Minutes of User Interface Task Group Meeting

Friday, January 13, 2006

Attending: Heidi Hanson, Janet Evander, Linda Seguin, Diane Fuller, Laura Wrubel, Susan Wheeler, Lenore England, Joanne Dugan, Seán Henry (minutes)

Meeting minutes from Dec. 9 were approved

Topic 1: ERIC 2 forum on Find It in the catalog (Laura, Heidi, Janet, Linda)

The ERIC II forum had been held the day before (Jan 12), so this topic was discussed first:

• The subgroup working on ERIC 2 issues reported that the ERIC 2 Task Group met after the forum to discuss the ILL link in SFX menu in response to forum questions and feedback.
• Susan mentioned doubts that the UB Reference Dept. has about SFX in the catalog: They prefer no SFX at all, or at least not without ILL link suppressed and PPH wording changed.
• In response to Susan, Laura emphasized that the SFX menu in the catalog is customizable by campus: wording can be changed and links suppressed.
• In view of forum feedback about catalog screen changes, Heidi is researching the granularity of linking the 240 uniform title field on the full view screen, especially for the music research community.
• Linda suggested "more like this" links next to headings on the full view screen, rather than hyperlinking the headings themselves, but Heidi explained the technical difficulty of doing that in Aleph without sophisticated customization.

Topic 2: New Title List (Laura)

Cindy Todd, who was not able to attend, had compiled responses the new title list from St. Mary's, UMBC, Salisbury, Towson, University of Baltimore, Frostburg, UM College Park. Laura passed out copies of the responses for discussion. Feedback fell into the following 8 categories:

1. Titles newly added to collections as purchase or gifts
2. Drop-down to select how "new" the material is.
3. Titles new to specific campus.
4. All formats…this is not a New BOOKS catalog.
5. Filtering/selectivity/sorting
6. Report or List
7. Other features
8. Presentation on Catalog toolbar

At this point, no decisions were made. The responses were sent on to ITD to investigate technical feasibility.

Topic 3: Prioritize issues from usability testing (Laura)

Problems/issues discovered in reports from recent usability testing documented at http://usmai.umd.edu/userinter/usability.html were reviewed, discussed, and prioritized for action.

Discussion included:

• Confusion between catalog screen labels (i.e., "multi-campus" vs. "choose campus" on the toolbar)
• Students not clicking on information icon, which is also missing from holding/availability screens
• Evaluating fields on full record and moving some to another view.
• Users overlooking the Find It button, which might be improved by color, placement, or more meaningful wording
• ILL and PPH services on the Find It menu
• Permute screen clean-up

From the above, it was decided to give the following items high priority for the next meeting:

• Evaluating fields on full record and moving some to another view
• Find It Button (not seen, wording meaningful, color, placement?)
• ILL and request (PPH) services on Find It menu
• Permute screen (Heidi working on this)

Topic 4: Review User Interface items in the 2006 ITD Development plan

http://usmai.umd.edu/itd/USMAI_Development_Plan_06e.html (Laura)

The following UITG items were reviewed, with determinations about how to proceed:

• Google Scholar Integration (not important at this time)
• Definition of contents of journal subset in OPAC
• Many serials staff feel strongly that annuals should not be filtered out of journal subset
• Is journal the best screen label for this subset?
• Pre-work for next meeting: Get feedback from serial librarians about implications of broadening definition of journals subset
• Evaluation and adjustment of screen messages in OPAC, Research Port, and Find It. (Laura will draft a message about this to send to COI for feedback )
• New items OPAC base (ITD, Catalog, and Acquisitions issues need to be resolved first)
• Usage Statistics for OPAC (Heidi will look into this and see what kind of data is captured for statistics)

Topic 5: Round Robin

• Diane and Sean inquired about placing call numbers in brief record views. Heidi clarified that this would cause user confusion, because specific information about sublibrary and/or collection would not display with the call numbers on this screen.
• Lenore asked about more details of the scheduled Jan. 25 soft release
• Sean suggested possibly including FSU in a future round of usability testing

Topic 6: Reevaluate monthly meeting dates

Due to difficulties with meeting times on the second Friday of the month at 1-3 PM, it was agreed to change meeting times to the first Tuesday of each month, from 10 AM to 12 PM.

Meeting Schedule

• February 7, 2006
• March 7, 2006
• April 4, 2006
• May 2, 2006
• June 6, 2006

Next Meeting:

February 7, 2006: 10 AM -12 PM, at UMCP

Topics for February Agenda

• Usability issues
• Pre-work: Talk with serial librarians at home campuses about implications of broadening definition of journals subset.