Peter Morville's keynote for the 2014 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit

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Inspiration
Peter Morville, 2014 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit
Architecture

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“I say we fight for and maintain our very long-term and hard-
won connection to books and what they represent.”Joseph Janes

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The structural design of shared
information environments.
The organization, labeling,
search, and navigation systems in
websites and intranets.

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#dtdt

10. “Where architects use forms and spaces to design
environments for inhabitation, information architects use
nodes and links to create environments for understanding.”
Jorge Arango, Architectures (2011)

12. Fragmentation
Fragmentation into multiple
sites, domains, and identities is
clearly a major problem. Users
don’t know which site to visit
for which purpose.
Findability
Users can’t find what they need
from the home page, but most
users don’t come through the
front door. They enter via a web
search or a deep link, and are
confused by what they find.
Even worse, most never use the
Library, because its resources
aren’t easily findable.

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1. One Library
2. Core Areas
3. Network Intelligence
Web Strategy

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16. 16Source: Search Patterns (2010)
Search is a Complex, Adaptive System

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Web Governance Board

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“When I was playing baseball, most of
the time I wasn‟t playing full-scale,
four bases, nine innings. I was playing
a perfectly suitable junior version of
the game...But when I was studying
those shards of math and history, I
wasn‟t playing a junior version of
anything. It was like batting practice
without knowing the whole game.
Why would anyone want to do that?”

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The MOOCs must first compete
with nonconsumption by
meeting demand outside the
schools (e.g., developing
countries, home-schooling) and
then within (e.g., letting students
take courses not offered by their
district).
Later, this self-paced, student-
centered model may gain
sufficient momentum to become
the dominant paradigm.

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The Architecture of a Class

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29. Regardless of all the time and effort libraries put into
providing a variety of research tools and resources
on their websites, the literature suggests that
students still prefer to start their research using
Google or some other form of search engine.
It is clear that there is an overwhelming preference
for easy to use, familiar search tools that
transcend education level, discipline of study, and
student demographics.
Discovery Layers and the Distance Student
Jessica Mussell (2012)
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Strengths
• Fast, easy, familiar
• Cross-disciplinary searching
• Links to citing and related articles

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Weaknesses
• No “advanced search” functionality
• Limited, inaccurate metadata
• Inconsistent coverage across disciplines
• No transparency (coverage, algorithms, usage, monetization)
• Not customizable or interoperable

32. Information Literacy
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Employers claimed that college hires rarely conducted the
thorough research required of them in the workplace.
At worst, some college hires solved problems with a
lightning quick Google search, a scan of the first couple of
pages of results, and a linear answer finding approach.
“I had a new graduate hire who only searched for papers
on Google. I said, you‟re missing things, you need to use
PubMed, and he responded, „Well, I did this quick search,
and that‟s what I got.‟ But that‟s not good enough.”
Project Information Literacy: Learning Curve by Alison J. Head (2012)

33. 33Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies by Roger C. Schonfeld (2010)
Faculty rate importance of library roles
“The academic library is increasingly being disintermediated from the
discovery process, risking irrelevance in one of its core functional areas.”

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Federated
“Bento Box”
NCSU
Stanford
Dartmouth
Virginia
Columbia

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Aggregated
“Faceted”
Cornell
Duke
McGill
Northwestern
U. Washington

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FacetedNavigation

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AdaptiveFacets

39. Gross and Sheridan conducted a usability study
that examined how Summon (“web-scale discovery”)
was used for common library search tasks.
Summon was positioned as the primary search
box on the library‟s home page for the study.
They found that the single search box was
employed for 80% of the assigned tasks.
How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box
Lown, Sierra, Boyer (2013)
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40. Use of full-text online content dramatically
increased in the year following implementation.
Librarians found they could focus instruction
less on choosing a database or catalog and more
on refining a search, research as an iterative
process, and other high level search skills.
The Impact of Serial Solutions’ Summon on Information
Literacy Instruction
Stephanie Buck and Margaret Mellinger (2011)
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63% didn‟t use any Internet
resources, other than the
Guide, to complete their
assignment.
Embedding LibGuides into Course
Management Systems
Stephanie Brown (2012)
Embeddable
Search Widget

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Information Literacy
The ability the find,
evaluate, create, organize,
and use information from
myriad sources and media.

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“70 percent of humans experience
severe back pain…and in the U.S.
this results in tens of thousands of
surgeries each year.”
“There‟s a secret about MRIs and
back pain: the most common
problems physicians see on MRI
and attribute to back pain –
herniated, ruptured, and bulging
discs – are seen almost as
commonly on MRIs of healthy
people without back pain.”

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Why is Medicine a Mess?
• Our minds/bodies are complex.
• Patients want a quick fix.
• Doctors hate saying: “I don‟t know.”
• The AMA is an advocacy group.
• Relentless and insidious advertising.
• Industry-funded research.
• $2.7 trillion per year.

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“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to
one who is striking at the root.” Henry David Thoreau
“Our government is corrupt. Not
corrupt in any criminal sense.
But corrupt in a perfectly legal
sense: special interests bend the
levers of power to benefit them at
the expense of the rest of us.”

51. 51The relationship between information and culture

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“It is now my suggestion that many
people may not want information,
and that they will avoid using a
system precisely because it gives
them information…If you have
information, you must first read
it…You must then try to understand
it…Understanding the information
may show that your work was
wrong, or may show that your work
was needless…Thus not having and
not using information can often
lead to less trouble and pain than
having and using it.”
Calvin Mooers (1959)
The limits of information

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“We shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us.”

54. 54The order of food influences choice by as much as 25 percent.

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Some habits have
the power to start
a chain reaction.
“Success doesn‟t depend on
getting every single thing
right, but instead relies on
identifying a few key
priorities and fashioning
them into powerful levers.”

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“Willpower is the single most
important keystone habit for
individual success.”

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Paul O’Neil as CEO of Alcoa
“I want to talk to you about worker
safety…I intend to make Alcoa the
safest company in America.
I intend to go for zero injuries.”
“We killed this man. It‟s my failure of
leadership. I caused his death.
And it‟s the failure of all of you in the
chain of command.”

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“A culture of generosity.”
Josie Parker, Ann Arbor District Library

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“A library, like a national park, teaches us that we all benefit
when our most valuable treasures are held in common.”
Peter Morville, Inspiration Architecture

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Keystone
A central stone at the summit
of an arch locking the whole together.

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Polar bears are a keystone species in the Arctic ecosystem.

64. The library is a keystone of culture.

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“A library outranks
any other one thing a
community can do to
benefit its people. It is
a never failing spring
in the desert.”
Andrew Carnegie
(1889)

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“Too many people think that we don’t need libraries
when we have the Internet.” John Palfrey, DPLA (2012)

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IA Therefore I Am