Overview. Green Apple Books is an 8,000 square foot bookstore located in San Francisco, CA. They separate their physical books into two adjacent spaces, one for used books and one for new books. Green Apple Books has also partnered with the Canadian company Kobo to sell e-books.

The store has a consistent stream of new and used books coming in, but limited space in which to house them. They want to have a broad enough scope to satisfy casual browsers, as well as customers actively seeking titles. They also have to strike a balance between overstocking books and selling out, which could lead to customers going online or to another store. How can they organize books and other resources in a manner that will lead customers to purchase more books, including ones that the store is particularly interested in selling?

What resources are being used? There are several resource types, the most obvious being books. Another resource type is the printed QR codes taped to shelves, which take customers to the Kobo listing page for a book, where they can purchase an e-book version. They also organize the resource type “impulse items”: items such as bookmarks, notebooks, tote bags, and finger puppets placed near the cash register to help boost income.

Another resource type is are hand-written reviews of books by staff members, which are displayed under copies of the reviewed books. In addition to being resources themselves, they act as an additional resource description for the books.

Why are the resources organized? In any organizing system, the resources are organized to support interactions, particularly ones such as finding and accessing resources. Along those lines, the primary interactions that Green Apple Books wants to support are finding, discovering, and purchasing books. This includes classifying new books. The books, impulse purchases, QR codes, and review cards are organized to allow customers to find both books they are looking for and those they were not actively seeking but might find interesting, and get them to purchase them.

How much are the resources organized? The highest level of the hierarchy is based on a single, extrinsic dynamic property: whether or not someone previously owned the book. This property determines which building it is stored in. One alternative here would be to store both new and used copies of books together, with a sticker on the spine to indicate which copies are used. Organizing the books by “usedness” suggests expectations about customer intent: they either are searching for a nebulous list of books at a discount, or for specific titles and/or new releases. At the second level of the taxonomy, books are categorized by genre (e.g., science fiction, travel). Among fiction books, the titles are then arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name.

Some titles also have staff reviews cards underneath them to direct browsing customers to potentially interest books. These titles are still organized alphabetically among the rest of the titles in their genre, but their covers face out. One alternative to highlight books would be to put them all on a single shelf, which Green Apple also does.

Nonfiction books are categorized topically, and often have more visible granularity of organization than fiction resources. For example, to find an Colombia travel guide, a customer would go to the “Travel” section of a store, find the “South America” section within that, and scan the books arranged alphabetically by country to find the group of books about Colombia.

In both sides of the store, the genres of books are organized by frequency of use. The fiction section in the new store is located on the front left of the store, near the door. The fiction section on the used side is also in the main part of the building, past a shelf of suggested titles, the register, and a magazine rack. Sections such as science fiction are through a side doorway.

When are the resources organized? The original set of books for Green Apple Books were purchased in 1967. From then on, additional books have been acquired and organized on a daily basis. This occurs as the store purchases used books, and as it receives re-stockings and new books ordered from publishers.

Part of the process of maintaining the organizing system is removing books that haven’t sold, and either remaindering them or sending them back to the publisher for a refund. The scale of the resource collection is limited by the physical store, so they need to make room for new titles.

The store also arranges the books in response to current events. For example, a bit after Oprah started her book club, they created a cheeky new section called “Books that would never be Oprah picks.”

The QR codes and review cards are also created on an ongoing basis, as new books come in and as the staff reads books they find interesting.

Who does the organizing? Although the organization is primarily performed by the bookstore manager, publishers also have some influence. They pay booksellers to feature certain books on the “new fiction” tables each season. These tables generally appear in the front of the store, arranged so that the eye-catching covers are showing. Green Apple’s layout funnels customers past these tables. This catches both casual browsers and those have to go further back into the store in search of specific books.

In addition, the Green Apple employees organize the books. Examples include the “Perennial Staff Favorites” and the non-Oprah book club books section mentioned above.

