SF Library Candid Photos
I was requesting a book on San Francisco Public Library’s online site (love the online services!), and they were advertising the exhibition of candid photos, of families. I love these pony pictures.
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It’s certainly useful to be able to make Internet
requests for books/DVDs to be delivered to your
local branch, and to reserve books, but the SF
Public Library WEEB interface is so amazingly
crappy, it begs for explanation.
I kinda wonder whether:
1. it was done inhouse by somebody who isnt
really that web savvy … maybe someone who
was hired for something else?
2. it was outsourced to somebody based on
connections rather than competence.
You’ld think in SF they’ld be able to find
somebody to put together something with a
non-ass interface.
Reading the Shifted Librarian (http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/), I started realizing all of the issues around getting the library sciences up to date. Also worked at one time at the Cupertino Library, which was ahead of the game for a while, but then quickly backslid. I consider it one of the issues of state and local funding. It’s not going to get to be good unless some uber-company donates the brain force to do it. I think KPMG did the city services- like paying your ticket online- and they aren’t that suave either.
the thing that gets me about SFPL is that it never remembers your ID, so you have to enter it each time you request a book, and I request about 4-5 at a time.
Kind of amazing that we are kids who were around in the card catalog days and the beginning of library systems on the internet.