Searching lessons of success

Citation

Maxymuk, J. (1999), "Searching lessons of success", The Bottom Line, Vol. 12 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.1999.17012cag.001

Searching lessons of success

Keywords: Customer service, Interet, Design, Library users, Online retrieval

I have sat through a number of customer service workshops over the years and generally found them uneventful. Usually they have taken the form of a business model and emphasize dealing with library users as a business does with its customers. I find nothing wrong with answering the telephone pleasantly or greeting patrons with a smile, but beyond these sorts of simplistic lessons I do not find much similarity between meeting someone's immediate information need at the reference desk and selling a person a pair of socks in a department store. After all, that information need is probably a transitory thing while the socks may last a year or so.

That being said, there are things to be learned from successful operations in other information-supplying fields - lessons which can be translated. Internet stocks have been booming over the past couple of years. Investment firm Goldman, Sachs & Co. reported that the average Internet stock rose 225 percent in 1998. Leaders like bookseller Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ and search engine Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com have increased much more than that. Online auction house eBay http://www.ebay.com/ had its initial offering at $18 a share in September 1998 and sold at $240 a share at year's end. Such gains appear to have no basis in reality. Amazon has yet to turn a profit, and Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay all may be overtaken by competitors. Some analysts liken this market activity to the boom and bust cycles of biotechnology companies in the early 1990s, electricity generation firms in the 1880s, and the Dutch tulip bulb mania in the 1660s. Regardless of the eventual success or failure of individual companies, most would agree that the Internet is an ever-growing medium that is changing how commerce is conducted worldwide. Whether their stocks are good investments is immaterial to the fact that their success can be measured by their online popularity.

While libraries do not compete directly against Web-based companies in their Internet presence, there are indirect effects. Users of the Internet often look for the same type of service and amenities no matter where they click. Libraries are not to be expected to provide games featuring cartoon characters like Disneys' Daily Blast http://disney.go.com/Kids/index.html, but library Webmasters might pick up some pointers in how to present what they do have to offer. Primarily, what Web-based companies offer their users are these six virtues:

1. 1.

   comprehensiveness;

2. 2.

   discovery;

3. 3.

   value;

4. 4.

   independence;

5. 5.

   service;

6. 6.

   security.

Libraries would do well to consider how to appear so virtually virtuous as well.

Comprehensive: over 100 billion served

A Web site must imply a sense of comprehensiveness to assure the user that he has found the best spot to search for what he wants to find. One reason Yahoo is popular is that it gives the impression to the novice user that all of the Internet is indexed there. Experienced users quickly learn that such a mission is impossible. Yahoo is a large and friendly indexing tool. Similarly, Amazon does not include every book that is in-print in the USA, but it includes a large enough proportion so that some libraries have canceled venerable, somewhat-expensive, standby Books In Print to rely instead on Amazon's cyberlistings for basic bibliographic searching. In the same way, CDnow http://www.cdnow.com/ does not sell every music CD listed as being in-print at the All-Music Guide site http://www.allmusic.com. For that matter, each entry in the online All-Music Guide does not include full data. Some only feature little more than artist and title.

However, while nothing on the Web is truly comprehensive, all of the above sites will probably meet the overwhelming majority of most users' searches for books, music, and more. Libraries need to inspire that sort of confidence in users through selectivity. Even the largest library's holdings will not be all-inclusive, but including prominent links from your library's pages to other libraries' catalogs, as well as to those of shared catalogs, broadens the appearance of your holdings and the options for your patrons. Of more importance, what a library holds should reflect the needs of its primary clientele; a library needs to know who it is serving and what they want in order to inspire any confidence in its users that it is big enough to supply their information needs.

Discovery: let your fingers do the walking

With size comes responsibilities. Having a large catalog is of no use without strong organizing principles and a powerful search engine. Most search engines on the Web have some serious quirks. Chiefly, they are set up to do a basic keyword search, usually with an implied "or" operator. Often they have much more powerful potential for more advanced searches, but that information is buried on help screens. eBay is the most popular of many online auction houses. It claims to list over two million items for sale each day, lending credence to the old saw that one person's junk is another's treasure. It lists items according to a hierarchy of subject categories, and users can find things either by browsing or by its search engine. On the surface, eBay's search feature is primitive in the extreme, but it actually has all the general features one needs. The "and" operator is implied, the truncation symbol is *, and the "or" operator can be invoked either by using the search prefix "@0" or by putting terms to be or'd within parentheses and separating them by commas and no spaces. The weird syntax required for "or" is a good example of typical Web search quirkiness. Why make things so confusing? Why not use the operator itself, perhaps in a pull-down menu? With eBay, though, it hardly matters. As long as a user can get close to what he's looking for, the browsing and serendipity is half the fun of shopping. Yet, libraries are shopping centers. The factor to consider in this regard is that on eBay the seller chooses the subject category and writes the title and description for each entry. Thus, a buyer has to consider misspellings, miscategorizations, and a wide variety of potential synonyms when searching - even more so than with databases developed under more professional control. In what is essentially a flea market, though, looking through the dreck to find the virtual diamond is part of the enjoyment.

