[Web4lib] RE: vendors and usability

[Jennifer A. Heise]

> The other argument against pressuring vendors to work on their user 
> interfaces is that the user interface is going to be the most variable 
> part of the system across customers. It's not economically viable, nor 
> terribly sensible, for vendors to put a lot of energy into customizing 
> the user interface for individual libraries.


I'm sorry, I don't think you are understanding the problem. What we are 
seeing are interfaces that, while nominally customizeable, are still so 
invested in older systems technologies on the back end that little 
effort is being made to improve customizeablility.

> I still think we should try to split the user interface away from the 
> rest of the system so that it CAN vary for each library. The vendor's 
> energy could then be put into making the program interface as flexible 
> as possible.
>
While the interface IS generally split from the rest of the system, 
especially in web-based systems, the customizeability of the user 
interfaces seem to be a low priority. For instance, wouldn't it be nice 
to be able to put 'Next page' buttons whereever you wanted on a page of 
results? I'm informed that our catalog web interface software will not 
allow putting it anywhere except the system-defined spot.

Now, if vendors were to come up with interfaces as a separate swapable 
module, so that a good interface could be built locally or by another 
company and fixed onto the systems back-end, that would be a way to go. 
Z39.50 etc. interfaces to our existing catalog databases don't seem to 
be very flexible because of the limitations of backend diversity and old 
code in the backend systems.

It seems that the need is to  pressure vendors to work on the 
customizeability of their web interfaces, and to put effort into 
modernizing their back-end systems.

-- Jenne Heise