Ann Arbor has a pretty rockin’ library site and their tech guys clearly know what’s what. My already obscenely high usage of the library skyrocketed with the new site (and got even more ludicrous when they moved the hold shelves into the lobby and added automated check out machines).
Despite my heavy usage I still have a “wha-haa?!?” moment every time I want to get an item. Below is a screencap of an item view at the AADL’s site. Try to find the place where you can take action to get this item.
You need to click the “Request this Title” link up at the top of the page (it’s also mirrored at the bottom). I miss it every damn time. The layout and style give it equal weight with other actions like “MARC Display” (a mystery to me, I had to look it up). Once I’ve decided I want an item (which is the goal that ultimately brought most folks to this page), there are no clear “where to go next” signs. A simple fix would be making the most common action (getting the item) more noticeable.
But there’s an extra fold to this problem: is this item really available for me to have? To answer that question, you need to check below to a list of the available copies of the item. If one of the copies is “AVAILABLE”, I can check this item out and expect it to be on the hold shelf for me in about a day. But if it’s not, when can I expect the item to be ready for me? You might think that you can look for the latest due date and add a day or two, but there could be any number of patrons in line ahead of you. To determine when you might have a copy of this item in my hands you
- reserve the item
- check your hold status (“hold 81 of 81”)
- determine the number of copies available (60 for twilight)
- factor in the return dates of those copies in the list
- factor in the length of a borrowing period for this item type (three weeks for books)
It’s not a perfect estimate (it can’t take into account lost copies, additional copies bought to meet demand, patrons who return early/late, or copies that languish for a while on the hold shelf) but I find its margin of error to be around three days. If you’re looking very closely at the screencap (as I was) you might see that the information gleaned from first three steps is actually already on this page (it’s the oddly phrased “80 holds on first copy returned of 60 copies.” I should ask to be the first hold for second copy returned and let those other 80 people keep waiting on the first!).
If I could make one change to the AADL site today I would move the answers to the questions above (“can I get it?”, “can I get it now?”, “when I can I expect to have this”) front and center:
