Prepared by Suzanne LewisArea Libraries, IM&T

November 2007

Focus on the User Environment: Enhancing

Library Usability

Usability

Easy to learn

Useful

Easy to use

Pleasant to use

Gould, J.D. and Lewis, C. Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think. Communications of the ACM, 28, 3 (March 1985): 300-311.

Ease of Use

Defined as “how quickly we can use a product to complete tasks”.

Library patrons want ease of use

Usefulness

Defined as whether the product does “what it is supposed to do … Does it work?” What are the end results?

Librarians want usefulness.

ease of use + usefulness=

usability

Dicks, R. Stanley. Mis-usability: on the uses and misuses of usability testing. Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation, 26-30. October 20-23, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Usability Quick Fixes

Signage

Display

Weeding

Opening hours

Food and drink – coffee

Woodward, J. 2005. Creating the customer-driven library: building on the bookstore model. American Library Association: Chicago.

Daily Checklist Completed

(tick √)

Out of date material removed from counter

Brochure holders full of relevant leaflets

Velcro, Blu-Tack and sticky tape removed

Time on clock is correct

Windows, doors, floors clean & all litter removed

All staff wearing name badges

All clutter removed from counter

All displays re-stocked

All lights are working

All signage is relevant to today

All faded, ripped signs are removed

Stanley, J & L. 2004. Think for your customer. Lizardpublishing.biz: Kalamunda, WA.

What Makes a Library Usable?

Accessibility – physical and online

Relevance – right information, right place, right time

Responsiveness to patrons – able to change, adapt, respond quickly

Attitude of library staff

Three Types of Librarianship

“Lollipop librarianship”

“Broccoli librarianship”

Evidence based librarianship

Lollipop Librarianship

Give them what they want

Choose services and resources that are easy to learn and use

Google

Fast results but not always the best or most useful

Lollipop Librarianship

Hangwi Tang & Jennifer Hwee Kwoon Ng. 2006. Googling for a diagnosis – use of Google as a diagnostic aid: internet based study. British Medical Journal 333:1143-1145, 10 November.

“…. In difficult diagnostic cases, it is often useful to ‘google for a diagnosis’. Web based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use”.

In this study, using 26 case reports from the New England Journal of Medicine, Google searches found the correct diagnosis in 58% of cases.

58% !!!!!!!

Referrals from Search Engines to Web Sites of 844 Journals Hosted by HighWire Press (June 2005)

Steinbrook, R. Searching for the right search – reaching the medical literature. New England Journal of Medicine 2006; 354:4-7.

Broccoli Librarianship

Telling patrons what they should know and how they should use services and resources because “it is good for them”.

Vaughn, D. & Burton C. 2003. Broccoli librarianship and Google-bred patrons, or what’s wrong with usability testing? College & Undergraduate Libraries 10 (2), 1-18.

Information Literacy

“only librarians like to search; everyone else likes to find”.

(Roy Tennant quoted in Wilder, S. 2005. “Information literacy makes all the wrong assumptions”. The Chronicle Review, 51, 18. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18b01301.htm)

“The OPAC meets librarians’ needs, not the end-users’ needs. Change the OPAC rather than doing more information literacy training. Put our content into Google”.

(Abram, Stephen. The Top 10 Strategies for Library Success – An Expert Forum with Stephen Abram. 29 August 2007, Sydney.)

Evidence Based Librarianship

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) seeks to improve library and information services and practice by bringing together the best available evidence and insights derived from working experience, moderated by user needs and preferences. … It thus attempts to integrate user-reported, practitioner-observed and research-derived evidence as an explicit basis for decision-making.

Booth, A. (2006). Counting what counts: performance measurement and evidence-based practice. Performance Measurement and Metrics, 7(2), 63-74.

All Too Familiar?How often have you seen this sort of message on a listserv:

‘Does anyone out there know how to deal with problem x or y?’

And the reply comes back:

‘Yes, here at Diddly-Squat Library we had the same problem and we fixed it by doing yabba-dabba-doo.’

And more often than not, the response is:

‘Great – we’ll try the same thing and hope it works for us. Thanks so much.’

Well, isn’t that careful, reflective and insightful professional practice!

Gorman, G. E. (2004, April). Evidence-based information practice comes of age. Retrieved 23 August, 2005.

Stages of EBLIP

Formulate the question

Find the evidence

Critically appraise the evidence

Apply the evidence

Evaluate impact and performance

Report findings

Formulate a Question

S Setting Library Services Intranet site

P Perspective Staff and students of the organisation

I Intervention Site improvements

C Comparison Original site

E Evaluation Usability (as a determiner of effectiveness)

Focus the Question

“What improvements to the current Library intranet site should be made to improve usability for the staff and students of the organisation?”

Cotter, L., Harije, L., Lewis, S. & Tonnison, I. 2006. Adding SPICE to a library intranet site: a recipe to enhance usability. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 1, (1): 3-25.

Finding the Evidence

User-reported – brief online survey

Librarian-observed – usability testing

Research-derived – literature search

Appraise the Evidence

We appraised

– Quality of article

– Level of evidence

– Contextual relevance

We asked

– Is this a study we can use/adapt?

– Is the study valid/reliable/applicable?

Apply the Evidence

DIRECTLY– Raward’s Usability Analysis Tool for library websites

DERIVATION– Usability testing

CONDITIONALLY– Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines

ENLIGHTENMENT– Theoretical discussion, commentaries– Examination of other sites

Evaluate Impact

Evaluating

– Our performance applying the EBL process

– Impact of changes made

Disseminating

– Conference proceedings

– Publication of project report

– EBLIP journal from 2006

Libraries Using Evidence

What does EBLIP have to do with Usability?

“Lollipop librarianship” tends to result in services and resources that are easy to use but not always useful

“Broccoli librarianship” tends to result in services and resources that are useful but not always easy to use

Evidence based librarianship helps you achieve resources and services that are highly usable

Usability and Web 2.0/Library 2.0

Ann Arbor District Library Catalogue

http://www.aadl.org/catalog

OPAC 2.0

tag clouds – subject headings and/or user-generated

“best bets”

“recently arrived”

“most popular” – based on circulation data

community reviews and ratings

federated searching across catalogue and databases