Library signage and wayfinding design: communicating effectively with your users

This book, fromALAEditions, is going to be a great guide and its small format (A5 size) paperbackwill fit into your bag for reading on the go! Thewonderful thing aboutALA editions is that they are not only consistent and a great ready-reference or refresher but the purchase of their titles also funds advocacy, awareness, and accreditation programs for library professionals worldwide. The disadvantage of these editions is that they’re generally very US focused. Written by Mark Aaron Polger, who confesses upfront to be ‘obsessed with street signs and maps’ since childhood, the genuine passion shows. Systematically, Mark leads us through the world of library signs in six concise chapters. Commencing with an introduction by way of examining a brief history of the subject, well referenced and relevant, we’re then led through application into your own environment. The second chapter, entitled Signage Research Methods, is where your personal journey will commence. You will be guided through how to conduct a study of your own situation, methodologies and rationales with a view to getting a better understanding of where you are, and where you’d ideally like to be with guiding people around your facility. With a better grasp of where you are, chapter three is about Auditing your Signage. It provides a brief, but well researched literature review as well as case studies, and discusses types of audits and techniques and why you need them. There is a chapter dedicated to Digital Signage that has many subject headings and graphs, but the chapter presents in feet and inches that will require conversion to metric. Also, USbased companies are discussed and these may not be relevant for us. This chapter is the one part of the book that may not age well. The last chapter, chapter six, is also US focused and is about the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990. While much of this will be of interest and transferable, it is country specific. Taking a step backwards, chapter five is wonderful, it relates to Best Practices and Policies. While it too lists local manufacturers and US best practice requirements, the information is still interesting and usable. We liked the fact that this book was very well researched. It included ample, useful bibliographies and made use of numerous illustrations, charts and graphs that added to its easy use nature. The only downside of this title is that, as we said, it is US focused. A useful addition might have been to include some architectural notes that would explain things like line-ofsight analysis, particularly in relation to other services such as electrical or mechanical-type fittings. If librarians are consulted during the redesign or construction stages of libraries, BIM (building information modelling) could be used to model all services with signage line of sight analysis and clash detection analysis early in the planning phase and not as an afterthought, which unfortunately is often the case.