CIL - last morning keynote

The keynote on Friday morning was by Mary Lee Kennedy & Stephen Abram on Personas. They called it delighting the real user. And it was about amazing things. They suggested that we should do in-depth analysis of our users to determine what they want. I'm not sure that is practical in the average library - actually I'm sure it is not practical. But we can all get some idea of who they are by watching them and talking to them, and pooling the knowledge all the staff already have about the people they work with. Mary Lee and Stephen did personas for a corporate library that involved 50,000 employees - and they represented them with 5 personas. The bottom line for this group boiled down to how long the person had been with the company, their age (which correlated to what technologies they were comfortable using), and how mobile they were in their work - where they were located. The focus is on what is valuable to the user - not what the library has available. It's an interesting twist!