Hi there, 👋. It's been awhile. You might not remember, but at some point in the last few years you signed-up for my newsletter called the Web for Libraries, then -- more recently -- just LibUX.
I'm Michael. I started LibUX - as in, Library User Experience: a podcast now called Metric, and blog that pays its writers, purveyor of more infrequent-than-I'd-like library user experience webinars (that pays its speakers better than other library organizations), and a community of about 500.
I won some awards when I was a web services librarian, but I joined Springshare in May and haven't looked back.
It's been about that long since I wrote.
It's been a nice hiatus, but I have been anxious to swing back around and bug all of you on the regular, as well as put renewed effort into LibUX, my podcasts, and so on. I am making some changes, though, so I wanted to give you the heads-up in case you wanted to get the jump on unsubscribing early.
I am retiring the Web For Libraries ...
Although I remain neck deep in librarianship, both as a librarian, in my day job making library software, and in my freelance work working on killer library user-experience projects, I've become a bit claustrophobic in the library-specific constraints I set for myself. I have a lot to say about the business of user experience, or -- for instance -- approaching elections as design problems, but this newsletter never felt like the right spot.
Well, now it is. I've renamed it The User Experience is a Metric by Michael Schofield, which just means that this is a design-thinking newsletter from me about subjects that may not be directly applicable to libraries. Keep in mind that libraries are what I do and who I am, but I want to talk about other stuff.
LibUX = a publication
I have been a tad schizophrenic about what LibUX is because I've used it as the umbrella for all sorts of things. Now, LibUX -- remember, that's as in "library user experience!" -- refers to the blog and its community of readers and contributors, many of whom you can find in our awesome slack channel.
LibUX is a casual but authoritative blog about design and the user experience in libraries and the higher-ed. I pay contributors. I point this out a lot, because I think other library blogs, library conferences, and other library whats-its backed by organizations can and should do the same. I'm just one bloke.
Additionally, Emily King has agreed to take a leadership role in LibUX in the near future. I'm stoked. What's more, I'm still looking for a little bit of help. I posted such a call in our slack channel - and I'm making it a prerequisite to respond to that call in slack.
However, if you do or are interested in posting about the user experience, give my guest-posting writeup a look and shoot me an email : ).
Metric is no longer a podcast about libraries
My user experience podcast Metric was the first thing Amanda L. Goodman and I ever called LibUX. It was a podcast about, well, #libux. 50 episodes later, I renamed it "Metric," and unofficially disassociated it from being about libraries specifically. For the same reasons above, I'm just making that official.
Eventually, Metric will have its own website, and its posts will stop appearing on LibUX-the-blog.
I have a new podcast about web design news called W3 Radio.
If this sounds like your cup of tea, listen to our most recent episode: "Big Web Wins and DRM Makes it into HTML."
That's all for announcements
My next email will be more like you expect: a round-up of articles and other media about design, design in libraries, workflows, and so on.
❤️ Thanks for standing by.
Your pal,
Michael Schofield
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