Think About This: “He was told what HE had to do”

The reactions from the room were almost aggressive, a few actually got angry. This guy, or so he was told by audience, should enrol in a course on information skills. If he only was ready to spend some time on learning these tools, he would be very pleased with the results and understand what is going on. The library offers great tools, even if the complexities of information delivery cause them to be relatively difficult to handle. The scholar should have worked with us, or at least should have tried to learn the necessary skills, the audience said.

I was flabbergasted. Instead of people listening to him to figure out what we should do, he was told what HE had to do. A few errors in interface design were readily admitted, but the thought of reconsidering the way information should be offered did not occur, not noticeably at least.

Read this post at -=( In Between )=- Scholarly Online Publishing, Open Access and Library Related Technology about a presentation made by a user to a group of librarians. I have witnessed this as well. This is just an excellent of example of listening to users and building systems that work for them.