The March session of the Resource Discovery Forum began with another look at the headline conclusions from February's focus group work. Rachel Mason, Metadata & eTechnologies Manager, summarised the key points, most notably the diverse requirements of our broad catalogue user community and the range of tasks they use the catalogue to carry out. Initial impressions of the look and feel were largely positive, but RDF members particularly noted the need for a strong corporate identity and branding, a clean and simple start page, a prominent search box, clear links to frequently carried out tasks, and consistency (of navigation, terminology, etc.). The Systems team are working on a new test interface, based on these ideas, and Andy Bussey, Library Systems Manager, gave a brief demonstration of it. RDF members have access to the new test interface as well as the 'out of the box' interface, so they can test and compare at their leisure and report back to the project team.
Next, RDF members turned their attention to the main business of the meeting, which was to consider how we should make the resource discovery layer available to customers. Star is available via the Library's web pages as well as via dedicated terminals and kiosks around campus. The new resource discovery layer should present many more possibilities. The search box can be embedded into third party web pages, for example, opening up options to access it from social networking tools and the websites of organisations affiliated with the University of Sheffield. RDF members came up with lots of ideas. We thought about all the places where customers can access University of Sheffield services and facilities, such as the University's portal (MUSE), online collaboration and networking tool (uSpace), virtual learning environment (MOLE), managed desktop service and mobile app (CampusM). The project team took away a long list of possible locations to investigate what is feasible and what might best benefit our customers.
15 March 2011
Focus groups & the competition
The second meeting of the Resource Discovery Forum was a practical focus group session. The aim was to generate some initial findings to help shape a test interface for customer usability testing. Forum members were split into three groups, each hosted by one of the project team (Andy Bussey, Library Systems Manager; Antony Hawkins, Library IT Manager; and Rachel Mason, Metadata & eTechnologies Manager) and decamped to breakout rooms in the Sir Frederick Mappin Building to work through a series of questions.
Each group began with a brief discussion of the catalogue user community. You may think a simple staff/student approach would suffice, but this doesn't account for the fact that there's more than one type of each. Undergraduates have different needs to postgraduates who have different needs to distance learners who have different needs to placement students - and so on. This tied in with the next topic: the most frequently carried out tasks. Why do our customers use the catalogue? What do they go there to do?
Next, there were questions on the look and feel of the 'out of the box' interface (our current test version). We were asked to consider the overall visual impact (things like branding, use of white space, graphics and text) and say what we liked most (and least!). We also thought about usability issues, such as navigation, layout and links.
Having had a chance to reflect on the 'out of the box' interface, we were ready for some competitor analysis to give us an idea of the 'market' context. A number of leading international research focused universities have already implemented Primo. By applying the same questions we'd asked of our own test set up to their live systems, we hoped to assess the possibilities for customisation and making the most of the available functionality. Some of the institutions we looked at were Yale, Oxford, Aberystwyth, New South Wales and Manchester. The idea of an implementation as a work in progress (there are a few beta labels) is an interesting Web 2.0 inspired approach (the 'perpetual beta' model allows for user-contributed development to extend beyond an early release). But that aside, it was a useful exercise just to be able to visualise the possibilities for Sheffield.
Finally, there was time for the briefest of summaries of each group's findings. We agreed that our customer base is diverse; that customers use the catalogue for key tasks (such as reserving an item); and that less is more - we like a Google-style clutter-free page with a highly visible main search box. The full findings will be collated and summarised in advance of the next session and we'll have a chance to look at them in more detail then.
Each group began with a brief discussion of the catalogue user community. You may think a simple staff/student approach would suffice, but this doesn't account for the fact that there's more than one type of each. Undergraduates have different needs to postgraduates who have different needs to distance learners who have different needs to placement students - and so on. This tied in with the next topic: the most frequently carried out tasks. Why do our customers use the catalogue? What do they go there to do?
Next, there were questions on the look and feel of the 'out of the box' interface (our current test version). We were asked to consider the overall visual impact (things like branding, use of white space, graphics and text) and say what we liked most (and least!). We also thought about usability issues, such as navigation, layout and links.
Having had a chance to reflect on the 'out of the box' interface, we were ready for some competitor analysis to give us an idea of the 'market' context. A number of leading international research focused universities have already implemented Primo. By applying the same questions we'd asked of our own test set up to their live systems, we hoped to assess the possibilities for customisation and making the most of the available functionality. Some of the institutions we looked at were Yale, Oxford, Aberystwyth, New South Wales and Manchester. The idea of an implementation as a work in progress (there are a few beta labels) is an interesting Web 2.0 inspired approach (the 'perpetual beta' model allows for user-contributed development to extend beyond an early release). But that aside, it was a useful exercise just to be able to visualise the possibilities for Sheffield.
Finally, there was time for the briefest of summaries of each group's findings. We agreed that our customer base is diverse; that customers use the catalogue for key tasks (such as reserving an item); and that less is more - we like a Google-style clutter-free page with a highly visible main search box. The full findings will be collated and summarised in advance of the next session and we'll have a chance to look at them in more detail then.
