MIT Libraries’ Betastesting & getting feedback on new services

Nicole Hennig

Web Manager & Usability SpecialistMIT LibrariesMarch 2007

Outline•how we came up with the idea• reaction from our community

(positive!)•example of one beta service: LibX•other betas•questions

libraries.mit.edu/betas

labs.google.com

Key Advantages•Helps us find out what works for our users before committing to supporting a new service.

•We can get experience with technologies or features that we are still learning about without putting those into our mission-critical services.

•It’s a special way to market new services - creates “buzz” before new services are live.

Other advantages• Helps to encourage staff creativity and

experimentation.

• It's a place where we can ask the MIT community to contribute tools.

• It can help to manage user expectations... these things aren't perfect and may not always work. We don't support them in the same way as our mission-critical services.

a key point

• not everything that is “beta” will become a permanent service

Learning from failure

• Every service on the Betas page will not necessarily "graduate" to permanent status.

• Even if we decide not to "graduate" a beta service, it can still be useful to us as something to learn from.

• Aspects of a particular beta service may become part of a more supportable service later on, perhaps backed by a different technology that is shown to be more stable.

Criteria for moving out of beta

• The beta has received positive user feedback(from more than a handful of users).

• It has been in beta for at least one semester.

• It has been demonstrated that our community is using it. (We have statistics).

User feedback

Criteria for moving out of beta

• we’ve made a commitment to support it either centrally or locally with tested technologies that our staff is trained to support.

• documentation, training, and workflow are in place.

• if it's provided and supported outside of MIT, it's from a trusted and reliable source.

Tech support

Example

• LibX - Firefox extensionlibraries.mit.edu/libx

LibXadds our search to the browser toolbar

LibX helps meet one of our goals

Put links to the libraries where the users are:

- such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s- New York Times book reviews- Google- and more.

Links from Amazon to our catalog

cue

Links from Amazon to our catalog

LibX

links ISBNs to our catalog

Without LibX, the ISBN is not a link.

LibXright-click

sends selected text on a page

toGoogle Scholar

and more

LibX helps you get to our licensed copy from off-campus

Right click on a page to “reload via off-campus proxy”

Our licensed copy

libx.org

LibX has “graduated”

• The beta has received positive user feedback(from more than a handful of users).

• It has been in beta for at least one semester.

• It has been demonstrated that our community is using it. (We have statistics).

User feedback

MIT’s LibX has highest number of downloads of all libraries using LibX.

Other betas• Dewey Research Advisor• RSS feeds for new titles from our catalog• Humanities “Virtual Browsery” in a

Wordpress blog

Dewey Research Advisor

RSS feeds for new

titles

Possible future betas

• Podcasts and screencasts• Preview of next version of Vera that will

include metasearch features

questions?

libraries.mit.edu/betas