Find Articles

1
Find Articles

• Fourth Generation Design For Federated Searching
  at the University of Rochester
• Brenda Reeb, Usability
• David Lindahl, Digital Initiatives

2
Agenda

• Serial Failure
• Metasearch
• User Centered Design Process
• Culture and Politics
• Generations of Design
• Technology

3
Serial Failure

1. Students cannot find articles
2. Students overwhelmed with database names,
   contents, and search protocols
3. Students insist on search simplicity
4. Eliminate the complexity of information retrieval
5. Technologies exist to make it simpler
6. Politics exist to make it complex

4
Serial Failure

• Design Responses
• Dont make undergraduates choose anything before
  searching
• Dont expect users to read anything before
  searching
• Forgiving search box tolerates single words,
  multiple words, Boolean, phrases.
• Assume relevance ranking

5
Serial Failure

• Serial Failure The Charleston ADVISOR, Vol. 5.,
  no. 3, 2004. Jennifer Bowen, Judi Briden, Vicki
  Burns, David Lindahl, Brenda Reeb, Melinda Stowe,
  Stanley Wilder.

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Metasearch

• What is metasearch?
• Federated Search
• Single user interface to multiple databases
• Simultaneous searching across resources
• Merged results
• Metasearch technology
• Metasearch product with UI
• Connectors
• OpenURL Linking

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User Centered Design Process
Design iterations Test results
Usability group
Key tasks Test results
Design group
Prototypes Issue/Responses
Content group
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User Centered Design Process
Group
User Focus
Highest No other goal than to represent the user.
Usability group
Design group
Medium Competes with standards, technology, time
and money
Content group
Medium Competes with exhaustive content, complex
tasks
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User Centered Design Process

• Artifacts of design process
• Key task list
• Design iterations and prototypes
• Usability results
• Issue/response document
• Meetings
• Regular meetings (design usability)
• Project specific meetings (usability content,
  content design)

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Design Group

• Reorganized in 2001
• Lives in the Digital Initiatives Unit
• ¼ FT UI designer (MS, Computer Science)
• 1 FTE graphic designer (BA, Graphic Design)
• 1 FTE developer
• Responsibilities
• UI Design and prototyping
• Style guidelines
• Issue/response process

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Design Group

• Perspective on Site Design
• Hide the technology
• Consistency across library website
• Task-oriented pathways
• Usability testing results
• Perspective on Page Design
• Essential components
• Prioritize
• Simplify
• Style guidelines

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Design Group
Style Guidelines

• Universal Design
• Section 508
• Web Style Guide
• Research-Based Web Design Usability Guidelines
• Page Editors Checklist

13
Design Group
User pathways
Knowledge of databases
Databases A-Z
Partial knowledge
Databases by Subject
No knowledge needed
Mapping your search to a subject takes you away
from your natural path
Find Articles Google
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Design Group

• Models For Finding Google
• Enter keywords
• Browse results by title and snippet
• View full text

15
Design Group

• Models For Finding FRBR
• FRBR User Tasks
• Find
• Identify
• Select
• Acquire
• FRBR Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
  Records
• More information http//www.ifla.org

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Design Group
Encompass UI

1. Enter keywords and select databases
2. Select databases or SHOW ALL
3. Select a result
4. View metadata
5. Select a full text source
6. View full text online

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Design Group
Encompass UI

1. Enter keywords and select databases
2. Select databases or SHOW ALL
3. Select a result
4. View metadata
5. Select a full text source
6. View full text online

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Design Group
Find Articles UI

1. Enter keywords
2. Select a result
3. View full text online

Generation 3
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Design Group
Mapping the Find Articles UI to FRBR
(Gather)
Select Article
Full Text
Search

• FRBR Tasks
• Find
• Identify
• Select
• Acquire

Generation 3
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Content Group

• Multiple content groups, one for each project
• Any number of members (1-?)
• Every department participates - cataloging,
  circulation, reference, etc.
• Created and disbanded as needed

21
Content Group

• Content group activities
• Define key tasks
• Select appropriate content
• Apply experience and education
• Observe some tests
• Interpret usability results
• Raise issues, not design solutions

22
Content Group

• What is a key task?
• Key tasks are defined as frequently asked items,
  frequent actions or navigation to parent/child
  pages.
• Example key tasks
• Find a known article.
• Find a known journal.
• Find an article on a specific topic.
• Find articles on a multidisciplinary topic.
• Find a specific journal collection.

