Highlights included Susan Gibbons’ (Vice-Provost and Dean of Libraries, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester) discussion of usability study methods and findings, and the impact the work has had on not only the library but on the University as a whole. U of R’s initially grant-funded usability testing lab met with such overwhelming success that it is now a permanent part of the library, and they’ve segued into consulting for other departments across the university and beyond. They leveraged the usability lab as a critical cross-departmental resource. This has not only raised the profile of the library, but also led to more thoughtful (and presumably less wasteful) use of resources since decisions are now made not based on assumptions and educated guesswork but rather on research and evidence.

Michael Lascarides gave an excellent talk on the ways NYPL has sought to improve its online presence using tools developed to speed up the iterative design and analysis phases. They’ve created Infomaki–an open-source “lightweight usability testing service” that occasionally appears as a banner on the NYPL page asking the user “Do you have time to help the library by answering one question?” After which, they’re asked “How about one more?” What do you suppose was the average number of questions a user clicked to answer? …11! They’ve received over 110,000 responses in just a short amount of time using this tool. Other highlights from Michael’s talk included creative and simple uses of social media to gain different user perspectives and feedback (like setting up an RSS feed to gather all twitter postings including the acronym “NYPL” or variations of that). Also of interest: NYPL is also launching their redesigned website in January 2010, built on Drupal! Great minds…

The focus of Julie Strothman’s eye-opening discussion and work was website design for universal accessibility. Her discussion focused on simple, yet effective ways designers and builders can enhance usability of websites for broader audiences–from testing whether or not a form can be filled out using just your keyboard (without using your mouse), to ensuring radio buttons on forms are tagged with a field tag (so any part of the field may be clicked–essential for users with fine motor control issues, or so a speech reader can identify the button as being associated with the phrase that follows), to following standards for formatting page content (text to speech readers are designed to identify headings on a page to help give the user a preview of what is on the page. If a heading isn’t tagged as such and is instead made for instance, bold and in a large font, the speech reader doesn’t recognize it as a heading and the user doesn’t get a good preview of page content).

More info. on the workshop may be found here. Susan Gibbons’ slide is up, and so is Michael Lascarides’ but the latter appears to be an outdated version/with errors. I think our host said the other slides would be added eventually. Great food for thought as we begin to think about testing in January!

LIS Website Information Architecture

(Also linked from our team wiki page.)

FYI: This follows the IA documents White Whale created for other parts of the College web redo project. It’s primarily a high-level guide to page & subpage structure, not a detailed list of page contents (though there are some content recommendations in the notes sections). See middfiles:\orgs\WebMakeover\IA Documents for examples (I used Academics when creating the wiki page.)

If we had both, would it make sense to have a link going to the whole blog, and a feed listing only our outward-facing category posts (and only displaying 2 or 3 posts so as not to clutter the page)?

e.g.

LIS landing page:

• Link to all blog
• Feed with Good to know(/TBD)

The LIS landing page is the only place where we have to make this determination, correct? (Since primary contacts are deciding what goes on their pages.)

• Bringing knowledge to you
• Good to know
• Need to know
• The essentials
• Tuned in

Voting will end at close of business Friday, 9/18. (Please, no additional suggestions…)

• Did you know? (or some variation?)
• Other ideas?

Do we need an All LIS category?

Manage overlapping URLs/existing website content (20 min.)

Discuss when & how moving to 1 Blog will happen (15 min.)

Set freeze date for changes/additions to current CMS content (5 min.)

Other items?

1. Will a link to my department/content exist on the LIS landing page?
2. Will there be a “featured departments/events/exhibits/goings-on” spot on the LIS landing page?
3. If I have an exhibit or event or online project being launched, can I advertize it on the LIS landing page?
4. Can I name my part of the LIS site whatever I want? (What if I want to name it something other than what my department is called?) Can I separate out parts of my site as I see fit?
5. Is creating my content in a Drupal page the best way to display and organize my department’s dynamic content (video, images, audio, etc.)?
6. What if I want to use blogging tools than Wordpress as part of my department’s web presence?
7. How can I use MiddLabs, and other tools of the new College website to best communicate my department’s services and collaborative activities?

• Liz will moderate meeting
• Ian will give an overview of the AD meeting and reactions
• More discussion of meetings with primary contacts/working with them if needed
• Finalizing recommendations on the wiki; we want buy-in by the meeting, so please contribute on the wiki!
• Going over student employee survey feedback

Email intro something like:

Dear student employee,

To go along with the College web makover, we are creating a new LIS website and we would love your feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what you would like to see on the site.

Please try to answer these questions from your perspective as a student!

• What do you use most often on the LIS website? [we could give options or leave it wide open]
• What features of the LIS website work or could be improved? [same as LIS staff version]
• Is there anything missing from the LIS website?
• Rate your level of comfort with these technologies [same as LIS staff version]
• Is there anything else we should know?

Closed questions: Questions with several answer choices (with check boxes), and with a catch-all at the end.
e.g. I will use the LIS website to:
Find resources X
Get technology help X (etc….)
Anything else? Please say what! X (with space for answer)
Open questions: May best follow closed questions, i.e. “Why is this?”
Simple checklists (with check boxes), and a catch-all at the end:
e.g. Why did you use the website today? Check all that apply
Find resources X
Look for information X
Get help from a librarian X (etc…)
Other, please say what! (with space for reply) X
Likert scales: Highly likely/highly desired with boxes to highly unlikely/highly undesired
e.g. I will return to use the website in the future to do X
select one box
Highly likely  X  X  X  X  X  X  Highly unlikely
Thurlstone scale: tracks agreement or disagreement with the question
e.g. I found what I needed on the website today X yes X no
Semantic differential: quantitative measures of topics usually addressed through qualitative means
e.g. The library website is
select one box
Good  X  X  X  X  X  Bad
Guttman scales: statements arranged in sequence to gauge strength of respondents’ view
e.g. Shifting LIS communications to web based tools:
select one box
Web based commun. will catch on quickly/completely replace current tools X
Web based commun. will require some adjustment, but will mostly work X
Web based commun. will be hard to sell, may or may not work X
Web based commun. will never work for our organization X