Via an entertaining compare and contrast, the presenters explore disconnects between e-books and streaming video available via library resources compared to “real world” resources such as Netflix and Kindle e-books. The purpose is to illustrate how library resources and commercial resources aim to meet user needs in radically different ways.

1. Never Mind, I’ll Just Buy It: Why Library Users Won’t Jump Through Your Hoops
Joelle Thomas & Galadriel Chilton
joelle.thomas@lib.uconn.edu galadriel.chilton@lib.uconn.edu
Abstract
Via an entertaining compare and contrast, presenters will explore disconnects between e­books and
streaming video available via library resources compared to “real world” resources such as Netflix and Kindle
e­books. The purpose is to illustrate how library resources and commercial resources aim to meet user
needs in radically different ways.
Image Talking Points
Intro
#erl14nevermind
For example...
You don't need instructions, usually, but in case
you do: three steps!
Anecdotes with Joelle: Options for Video!
● Response #1 Is it YouTube?
● * Response #2 ­ Pay Options?

2. Galadriel
Galadriel
Galadriel
Galadriel
Here’s another example of how library access to
e­books is absurd and inflicts significant pain…
Note that this video assumes that one already
has an EBSCO account.
Galadriel
A couple of things to highlight about this awful
experience include…
That you must authorize your computer to be
able to share an EBSCO e­book amongst
multiple devices. If you skip this tiny print, the
e­book is only available one computer and going
back to authorize a machine is complicated.

3. Galadriel
And then it gets even better….
Once your e­book expires, even if you remove it
from Adobe Digital Editions, it still takes up
space on your hard drive.
How does this make your feel?
Galadriel
Here’s another example of complicated
instructions required due to the interfaces we
offer users.
Why is this?
Galadriel
It results in telling our users “No” and results in
inconvenience at a most spectacular level and
utterly defies expectation.
A faculty member’s response when being shown
how to use Ebrary was why is the library even
paying for stuff that is so hard to use>
Joelle’s student story
● Buy it instead of e­book
Galadriel
The reality is that…
...and we haven’t even mentioned the poor MARC
records provided that inhibit discovery and
access to e­books.
< Joelle enter stage left >
Ok, next up...
I teach ARTstor, and students do not use it, ever.
Why?

4. Google Images...
<play video showing ArtStor access>
Anecdotes with Joelle! Students do not want to
use ArtSTOR if they can possibly help it.
Clicks in defiance of all expectation. Why
double­clicks? Why? :(
What do users expect vs. what we offer ­ it’s a
problem.
Vendors who sell to end users work with very
different assumptions from vendors who sell to
libraries
1998 ­ 2012
From 2004 onward, consistently something with
an electronic user interface.
Yet, we not only give poor interfaces, but a hefty
user guide to go with it.
And it's not just because these commercial
products are simpler. Netflix is not a simple
product. Amazon ebooks are not simple
products.

5. One way to reduce complexity is to reduce
choices and offer smart defaults. We seem to
prefer offering complex guidelines for navigating
an interface rather than streamlining the interface;
we put all options up front rather than creating a
useful hierarchy. We are trying to meet all needs
equally and not meeting any of them very well.
We need to know our users and their aspirations
better.
Galadriel
Yet people want e­books and they wouldn’t mind
getting e­books from libraries, but...
Galadriel
Galadriel
Joelle
"Clayton Christiansen had a theory and he called it
disruptive innovation. What this theory states is that
disruption happens from the low end. New products
come on the marketplace and even though they’re
not better, even though they don’t work as well as
their high­end predecessors, even though they are
made of cheaper materials and they are, pound for
pound, more expensive in a sense for what you get,
they do one thing and they do that one thing really
well. They do that one thing better than anything else
on the marketplace. They create an entirely new
market for that technology, for people who could
never have had access to it before. Because there
are so many more of these people who now have

6. access to this technology, eventually, the technology
gets good enough, and it disrupts the market for the
higher­end products. It wipes away their larger
competitors." ­Karen McGrane
tl;dr Perfect is the enemy of good, your perfect,
complex product is not going to win.
Joelle
Interview about doing business in Russia­­now
Steam's second­largest European market
Joelle
If it's convenient and cheap, people will pay for
it­­where restrictions fail, added value and being
easier than piracy prevails.
Joelle
DRM reduces value, makes buying inherently
less attractive.
Galadriel
Galadriel

7. Joelle
We're trying! Just not very well.
So, what do we do?
Here’s what we’re doing...DDA 2.0
What are you doing, what do you think we should
do?
March 18, 2014
This work is licensed by Joelle Thomas and Galadriel Chilton under a
Creative Commons Attribution­Non Commercial­Share Alike 4.0 International License.