Other considerations. Other considerations include how to create a community in the store. Customers can find the books more cheaply elsewhere, so they need a reason beyond price to return. In addition to making books findable and supporting serendipitous discovery, the bookstore has to organize itself in a way that creates a personality. This includes offering review cards, as well as striking a personable, memorable, and distinctive the tone with the review cards, signage, and employees.

(Images in this post are from Google Images)

Overview:

The Research Program on Genes Environment and Health (RPGEH) is an effort by the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente to create a resource for health researchers to investigate causes and treatments for a wide range of diseases. In order to do this, the program has collected samples from over one hundred thousand Kaiser members in Northern California and created a system to combine information from the analysis of those samples with health records, survey information, and GIS data.

The organizing system for the program is concerned with several different tasks. Tracking participant interactions to recruit new participants and build the resource, managing samples and analysis, and compiling data sets requested by researchers.

 

What Resources are Being Organized?

The RPGEH is built on participants, their samples, and health data. It might be tempting in a research system to focus on samples and data as the primary resources but the need to recruit participants made participants the most important resource class. There are theoretical and practical reasons for this. A blood sample or medical record on its own is of limited use to researchers; it is the combination of these things that will allow researchers to find novel links to push forward our understanding of health. Participants are the nexus that binds together samples and data sets and make them meaningful. In a sense, participants are the primary resource of the RPGEH and any samples or health information is just a description of them. Also, without participants nothing else would be possible. A large part of the RPGEH has been recruiting nearly two hundred thousand participants to participate. Recruitment of a participant is no small feat. Just because we send them a consent form does not mean they will sign and return it, even if they do, that does not mean they will provide a sample or health survey, and even if they do they could decide later on to revoke permission to use their data and samples. Due to this level of agency, maintaining accurate and up to date descriptions of participants and their interactions is very important to the system.

As physical resources, samples present different challenges in the system. Different sample types are processed and stored in different ways. For example, blood samples must be split into different components and will go bad if they are not processed frozen quickly. A database stores the location and other descriptions of samples such as who they belong to and when they were processed.

The most important piece of health data for each participant, their health record, is not directly managed by the RPGEH. Rather when data is needed, it is pulled from Kaiser’s electronic health record system and transformed into the needed format.

 

Why are the resources being organized?

The goal of the RPGEH is to provide a one stop shop for health research. A researcher can make a request to study a disease and the RPGEH can find matching participants and provide samples or sample analysis and a data set compiled from Kaiser health records, health surveys, and other information sources. Resources are organized either to support recruitment or to allow the creation of research datasets.

 

How much are the resource organized?

There is a high level of description applied to each participant to keep track of their status in the program. Additionally, there is a high level of description about each patient available in their health records. Patient’s are not sorted into predefined categories based on their health information however. This is because we simply do not know what a researcher might need. Rather, when a request is made the descriptions in the health records are leveraged to find matching participants.

 

When are the resources being organized?

Most of the organization for the system’s resources is done when it first enters the system. When a participant signs up, their contact information is loaded into the system. When a sample is taken, information about it is loaded into the system. Further organization is done as needed to update the system, such as noting a new address or tracking samples that have been sent to a lab for analysis. Also, as has been noted, when a researcher requests data there is another level of organization applied to find matching participants and compile the data set needed for the research.

 

Who does the organizing?

The RPGEH data set is highly mediated. Researchers who want to use RPGEH data are not allowed direct access. Rather, they must submit an application with specific requirements. If the application is approved, then RPGEH data analysts pull the data and create a dataset for the researcher. Since the system is not outward facing, users can be trained to use the system. Additional organizing is done automatically. There are programs that hook into Kaiser’s systems to update participant and sample every day.

 

Other considerations?

Working with health data means the RPGEH must be very conscious of patient privacy HIPPAA regulations. Participants are given extensive information about their rights as research participants when they sign up. Data is encrypted and anonymized before it is sent to researchers.