I graduated from college a long time ago, but I still find myself on campus about twice a year, giving a guest lecture or meeting with friends. One of my rituals when I have the time is to peruse the bookstore. I usually buy a couple of textbooks to support my continuing education and keep up with computer science trends.
My last trip was a profound educational experience—because of the books I couldn’t buy.
Historically, college bookstores were organized around subjects, like a library. You could wander to the computer science section and browse. I don’t need another “introduction to data structures” or “programming for rookies,” but a detailed analysis of blockchain might be a prize for my shelf.
Last time, though, I found that the shelves had been completely reorganized. All books were organized alphabetically by the last name of the author. There was a very cool QR code that you could scan with your phone and enter your student ID number, and it would list the required texts for your classes, including the author’s last names. If I were an enrolled student, this would have been awesome and saved me a bunch of time.
Alas, I am not an enrolled student.
Imagine going to a commercial bookstore and discovering that all books had been sorted by author’s last name: cookbooks, biographies, knitting, sci-fi, histories—everything!
I’ll confess that I spent about two minutes wandering through the A’s, looking at books about cellular biology, urban design, and fiction for some English class, before admitting that wandering wasn’t going to work. I left, stopping briefly to inform the nice folks at the desk that I couldn’t spend my money there because of their new “modern” organization.
As I walked away, I imagined the design session for that new system. Someone assumed that the “customers” for the college bookstore were enrolled students looking for their textbooks, which is an obvious and logical assumption, for the most part. They appear to have done a good job of addressing those stakeholder needs.
However, they didn’t think about other customers—namely, me and a lot of other professionals I know—who aren’t students but are trying to stay on top of their craft and engage in lifelong learning. I’m sure we aren’t a big part of their revenue and they may not even notice we are gone, but they have lost us.
When you are thinking about the stakeholders for your shiny new system, don’t rush. Don’t stop at the obvious cases. Ask, “Who are we missing?” Consider not just the advantages of the new system, but also potential disadvantages.
The stakeholders you miss will find other places to spend their money.
Way back in prehistory, I trained as a librarian. No library would ever shelve all its books by author last name: that was what the catalogue was for.
My own personal library is catalogued by author last name, because that makes it fun to browse. But my cataloguing app (LibraryThing) has powerful search functionality and I've added the tags I need to my catalogue entries so I can find books in my personal collection when I need to find a specific subject (instead of just basking in my collection's wonderfulness).
What was that bookshop even thinking? They have replaced a system that anybody can use with one that inconveniences everyone. Even the students will now have to wander around the shop, following an alphabetical trail; which is sort of OK if your reading list requires you to find books by Andrews, Brown and Carter. But if your list starts with Aalborg and ends with Zebrowski, you could have a lot of walking in store.
It sounds like a system devised for buying eBooks, or possibly it was based on a warehouse stock control system, where a book's unique identifier bears no releationship to the actual content of the book. But any librarian will tell you that there are at least two ways of cataloguing a book, depending on why you might want to retrieve it later.
Personally, I'd be writing to the CEO of the bookshop (if it was a chain), asking what were they thinking, and why they took a decision of such monumental stupidity. Whoever thought that was a good idea has probably never actually had to go out and find a book in their life.
I suspect it was a rushed job of requirements analysis. I hear you about writing the CEO... but I won't bother. I'll just find another bookstore. (I did get a nice article out of it though). Thanks for your comment.