dates me to what some consider a prehistoric era).

The Mystery Resolved

I pulled up their medical school library guide and began investigating.  Aha, their library was technically the supplementary facility and their primary library was located over seventy miles away.  The very helpful and detailed guide explained all the different login mechanisms required since these medical students were at the mercy of remote authentication methods due to their presence at what was essentially a satellite campus. 

When I explained to the young future neurosurgeon the solution to accessing the medical database in question, he shook his head and told me that it just would not work and was way too frustrating even if only during a somewhat stressful time.  He felt a lack of confidence that even if he took the time to access the database, what assurance would he have that the database would address what he needed when his studies were stressful as is?  And he was certain that someone would find a way to charge him something!

Brianna chimed in, saying one might as well ask the attending physician since there was a high chance of the experienced doctor providing a thoughtful and empathetic response to such questions of ethics.  After all, in her opinion, if the library needed such complex authentication to what should be freely accessible information, perhaps the library was part of the problem!  The fact that it made sense for a library to operate in this fashion meant technology had to improve to make way for a more sensible setup.

Improving User Experience through Collaboration

Sufficiently scolded by the ethically conscientious students, your column author had to lie down on the couch and hold Sirius in his lap while having an existential crisis about the role of libraries, open access, and more!  You do have to admit that there’s a certain charm to the scent of Fancy Feast cat food while a cat gives you boops with his nose as you ponder your thoughts of, “No, wait.  This isn’t my fault, it’s the publisher platform’s fault.”  Sirius gave my nose one of his trademark whisker tickles and now I was armed with the mental clarity from his therapeutic presence.  I concluded that librarians could do more to address the relationship and usability between vendor and library, for the sake of better outcomes for the library user. 

The next time a chance to improve these usability outcomes began with the most unlikely of partners: Amazon Business and their physical book sales initiative.  For the uninitiated to libraries, Amazon is often described as the Lord Voldemort of bookstores, the stuck in the past Christopher Plummer Klingon of physical media, or even worse — the Borg that will assimilate your library.  Thus when Jared Gradecki, our Books Advisor for Amazon, wanted to meet with me about the technology solutions they were developing for libraries, as the kids say, I was “sus.”  But with the chiding from cat and students fresh in my mind, I opened myself to the opportunity.

Truly, I was impressed with the level of curiosity on Jared’s part.  He listened carefully to the methods used by libraries to import order metadata into their library enterprise systems, immediately realizing that Lehigh University had developed an entire app (the Purchase Request Platform (PRP)) in some senses primarily for the purpose of creating a workaround for Amazon’s lack of integration with library systems.  Jared correctly concluded that he had to bring in Moses Lai, the product manager and technical specialist for Amazon Books, to work on my proposed enhancements since other libraries had also mentioned struggling with the same issues.

When I evaluated the result of Amazon creating a MARC order metadata solution, I realized that while the Lehigh PRP app was superior in terms of customization, if we ever lost access to our custom tool, Amazon could pick up the slack because of the level of sensible usability and flexibility built into their solutions.  This continues to be important since we can no longer rely on the Coutts/Oasis monograph ordering infrastructure in the wake of the Clarivate announcement, even if Amazon’s intention wasn’t to take over the Oasis client base (in fact, they asked me why are library book jobbers desert-themed, having heard little of that corner of our library acquisitions world).  As of the time of publication of this column, both Moses and Jared have informed me that even more thoughtful library-informed enhancements are taking place with Amazon and they have more user interviews to conduct.  Other library suppliers have some catching up to do!

I have even been sent additional pictures of cats by Moses and others in moral solidarity regarding the benefits of cats influencing library technology.  The lesson for both libraries and vendors here is that this is the time to invest in studying user experience.  I have proposed to Jared and Moses that Amazon needs to consider the inequities in access to books through building linkages that connect students with the library’s acquisitions budget.  If a medical student studying ethics in neurosurgery needs a book, searches on Amazon, and cannot afford it, their solutions should send the information regarding the need to their campus library staff.  I know that librarians love purchasing books that are sorely needed and appreciated. 

In a forthcoming column, I want to begin addressing what I consider a workable model for libraries to evaluate UX and how to do so in an empathetic way that is conscious of lived experiences.  In the Amazon example I mentioned, part of the efforts should be to go where the library patrons already are at their point of need instead of requesting they come to us.  I greatly appreciated Moses and Jared for their people-centered approach, even if the solutions are out of reach for the time being.  But for now, I will conclude with a question:  I wonder if Jeff Bezos knows he has a cat and some small town medical students amongst the many people he should thank?