[WEB4LIB] Great Thread on Library Usability on Sigia-l

[Michael]

BLAKE CARVER WROTE:
-----------------
<snip>
Large libraries have an endless array of products available on a cavernous
wed site that usually does a poor job of pointing the beginning user to
where they need to be. Most of the time they fail to even give the user a
starting point. e.g., try to answer this question using most library web
sites:
What is the best Database to use for finding articles in Sociology?

I doubt it can be done, but this is how people approach me at the
reference
desk every day, and I imagine it's how they approach the site every day as
well.
</snip>


KEYPOINTS
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Blake, I've also compiled a list of library usability projects over the
years and focused much of my graduate research in library interface design
and development, and I agree that there are some common problems related to
user task analysis and user task workflows attached to many library sites.


To help users answer the question, "What's the best database to use for
finding articles in Sociology?" I think librarians need to redefine their
approach and take a more systematic one to designing their sites.


For example, if I were designing the *Databases and Article Index* portion
of the site, I would call upon my user profiles--undergrads, grads, and
faculty--to help me map out the task required for each group. Mapping out
the tasks for each unique group or profile allows me to design in
scenarios and storyboard the interactions required to complete the task.
Some techniques that I've used and found helpful for doing some of this
road mapping are Use Cases/UML or flowcharts for example.


For the undergrad group, I would create a Subject Guides category for
those browsing and are unsure of which database to use. Here, you would
pay close attention to database descriptions and help users evaluate the
contents of the database. Hence the keywords: browsing and evaluating.
In addition, I would also make available links to tutorials and workshops
on searching for articles in the library.


For the grad and faculty group, I would create a search box for known-item
searching, as well as an A-Z listing of databases just in case the search
index doesn't recover from misspellings and returns with zero results. In
the case of searching for known-items, this is where controlled vocabulary
and thesauri becomes important because the software can query against
tables of synonyms and variant spellings.



Michael