Summary of: User's Groups and web design

[Wishard, Lisa A]

Here is a summary of the responses that I received regarding Users's groups
and web design:

>From Eric Lease Morgan, Notre Dame

In the very near future we plan to create a sort of Web Advisory Group. It
will be composed of at least 51% students, faculty, and staff of the
University, and no more than 49% of people who work in the Libraries. The
total size of the group will be around a dozen people. We suppose this sort
of make up will foster communication, ensure our website is user-centered,
and provide an immediate audience for things like usability studies.
***********************************************

From: Vince Mariner, Florida Gulf Coast University

I reviewed a book for Portal: Libraries & the Academy (it's due in the next
issue) that I thought was pretty good.  It has lots of samples of what did
and what did not work, not just theory.

Usability Assessment of Library-Related Web Sites: Methods and Case Studies
Edited by Nicole Campbell. 2001. 124p. ISBN 0-8389-8157-7 $25 (LITA Members
$23) 

Web sites have become portals to library information, resources and services
and librarians spend a great deal of time creating, developing and
maintaining these Web sites. However, can library users use these Web sites
and can they find what they need? It is time to start determining whether
library users can successfully use these Web sites. Usability assessment can
help answer these questions. Usability assessment is a collection of methods
that analyze how users interact with a system, like a Web site, to see how
user-friendly and usable the system is. This text includes brief
descriptions and examples of many usability methods. More importantly, it
also includes eight case studies of libraries that have conducted usability
studies of their Web sites. 

http://www.lita.org/litapubs/index.html

**********************
From: Catherine Ebenezer, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust 

my MSc project was a web site usability study involving focus groups
and tests with library users. Would it be of interest to you? I could send
it an an attachment.

Visit our web site at http://stlis.thenhs.com/hln/s_london/lsw/main/
or our intranet pages (accessible within SLAM) at 
http://192.168.175.60/library/main/index.htm

**************************
From: Laura Jantek, Halifax Regional Library

I am proposing a project like that for next year's budget here at the
Halifax Library.
I found the ALA book on usability testing for library web sites inspiring
although you may have already seen it and not found it useful.

Thanks all,
Lisa Wishard, Digital Projects Librarian
Sandia National Laboratories Technical Library
PO Box 5820 MS0899, Albuquerque, NM 87185
Phone: 505-845-9957 or Fax: 505-844-0618
lawisha at sandia.gov
http://infoserve.sandia.gov