Yahoo is structured as a subject-based hierarchy to allow for browsing, too. Furthermore, Yahoo's search engine also has some quirks, but its advanced mode allows for the phrase searching, "and" "or" and "not" operators, truncation, and some field limiters. None of that is obvious for the novice user doing a basic search, but again the capability is there. Amazon flips this equation on its head. Its basic search facility is very well-designed; it is simple and powerful. A person can search by author, title, or subject and within these by keyword, exact match, or even the start of words or phrases. Further options are included for ISBN, publisher, and date searches. Its basic engine would be a reasonable search option for a library catalog. Strangely though, Amazon's "Power Search" relies on very quirky, exacting syntax, which I would not recommend.

Powerful search engines may not be the business of online business, but they are our business as librarians. While there are many library Web catalogs whose search engines could stand vast improvement, we will not learn much in this regard from successful Internet companies because it is not what they do best. Most do not need great search engines because users buy differently than they research. A site like Gateway Computers http://www.gateway/com/home/ provides the user with basic choices of what is available - desktops, portables, peripherals - and leads him choice by choice to a final shopping destination. This approach will not translate to searching an online catalog. They do correlate somewhat in how a library may lead a user to choose the proper online index for his topic. What libraries offer is now evolving in this electronic environment, and how we help users find what's new will also change.

Value: get your fullcolor free brochure

The electronic environment is rich in information, and libraries must take a leading role in the transformation. Access to the Web is a passport to a world of valuable resources never before available so easily. For example, the Vanguard Group http://www.vanguard.com/ is one of the leading mutual funds investing firms, and on their Web site they have put scores of guides and brochures on investment basics and strategies, as well as up-to-date news and account information. Likewise, Fidelity Investments http://www31.fidelity.com/, another investment house, makes available a wealth of market research reports from various sources, most of it free. On sites like these, a user can find all the pertinent data to make informed investment decisions. What once would have had to have been gathered through phone calls, mailings, personal visits, and newspaper/periodical research can be obtained now with a few mouse clicks by the Web citizen.

What is even more amazing is how much of this information is available without charge. "Free" is a great attraction. Microsoft's online news and politics magazine Slate http://www.slate.com/ experienced record increases in its online readership after making most of the magazine's content free in February 1999. Slate bears a strong resemblance to glossy print magazines, but the current issue is always there, can be updated at any time, and did I mention it is free? Another solely-electronic politics and culture magazine is Salon http://www.salonmagazine.com/ which made its name last year during the Impeachment process by breaking the Rep. Henry Hyde adultery story. Salon is totally free and presents feature stories and a host of regular pithy columnists including Camille Paglia, Garrison Keillor, and David Horowitz.

Current news, stock prices and financial data, weather, sports scores, even daily comic strips are available for free on the Web. Libraries do compete directly with that, but by offering our own electronic resources we are meeting the needs of our users. Library users come to us online looking for research and reference information. The advent of electronic journals, online government documents, and full-text indexes enables US to be players in the instant gratification information lifestyle of today, and we should take advantage of the contemporary digital cornucopia as much as we are fiscally able. Web guides tailored to the interests of our clientele are a further way to provide virtual assistance to our cyber visitors.

Independence: where do you want to go today?

Microsoft touches on a key appeal of the Web in its advertising slogan of "where do you want to go today?" The power the Web affords the individual to pursue personal interests independently is an undeniable enticement. The user can change daily. On the Microsoft site http://home.microsoft.com/, the emphasis is placed on "do," in other words to take an active role. "Do it here." "Do it now." "Do it today on MSN." The Web can be a very empowering environment for its users. Online auction house eBay brings individual buyers and sellers together in a virtual marketplace where it does not matter whether a seller's table of wares is large or small. For electronic entrepreneurs, all that matters is whether the supply meets a demand. It is pure capitalism.

