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Evaluation and Evolution: More on Rooms, Resolver & SingleSearch at Leicester

Evaluation and Evolution: More on Rooms, Resolver & SingleSearch at Leicester. Janet Guinea Jonathan McGowan. One Year On… . New skins Usability testing Guidelines and best practice Involvement: Library staff/University publicity Resolver/eLink maturity SingleSearch in progress

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Evaluation and Evolution: More on Rooms, Resolver & SingleSearch at Leicester

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  1. Evaluation and Evolution:More on Rooms, Resolver & SingleSearch at Leicester Janet Guinea Jonathan McGowan

  2. One Year On… • New skins • Usability testing • Guidelines and best practice • Involvement: Library staff/University publicity • Resolver/eLink maturity • SingleSearch in progress • Rooms pilot live in October 2005

  3. Usability Studies • 2 usability studies: March (main study) and August • Academic staff, postgraduate, library staff volunteers, undergraduate, foreign students:- rewards! • Facilitator and observer • SingleSearch tested in August study • Feedback throughout the pilot

  4. Usability (March) • Overall very positive • Welcomed the use of images • Eye automatically goes to top left, so make sure most important information is located there • Too much text • Navigation not obvious, especially from home page • Some items have positive and negative feedback e.g. predefined searches. • Non-standard University branding • Browser/accessibility issues • Many people not aware of the subject pages in their present form! • Suggestions for further resources to include being received.

  5. March conclusions • satisfactory level of usability, but can be enhanced by addressing certain issues • unfamiliarity of the interface = training and experience • greater level of consistency in our Room building required • design of the banner and terminology may need to be revisited • tab names should be consistent between rooms where possible • Using SingleSearch - make the nature of the search clear to the user • accessibility - JAWS software enables users to use the pages. Some work required

  6. Guidelines/best practice • Consistency – e.g. Welcome tab + image • Tab arrangement/pane names • Alphabetical versus logical debate • Skin choice • Link text standardised • Metadata: subject/description controls - keywords • Embedding websites: permission/rules • HTML guidance • Sharing content modules

  7. August Study • Most people impressed by Rooms • Generally unaware of efforts to organise content alphabetically or in any other logical sequence • SingleSearch: Usability tasks and questions must be considered carefully

  8. Integration • iLink implemented August 2005 • Rooms referenced on each page • Search results links to SingleSearch: SINGLE_SEARCH_URL • Search result links via ISSN to eLink: OPEN_URL • Catalogue > GoogleScholar > eLink: SEARCH_ENGINE_URL_PT1|http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=| • Migration: Rooms2/EPS in summer 2006

  9. SingleSearch – In the Beginning • What does it do? • Who is it for? • Is SingleSearch any use in an Academic Environment? • The potential of a configurable Metasearch engine • The threat to librarians everywhere!!!!!!

  10. The Plug-in Problem • The architecture of SingleSearch • A modifiable front end supporting search modules or ‘plug-ins’ • You want how many plug-ins? • Plug-ins are configured by Muse not locally • Limited configuration options • Inconsistency of changes by both MUSE and Database providers • Authentication

  11. The Athenian Question • Authentication is the biggest issue • IP verification works due to resident server • Server IP for search and client IP for result linking • Athens databases are a problem • Athens authentication is not supported • Session id cookies also present interesting difficulties

  12. Where we are now • The service is live but not hugely publicised • SingleSearch does provide an exceptional resource • Much Electronic content specific to academia is available • SingleSearch does provide a metasearch service far in advance of Mamma, Metacrawler or Dogpile • SingleSearch is no threat to subject librarians but should be pushed as a web search starting point • Future advances overcoming authentication difficulties and incorporating OpenURL links from the delivered results will provide a truly superb resource.

  13. Resolver/E-Link • Resolver is a resounding success • We have had a lot of positive feedback • It is still being pushed as an A-Z • Updates occur monthly • There are issues with some of the data provided by the suppliers • More suppliers are providing support everyday

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