Session C104 - Inspiration for your Library Redesign October 29, 2007

Bennett Ponsford and Christina Hoffman Gola, Texas A&M University

Notes:

Questions to ask users

• What type of items are users searching for?
• How do they discover new resources?
• What to do with subject and class guides?
  • Audience and function questions
  • format, location and terminology
• What web 2.0 features are desired?

Methodology: Recruitment

• Traditional
  • blanket campus emails
  • advertising in student newspapers
• New Tools
  • FB group
  • blog
  • discussion forum

Results: First Survey

• People aren’t really looking for pages on the website, they were looking for
  content

• Searching differences between different user groups
• Need for information about the library — undergrads needed more how-to
  information
• Interaction with the Libraries’ website
• Web 2.0 Issues
  • Limited interest in tagging
  • Limited faculty interest in user-generated content (undergraduates were
    more interested, but still not overwhelmingly so)
  • Traditional preferences for communicating with the Libraries

Results: Second Survey

• Confirmed earlier results on use of the site
• Default search
  • Want books or everything, but last searched for articles
• What to keep on home page?
  • Emphasis on simplifying the homepage, but had no consensus on what that
    meant

Results: Bulletin Board

• Intense hatred of our pop-up windows
• Frustration
  • Want to search, click on full-text
  • not interested in all the options we give them*** (this is using SFX and
    MetaLib)
• Confusion
  • Often can’t even describe where they got lost

Results: Focus Groups

• Undergraduates didn’t know about Google Scholar, but it was the first place
  that faculty went
• Integrate systems (catalogs, edocs, etc)
  • users wanted to log in once and have it personalized and not have to log
    in again
• Discovery of databases
  • not using Libraries’ website to discover - are mostly learning through
    word of mouth
• Subject and class guides
  • Audience was different than previously assumed
  • Interdisciplinary issue on campus
  • Not discovering them b/c they weren’t in good locations or listed in good
    formats
• Need more ways to allow self-discovery and shared knowledge ****
• Visual and “sexy” is good (participants encouraged them to “sell the
  sizzle”)
  • no one even realized they had lots of RSS feeds
• Use of Web 2.0 tools
  • Undergrads mentioned wikis
  • Use of RSS — glass half full or half empty?
    • About 50/50 are aware of RSS and its use in libraries
    • Where does user education come in (*this is a great opportunity for
      instruction)
  • Personalization features
    • She also mentioned personalization of librarians, as in creating
      Facebook-like profiles for librarians on the Libraries’ website

Web 2.0 in Academic Libraries

• How far should we go?
• Academic standard vs. Web 2.0
• How much education to we provide?
  • i.e. do we want to support use of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. with
    instruction

Recommendations

• Help them find our stuff and then get out of the way
• Reaffirmed traditional design rules
  • Let the user control the interface
  • integrate systems
• Determine user groups’ needs BEFORE trying to use 2.0 tools

Next Steps

• Focus groups, interviews, etc

********************************************************************************

Erica Reynolds, Johnson County Public Library

Web design is a fairly new, fairly “young” world, but art is ancient — we can
learn from and be inspired by art

Lessons about web design learned at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Lesson 1: Have a back-up plan.

• When redesign rolled out, they still gave staff access to old site
• Went from 5,000+ pages to 250

Lesson 2: Be bold. Be dynamic. Be human.

• Teen Scene - users can personalize and select their own skins

Lesson 3: When you paint to sell, you paint people.

• Teen Scene - teens can submit poetry, comments, etc.
• www.jocokids.org

Lesson 4: Enliven your collection through reorganization and presentation.

• Break apart your content and see how you can put it back together again
• Redistribute content to enliven collection
  • Change interface for purchased content based on what patrons want

Lesson 5: Technology changes everything.

Lesson 6: Experiment with small studies and prototypes.

• Usability studies
• You have to back up large changes with small studies
• Card sort
• Paper prototyping and more paper prototyping

Lesson 7: A desire for beauty and serenity endures.

Lesson 8: We like surprises. And anticipating the surprise is even more delicious.

• Created a button that says “Surprise!” and people liked to click on it.

Lesson 9: A good guide enhances the experience exponentially.

Lesson 10: Destruction and creation and forever linked.

Lesson 11: Never stop innovating.

Lesson 12: We can be both prestigious and playful.

* Usability stuff is up at www.jocolibrary.org/usability