24 February 2011
Testing, testing ...
It's a month since the launch of the Resource Discovery Forum and a good time to summarise what we've been up to. After an introduction and welcome by Tracey Clarke, the Library's Head of Collections & eStrategy, the first session of the Forum involved a presentation and demo by project group members to give us an overview of the new catalogue/resource discovery layer and to highlight the key functionality. Some of the initial testing plans were also outlined and Forum members have been busy with these for the past few weeks.
The idea is that Forum members will carry out 'themed' testing - that is, performing themed searches on the records already uploaded in order to detect any problem areas for further investigation. Jeremy Grayson, the Library Database Manager, comes up with weekly tasks for Forum members to try out. These have included testing the basic search functionality across all collections and feeding back initial impressions, testing pre-search filters, advanced search options and facets (for post-search filtering), examining how individual records display and what they contain, and checking if different versions of the same thing are grouped together in one search result (the jargon for this concept is FRBRization - pronounced 'fir-burr-eye-zation', if that helps!). The systems team and metadata specialists are continually working on issues as they arise and when Ex Libris visited this week to deliver back of house systems training, there was a further opportunity to raise many of the issues identified during testing. There are now over half a million records uploaded to the system and changes are taking place on an almost daily basis.
The idea is that Forum members will carry out 'themed' testing - that is, performing themed searches on the records already uploaded in order to detect any problem areas for further investigation. Jeremy Grayson, the Library Database Manager, comes up with weekly tasks for Forum members to try out. These have included testing the basic search functionality across all collections and feeding back initial impressions, testing pre-search filters, advanced search options and facets (for post-search filtering), examining how individual records display and what they contain, and checking if different versions of the same thing are grouped together in one search result (the jargon for this concept is FRBRization - pronounced 'fir-burr-eye-zation', if that helps!). The systems team and metadata specialists are continually working on issues as they arise and when Ex Libris visited this week to deliver back of house systems training, there was a further opportunity to raise many of the issues identified during testing. There are now over half a million records uploaded to the system and changes are taking place on an almost daily basis.
8 February 2011
Welcome to the Resource Discovery Forum
We've recently purchased a new next generation library catalogue and resource discovery layer. The selected product is called Primo and it's produced by Ex Libris, a leading provider of all types of library systems (our existing digital content discovery service, Find it @ Sheffield, is powered by another Ex Libris product). So, why have we bought a new library catalogue at a time like this? Like all traditional online library catalogues, our existing Star catalogue lacks the functionality required of a modern discovery and delivery solution specifically designed to handle growing digital collections. The new (yet to be named) catalogue/resource discovery layer should present a vastly improved customer experience with a single point of access for searching all the Library's collections. As well as locally held materials, our customers will be able to search for materials in digital repositories such as White Rose Research Online, and for subscribed ebooks, ejournals and databases available from third party vendors. Searches can return article-level results, and context-sensitive facets (things like topic, date, location) plus relevance ranking can enable refinement of results post-search, helping our customers select the most appropriate resources for their needs.
The Library's project to implement the new catalogue/resource discovery layer has been running for a few months now with lots of 'behind the scenes' work going on to set up the system and get our existing data into it. The Resource Discovery Forum has been formed to work alongside the project group to provide a wider, more customer-focused perspective of some of the issues. We're a sizeable group (around thirty members), representing a broad spectrum of the Library's operations. We include customer service staff involved in frontline service delivery, systems and metadata specialists (the experts on the technical aspects of both the system and the data), librarians with experience of information literacy education and the specialist requirements of our researchers, and staff responsible for supporting our customers with additional needs.
The Resource Discovery Forum aims to get a view from every possible angle on things like interface look and feel, quality of the user experience, and quality of the data. Initially, we'll be meeting on a monthly basis to discuss these issues, and to get involved in 'hands on' tasks such as testing and training. We plan to use this blog to keep you updated with our news and progress, and we hope you enjoy following us on our journey over the coming months.
The Library's project to implement the new catalogue/resource discovery layer has been running for a few months now with lots of 'behind the scenes' work going on to set up the system and get our existing data into it. The Resource Discovery Forum has been formed to work alongside the project group to provide a wider, more customer-focused perspective of some of the issues. We're a sizeable group (around thirty members), representing a broad spectrum of the Library's operations. We include customer service staff involved in frontline service delivery, systems and metadata specialists (the experts on the technical aspects of both the system and the data), librarians with experience of information literacy education and the specialist requirements of our researchers, and staff responsible for supporting our customers with additional needs.
The Resource Discovery Forum aims to get a view from every possible angle on things like interface look and feel, quality of the user experience, and quality of the data. Initially, we'll be meeting on a monthly basis to discuss these issues, and to get involved in 'hands on' tasks such as testing and training. We plan to use this blog to keep you updated with our news and progress, and we hope you enjoy following us on our journey over the coming months.
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