Providing spaces for patrons is a crucial part of public library service. The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) highlights this, ensuring that an emphasis is made that in modern society this includes both the physical library spaces we first think of, but also the online spaces provided by the organisation as well (I & J Management Services, 2016).

For these spaces to be beneficial, however, they need to be designed well. What does this mean? Countless elements come into play – from ease of access to aesthetics and the information provided in these spaces (Bell, 2018). In this article, we take a quick but practical exploration of these elements.

Below is a table highlighting three chosen organisations and their primary digital spaces. The table gives an outline of how three elements of the client experience – community-orientated language, multimedia use and time of day –  were implemented on these platforms.

Comparison table of three information organisations against elements of online client experience.

The three elements of client experience used in the above table were identified through a case study on academic libraries and their Facebook posts (Gruss, Abrahams, Song, Berry & Al-Daihani, 2020), however, each element has proven successful in various other digital environments according to experts (Kanuri, Chen & Sridhar, 2018; Klassen et al., 2018; Kumar & Kumar, 2020).

Gruss and colleagues (2020) found that using community-orientated language – defined as language that is unique to the brand, as well as directly related to the community they serve – can elicit an increased online interaction. Despite this, however, the three organisations we looked at largely don’t utilise this tool. New York Public Library (NYPL) was the outlier, with a large amount of language in its content relaying community-centredness, e.g. “…we want to ensure they know how important our libraries are to our communities” (NYPL, 2021).

An example of community-centred language utilized on the NYPL website.

Utilizing multimedia- images, video, audio files – is another element that research has found provides an significant increase in client interaction (Gruss et al., 2020). This element, which is incredibly easy to implement on online platforms, is something that was notable across all three platforms that we explored (see images below).

The final element of client experience explored was posting content at an intentional time of day. The study conducted by Gruss and colleagues (2020) found that posts during the morning were much more effective when analysing user interaction. However, this is something that was only possible to explore with Powerhouse Museum, as their Facebook page was the chosen platform.

This brings to mind the consideration of whether this particular element is applicable to all digital spaces, or is it just relevant to social media platforms, which is what our primary resource focused on? A more thorough exploration of relevant literature, and perhaps more research in general, would be needed.

References.

Bell, S. (2018). Design thinking + user experience = better-designed libraries. Information Outlook (Online), 22(4), 4-6.

Gruss, R., Abrahams, A., Song, Y., Berry, D., & Al-Daihani, S. M. (2020). Community building as an effective user engagement strategy: A case study in academic libraries. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 71(2), 208-220. doi:10.1002/asi.24218

Kanuri, V. K., Chen, Y., & Sridhar, S. (2018). Scheduling content on social media: Theory, evidence, an application. Journal of Marketing, 1-20. doi: 10.1177/00222429

Klassen, K. M., Borleis, E. S., Brennan, L., Reid, M., McCaffery, T. A., & Lim, M. (2018). What people “like”: Analysis of social media strategies used by food industry brands, lifestyle brands, and health promotion organizations on Facebook and Instagram. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 20(6). doi: 10.2196/10227

Kumar, J. & Kumar, V. (2020). Drivers of brand community engagement. Journal of retailing and consumer services, 54, 101949. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.101949

I & J Management Services. (2016). Guidelines, standards and outcome measures for Australian public libraries: July 2016. Retrieved from https://read.alia.org.au/guidelines-standards-and-outcome-measures-australian-public-libraries-july-2016

The New York Public Library (NYPL). (2021). Tell City Hall: Libraries Make New York City Stronger. Retrieved from https://www.nypl.org/speakout?itm_source=nypl&itm_medium=hpfeature&itm_campaign=2021BudgetAdvocacy