User Experience in Libraries ─ Applying Ethnography and Human-centred Design

Modern library services can be incredibly complex. Much more so than their forebears, modern librarians must grapple daily with questions of how best to implement innovative new services, while also maintaining and updating the old. The efforts undertaken are immense, but how best to evaluate their success?

In this groundbreaking new book from Routledge, library practitioners, anthropologists, and design experts combine to advocate a new focus on User Experience (or ‘UX’) research methods. Through a combination of theoretical discussion and applied case studies, they argue that this ethnographic and human-centred design approach enables library professionals to gather rich evidence-based insights into what is really going on in their libraries, allowing them to look beyond what library users say they do to what they actually do.

Edited by the team behind the international UX in Libraries conference, User Experience in Libraries will ignite new interest in a rapidly emerging and game-changing area of research. Clearly written and passionately argued, it is essential reading for all library professionals and students of Library and Information Science. It will also be welcomed by anthropologists and design professionals working in related fields.

Andy Priestner is the Project Manager of Cambridge University Library's FutureLib innovation programme. He was previously Head of Information & Library Services at the university's Judge Business School, where he?was responsible for a number of?pioneering ethnographic research projects.

Matt Borg?was an academic librarian at Sheffield Hallam University for fourteen years,?during which time he?was responsible for initiating a new research-based approach to user management. Having also lecturerd in Information Management, Borg now?works with libraries accross Europe in his current role at ProQuest.