ChB:PhD

I don’t think it is just me; in fact I pretty sure it isn’t. I think I am reasonably IT literate having struggled to get to grips with Basic programming in the Eighties, the vagaries of Internet connections in the Nineties (anyone remember Winsock?) and all the amazing developments in the last ten years. I have an iPad, an iPhone, MacbookPro and an iMac. They all work together, synchronizing and operating in a sensible and consistent way that would be hard to imagine when the early PCs first arrived in the office with a box of floppy disks.

Buying ebooks and e-audio books is a dream, completed in a matter of seconds and Good old Amazon are happy to provide the shelves to keep them on should the iPad (or the Kindle which also inhabits the house) go over the something-or-other thousands items that they are able to hold. Smooth service, reliable and it genuinely could not be easier to use.

Compare that with this afternoon. I decided to try the new ebook/e-audio book service being offered by my local library service. After logging in to my personal account I am offered the option to go to the ebooks service. To be able to borrow and item I am then asked to provide my account code and pin number again, presumably to establish a connection with the commercial organisation providing the service. There is a button labeled ‘getting started’ and then a series of instructions to load digital rights management (DRM) software and a console tool that acts as the interface to the collection of ebooks and e-audio books.

A while is spent first downloading and installing the software and then creating an account in the DRM system and registering the particular device being used. Now to search for some interesting stuff. Grab a couple quick and check them out. They arrive on the machine but refuse to work.

Go back a couple of steps and look more closely at the bottom of the details for the items to see that they are not in a format that will work on the Mac. Moreover, further investigation reveals that of the 645 audio items listed in the catalogue only 44 are apparently in a format that will.

OK, this is an experiment checking out the system and it was my fault for not looking at the fine grain. Best to ‘return’ the items so that someone else is able to use them. Not possible apparently. They have to sit on the machine useless until the two week loan period is up and they self-destruct.

Plan B, try the iPhone app. Download it and register it and then find another book. Have to get this one right since three is the limit. Stymied again – the 44 Mac format items are only available to reserve or to add to this wishlist. None can be borrowed for reasons unstated.

Total time taken to do all this? About 90 minutes give or take.

I do not relate this tale to be critical of what is clearly an emerging service. I do not want to suggest that such services are best left to the commercial market alone. What I do want to suggest is that those adopting these services should do some proper usability testing and ensure that the entry route for the new user friendly and clear about what can or cannot be done and how the system will function in a wide variety of conditions and configurations.

What we have at present is a service that is contracted and that commercial service is providing all of the guidance. They really don’t want to make a big issue about constraints on compatibility. They are unlikely to address local issues to do with availability – it is possible that the Mac items were not ‘borrowable’ because those resources have not yet been enabled for my local library service. And they certainly won’t want to blow a loud trumpet about the fact that most of the audio material is not compatible with Macs.

Yet, for the ordinary user these are exactly the things they will need to know up front. It reminds me of the different between the Sony eBook readers of five years ago with DRM, incompatible software with Macs and clunky interfaces, and what we have now.

I have been following the debate on LISPUB-LIBS about whether or not to charge for the loan of ebooks. My view is, of course, that they should be free. However, all of those managers would do well to spend a bit of time actually trying the usability of the systems themselves, getting their sisters and their cousins and their aunts to see whether it makes sense to them. Do they understand what DRM software is and why they need to load it? How does that fit with the services own interface? Why do they look so different? And so on.

There may be a bold and exciting future out there, but someone needs to make sure the message on the tin explains what is inside – and how to open it!