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Content Group

• Find Articles Group
• Acted as content group
• Collected issues
• Categorized these issues
• Technology issues (website, SFX, ILL, Databases
  OPAC)
• Building, shelving organizational Issues
• Subscription issues
• Citation problems
• Basic research help
• Librarians
• Created scenarios
• Assigned issues to various other groups

24
Usability Group

• Usability Program
• Began 2001
• 7 staff trained as usability testers
• Over 20 projects, large and small
• Testers volunteer for projects
• Reading, conferences, practice
• Vendor co-development

25
Usability Group

• Usability team activities
• Manage key task process
• Design and conduct tests
• Maintain a lab
• Communicate results to staff and public

26
Usability Group
Manage key task process
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Usability Group
Manage key task process
Key task Test question
Find a known journal Find an article in the Journal of Fish Biology.
Find a journal collection Your friend told you there is a collection of political science journals called JSTOR. Where is it?
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Usability Group

• Design and conduct tests
• Mental model test
• Heuristic test
• Card sort test
• Assessment test (Click path)
• Scenario test
• See Jeff Rubin Handbook of Usability Testing,
  Wiley, 1994

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Usability Group

• Picture of our lab

Meet me at Circ!
30
Usability Group

• Communicate results

31
Culture and Politics

• Students say
• I need an article!

• Librarians say
• Select a database
• This database has 435 journals in it.
• These journals are peer reviewed.
• Choose basic or advanced.
• These journals predate the Civil War.

32
Culture and Politics

• Student culture
• Connect at courses, not at academic disciplines
• Meet them where they are
• Students attend POL250 Conflict in
  Democracies
• They do not relate to Political Science.
• They do not envision themselves as political
  scientists.
• Sustainability
• Distributed workload (all bibliographers
  participate)
• Dynamic, database-driven pages

33
Culture and Politics

• Expect these accusations!
• Simple designs dumb down the site
• Testing 3 users is not enough
• I have to wonder if usability testing -
  especially for money - proves very useful input
• No one told me about this
• Where is your report?
• This is so subjective!

34
Culture and Politics

• Try these responses
• Inform
• Page design process document
• Dont leave home without the toolkit
• Neilsons Alert Boxes
• Pages from Krugs Dont Make Me Think
• Engage
• Observe tests
• Publish results

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Generations of Design
Generation 0
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Generations of Design
Generation 1
37
Generations of Design
Generation 2
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Generations of Design
Generation 2
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Generations of Design
Generation 3
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Generations of Design
Generation 3
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Generations of Design
Generation 4

• Find
• Subject clusters Course clusters
• Catalog (CUIPID Web Services)
• Identify and Select
• Relevance Sorting (Evolving Metasearch)
• Metadata (Abstracts on selection screen)
• Results navigation
• Obtain
• Direct to full text (via shared knowledge base)
• Holdings information / maps (integration with
  catalog)

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Generations of Design
Generation 4

• Subject Clusters
• Pre-selected databases
• Search boxes anywhere
• Course Pages
• Connects undergrads to library resources
• Top-5 resource
• Usability success
• Course Clusters

43
Technology

• Meta-search Technology and Standards
• Find
• Z39.50
• SRW/SRU and CQL (NISO MetaSearch Init.)
• XML Gateway
• Identify/Select
• OAI
• Obtain
• OpenURL
• SFX, LinkFinder, Serial Solutions

44
Technology

• Meta-search Issues
• Speed and Reliability
• Connectors
• Index vs. Meta-search
• Ease of use
• Database selection
• Abstracts on selection screen
• Full text availability
• One click to full text
• Relevance sorted results and de-duping
• Quality of results
• How search terms are applied
• Database selection

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Technology
ERA Server
Subscription Database
Library Web Server
XML
XML
XSLT
XSLT
Page with Full Text
HTML
HTML
User
(Gather)
Select Article
Full Text
Search
46
Technology

• OpenURL Knowledge Base
• Get the article
• Choose an alternative (catalog, ILL)
• Translate Journal abbreviations

47
Questions?

• Presenters
• Brenda Reeb, Usability
• breeb_at_library.rochester.edu
• David Lindahl, Digital Initiatives
• dlindahl_at_library.rochester.edu