Library Websites for Usability Study Needed

[Robert Kalabus]

Web4lib'ers:
    At WWCC a faculty member has offered to do a usability study on the
library website.  He is on sabbatical this spring and has to complete the
study as an assignment for an online class in which he is enrolled.  We are
developing a list of things that we want to find out about how students use
our website:  what works well and what doesn't work so well.  It will be a
formal study involving a selected group of students and audiovisual
equipment will be used to capture facial expressions, gestures,
vocalizations, computer screen shots, etc..  It should be pretty
interesting.
    Our website is set up so that just about everything is available off the
main page.  This has advantages and disadvantages which could probably be
argued about forever.  We would like to give the student guinea pigs some
alternative library websites -- different in style/format from ours -- to
look at and compare with our own as part of the study.  We especially want
to compare our site with another library's site that has a simpler kind of
structure:  presenting less information and choices to users at one time.
    If you think your library website would be a good one to use in our
study (because it is different or better(?) than ours), please send me the
address.  Of course we would share our results with you. Thank you.

Robert Kalabus
Hay Library
Western Wyoming Community College
Rock Springs WY 82902-0428
rkalabus at wwcc.cc.wy.us
http://www.wwcc.cc.wy.us/library/  (The WWCC IT staff are having some
problems with the college website today (Feb 14) so this link might not be
working temporarily.)