How Many Dimensions of Compatibility: Discovering What's Right for Your UsersThis was the keynote address at University of Houston Library's Discovery Day Camp on June 10, 2011. Some extra screenshots of admin interfaces have been added after the actual presentation.
- 1. How Many Dimensions of Compatibility? Discovering What's
Right for Your Users University of Houston Libraries Discovery Day
Camp June 10, 2011 Marliese Thomas Auburn University Libraries
2. x 3. When investigating discovery products....
- How many dimensions of compatibility do you really need? 4. Are
you overly narrow or overly broad in your search criteria? 5. Are
we shifting away from the idea of marrying our product
decisions?
6. Everlasting love....
- Traditional ILS purchases were long-term investments
- Change was a major undertaking 7. Staff, $$$, users
- Does that reasoning still apply?
- Buying a car vs. a laptop
8. or head in the clouds?
- Hosted solutions allow for lower up-front costs 9. Flexibility
in required staffing 10. Be more reactive to changing technology
landscape 11. Possible short-term solution
12. So, what next? Form a committee? Photo by hlehto.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hlehto/532099446/ 13. Well, that
depends...
- On your product
- Open source and customized solutions require more local staff
time
- On your staff
- Who is responsible for the project? 14. What skills do you have
among your people?
- On your local culture and geography
- Representation from other departments, branches? 15. Identify
needed skills, then desired insights
16. Gathering feedback
- From users
- Good old focus groups 17. Online surveys 18. Student Advisory
Council
- Technical capabilities
- Server speed and strength 19. Data management, statistics
- It never really ends... 20. Photo by Night-thing.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/80327698@N00/4998726133/
21. Don't forget about your employee users, too!
- Engage them in the process
- Bug blitzes - prizes! 22. Committee work
- Help them understand the what and the why
- Analogies, examples The Cookie Analogy 23. Forums, other
communication
- Know when to refer questions to a higher authority
24. Managing the flow of information 25. What information?
- Documentation (I can't stress this enough) 26. Regular
communication with the higher ups 27. Comments from all directions
- Feedback forms 28. Unsolicited opinions 29. Ongoing development
work 30. Error reports
31. We tried anything and everything
- Wikis 32. Blogs 33. Email groups 34. Listservs 35. Shared
documents (GoogleDocs) 36. Online forms 37. Bugzilla and Mercurial
(for the programmers)
38. Redmine.... just right. For us.
- Open source ticket tracking software 39. Tickets are created
from emailed comments 40. It can also store committee documents and
blog postings 41. Managed by our head programmer no more bi-weekly
roundtable meetings! 42. Note: This was a perfect way for the
Auburn University Libraries group to transition the VuFind
development project into maintenance mode.
43. Development is done,and you're ready to releasethe new
search box. 44. But can we provide too much customization?
- Argument A: Integrating all our resources into one interface
doesn't help the student actively know what resource he/she is
using. It's overwhelming 45. Argument B: If we pre-narrow the field
too much, will students realize their search results are
essentially being edited before they are even displayed?
46. Picky, picky, picky
- Websites like Google and Facebook use cookie-based and other
information to 'personalize' your experience 47. Results the
algorithms predict you won't find appealing are removed from the
results list or news feed
- Great for advertisements 48. Not so great for undergraduate
research
49. Every technology has an interface... a place where you end
and the technology begins. And when the technology's job is to show
you the world, it ends up sitting between you and reality, like a
camera lens. Eli Pariser,The Filter Bubble 50. You have to see
where you're going to know if you're facing the right direction.
51. Marliese Thomas Librarian for Special Collections Technology
Auburn University Libraries [email_address] 334.844.8171 Twitter
@msthomas Slideshare: marliesethomas