Thing 18- part 1

We love surveys around here, and considering our commitment to giving people what they want, I suppose we should. I think these surveys would be a great way to get feedback about our changes at the self-check in particular. We could assess people's knowledge of it and see how useful they think it really is. I would be interested to know how prevalent certain misconceptions are regarding the self-check, such as the idea that you have to be called down to use them or that you can't pick up holds there. I also feel like most people are still requiring a substantial amount of personal attention while using these machines, and I would love to find out how to liberate them a little bit more.

That being said, surveys have certain inherent problems that we'd have to watch out for. For one thing, it's very easy to write leading questions or only provide a limited number of answers. As a student, for example, I truly hate multiple-choice anything because they so frequently lack the choice I find most fitting; this would be an even easier trap to fall into if we're talking about opinions instead of "facts."

I also have some concerns about how we amateurs might analyze data. In certain cases, it makes perfect sense to just go with "Well, most people say X, so let's go with X." Sometimes statistics just don't work like that, though. For example, when we did the paper surveys about the self-check, a page brought up a good point: if we put the surveys next to the self-check, we only target the people who use or go near them. Sometimes data gets weighted one way or another for whatever reason, and our intuitions about how to interpret data can be pretty misleading. I have a vague sense of concern that all these cute tutorials and such will make us think we're experts in gathering and analyzing data.

Of course, this doesn't have to do with "Library 2.0" so much as surveys in general, so let's get back to the tech stuff. For one, I think these all look pretty easy to use (maybe deceptively so --see above comment on amateurs). There's actually not a whole lot to say there, because I think just about anyone could do this. I was surprised at how expensive the services are, but considering how precious feedback can be I guess it might make some sense.

By the way, I enjoyed Juanma's SurveyMonkey surveys about clerk stuff, and I think that was a good use of the tool.

I'll write up a survey and see if I can get anyone to take it, and I'll be back for part 2 after that.

Thing 13--Using LibraryThing

Well, I signed up for LibraryThing and added some books. I didn't figure out yet how to add a widget (another word I hate) to my blog. Here's my wee little library of recent or current reads.

As a social tool, I'd probably never use this. It seems to be more for people interested in projecting their tastes in hopes of connecting with other people of similar tastes. Beyond wearing band T-shirts to advertise my favorites, I'm not really prone to such behavior. I'm not especially interested in other people's opinions of what I read, and I rarely follow the recommendations of strangers as they're so frequently way off.

As a library tool, I think it's an attractive setup for patrons to search. I think it'd be kind of silly to start affiliating our collection with reviews and stuff, but I think I'm in the minority in regards to that sort of thing. People really seem to be into broadcasting opinions publicly (I keep my actual blog pretty private for a reason), so if that's what the people want then maybe libraries should give it to them. Let 'em argue about which James Patterson novel was the most riveting or whatever. I'll be at home, reading books without much input from anyone else.

I guess for me reading is a solitary activity, and I only share reading materials and opinions with actual people that I, well, actually know. LibraryThing is a neat little tool and maybe we could use it to showcase new books (so they can get even more holds put on them?) or collections (like graphic novels). Personally, though, it's not for me.