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Minutes - 5 February 2003

Present: Darcy Duke, Jennifer Edelman, Nicole Hennig (minutes), Christine Quirion, Stephen Skuce, guests for SFX topic: Peter Cohn, Patty Durisin

1. Usability Tests with non-frequent library users

  • We will run the same test we ran recently with 5 additional users who are not regular library users, recruited at Reg Day. We'll revise the SFX question to include in both Test A and Test B and we'll remove the Ask Us Live section of the test. Nicole will send names of volunteers to each of use, we'll each test 1 person.

2. Plan for reporting usability results

  • We will have a brown bag lunch to report the results to our staff. Tentative date is Thursday, April 3. We will present the results of the test and also talk about plans for a new template for subject pages at that time.
  • Results related to Barton have already been given to the Web Opac Design Team for implementation in the no frames version of Barton.
  • Results related to Vera will continue to be discussed in this committee and in VOLT where appropriate.
  • Results related to SFX have already been implemented in the design of the menu.
  • Nicole will eventually write up all the results in a more formal way and put them on our staff web page.

3. New subject page templates

  • Nicole will email CMG to follow up on the plan for creating a new, alternative template for Subject Pages, Course Pages, Publication Type Guides, and Cheatsheets. CMG was going to send a couple of volunteers to work with us last year and somehow that never happened. We still want to do that based on the results of our tests.

4. The Database Discovery Tool idea

  • Nicole will be meeting with PSMG soon to discuss the idea of Database Discovery Tool. This was an idea that didn't get approved as a priority in the last discussion of Systems Office priorities and we plan to re-submit it for the next round. Since our usability tests showed a need for more help selecting appropriate databases we plan to ask for more support for the idea of creating a tool for this purpose. It could be MetaLib, or an enhancement of Vera, or another portal product, such as Zportal.

5. SFX Citation Linker for public (FullText Finder)
(Peter Cohn and Patty Durisin, guests)

  • We looked at a possible mockup of the SFX Citation Linker for the public, which we will call the FullText Finder: <http://libraries.mit.edu/fulltext>
  • We agreed to test it by looking up various citations and playing around with it. We'll meet again in two weeks to come up with ideas for improving the user interface and deciding where to link to it from on our web site.
  • SFX training has gone well so far. Rotch, Dewey, and Science have had their training, Barker and Humanities will happen tomorrow.



Future agenda items:

  • FullText Finder implementation
  • plan brown bag for staff to discuss results of usability tests
  • discuss results of usability tests at next meeting (for non-regular library users)
  • continue to work on possible solutions to problems that came from usability tests
  • Usabiity testing of the Institute Archives web site (March 19)


Next meeting

February 19, 2-3:30pm, Barker Conference Room (10-500)

http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/minutes/20030205.html


Web Advisory Group Home > Minutes > 5 February 2003