Financial sites provide another good example of Web empowerment. On the Vanguard site, this point is duly noted, "The Web offers an excellent means of delivering an extraordinary amount of up-to-date information about mutual fund investing, and in a manner that can be directed by you.'' (emphasis added) Online investing site E*Trade http://www.etrade.com/ bases its business on this same point. "Online investing offers consumers numerous benefits, including low transaction costs, fast access to the markets, and a wide array of information resources." These benefits plus the overall ease of use of electronic investment sites have led to rapid growth of online investing. Because of this, SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt in January 1999 issued a warning http://www.sec.gov/news/press/99-9.txt to cyberinvestors to take at least the same precautions they would when buying and selling stocks and bonds in a more traditional manner - know what you are buying and understand the risks involved. Independence clearly requires an acceptance of personal responsibility.

If users can control how to spend their money in cyberspace, they certainly expect complete freedom in accessing information from libraries. The implication for libraries is that Websites should be attractively designed and logically organized so that users can come and go with autonomy, finding what they need. Many libraries are reporting a decrease in reference questions and in-person library use in general with concomitant increases in digital library activity. The challenge is to make our Web presence inviting, intelligible, and useful.

Service: but wait there is more

Beyond the basics, the Web allows for a host of supplemental services to be offered. The multimedia possibilities alone are a significant advantage. At CDnow, users can listen to audio clips from thousands of CDs, read biographical details of the musicians in several different languages, click on links to pages about that artist, and connect to CDs by similar artists.

Amazon tries a comparable approach by listing books purchased by other people who purchased the one the user is viewing - this is a marketing variation on citation searching although with less efficacy than ISI. Amazon also provides space for customers to write capsule reviews of items in its catalog. Wouldn't that be a nice feature in an online catalog? Call up the bibliographic record for Hamlet in the online catalog and find several links to full-text professional assessments of the work. Click on Shakespeare and receive not only a list of his works held by the library, but biographical and critical data on the writer as well. Many libraries have these three elements in the form of online reference works, full-text electronic indexing, and, of course, an online catalog, they just aren't linked. Think of how much easier the research process would seem to lower level students. For anyone doing research, however, we would have to link everything. Although that is not likely to occur, no one knows options of meta-indexing are just over the horizon. For now, libraries may be content focusing on Web guides and electronic reference service. Those are not the ultimate in online service, but they are things we do well and that have value to our library users.

Security: no salesman will come to your door

The successful sites here examined have mostly been of companies involved in electronic commerce. For electronic commerce to be fully effective, a system of security and an assurance of privacy are both necessary. That is true to a lesser extent for libraries. Any reputable business site will use some form of encryption to make the transfer of sensitive information like credit card numbers secure. CDnow, for example, uses Netscape's SSL encryption, perhaps the industry standard. Many sites, like E*Trade, also require logins and server authentication for further security. E*Trade and other sites like eBay offer some transaction insurance as well. Security is much less an issue for libraries because money generally is not being digitally transferred. However, our profession should watch the growing trend of using proxy servers and login authentications, which are necessary for licensed commercial databases and indexes.

Privacy is a related significant issue for companies operating on the Web. Users want to be able to conduct personal research privately without fear of unwanted exposure. CDnow posts a guarantee that it will not, "distribute, sell or rent your name or personal information about you to any third party without your permission." Other sites make similar assertions, although companies often do exchange aggregate information, i.e. we sold this item to this many customers. The privacy of an individual borrower's record is of paramount importance to libraries, too. As is established in the American Library Association's Code of Ethics for library professionals http://www.ala.org/alaprg/oif/ethics.html each library user's privacy and confidentiality is to be protected at all times. Libraries historically have stood firm on this issue and must ensure that new online systems do not contain security lapses.

Accomplished Internet businesses have a number of features in common. They present a complete picture of what they are trying to provide. They make successfully finding what you want from their site a pleasurable experience. They offer valuable information free to all comers. They allow users to pursue their interests with wide latitude and independence. Users can take advantage of additional, related services made available. Finally, users are made to feel comfortable that their dealings on these sites are confidential and secure.

Although libraries are not selling goods or services on their Web sites, there is still much to be said for providing users with the kind of service for which people expect to pay. The wealth of information accessible all across the Web raises the bar for all libraries. Part of maintaining or even improving our place in society is providing the public with the resources and services necessary to meet their online information needs. Not only should our cyberdisplay be attractive, but our content must be of the highest quality and constantly growing and improving. We should not lose sight of the traditional services of human interaction and wise research counsel librarians always have given. They are welcome in any library environment.

All links referred to in this column can also be found on the Web site of the author http://www.rci/rutgers.edu/~maxymuk/home/home.html).

John Maxymuk is a Reference Librarian at the Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey.