Theme Focus: Search

Search functionality is a fairly fundamental element of each of the JISC LMS projects so it would be foolhardy of me to try and document every single blogpost. The blogposts I've linked to below give a good representation of the sorts of issues and challenges that the projects have been tackling.

One of the things that often comes up as soon as you get anywhere near a library search interface is the thorny issue of 'advanced search'. I am starting to wonder whether it is only librarians themselves who can truly love this feature. It would be interesting to look at usage stats to see whether advanced searches get as much usage as library staff think they do/should do [and also whether that usage is changing over time].

Making a user friendly 'advanced search' interface is a particularly thorny challenge. During inhouse training sessions the #SWWHEPSRCH project team got feedback that the iFind advanced search was 'a little confusing'. The #BFCESEARCH team also reported that few users chose to use the advanced search function, and those who did 'found the option boxes confusing'.

When the #BLATHULL project analysed the results of their usability testing they found that opinions were divided on the usefulness of a) a tag cloud and b) a display of 'recently added' bookcovers(they were comparing SearchWorks at Stanford University and VirgoBeta at the University of Virginia). If the users are divided in their feedback then this makes getting the interface right all the more difficult.

Of course, implementing a new search often uncovers all sorts of data conundrums:
- http://yocalcat.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/progress-report-search-interface/
- http://blacklightathull.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/union-search-and-revised-categories/

The UX2.0 project crafted some indepth technical guides to share how they're implementing faceted search, Apache Solr and Dublin Core Metadata:
- Part 1
- Part 2

The #AQUABROWSERUX project also shared their know how around how you can develop realistic user tests when looking at search functionality.

The #ENCLAVELMS team have written a relevant blogposts on whether wordclouds are the future of search and also their thoughts on what library search functionality could be usefully embedded within their VLE.

Lastly, just to mix things up a bit, here are a couple of high profile and large-scale beta search interfaces that may be of interest:
- http://library.wales.org/catcymru/
- British Library search beta

Theme Focus: Open Source

The key projects with an interest in open source are as follows:
- #OSSVIAB: Project to produce a detailed evaluation of functionality to UK Core Specifications requirements of the open source library system, Evergreen. [project blog]
- #BLATHULL: Case study examining the implementation of the open source Blacklight discovery interface system over the library catalogue at the University of Hull. [project blog]
- #JANGLEFB: Create API connectors (via the OSS Jangle framework) between the Sirsi Dynix library management system and Facebook [project blog]
- #CREDAUL: Project to select and implement an Open Source next generation resource discovery tool (http://vufind.org/) to contain all the records of Sussex and Brighton Universities. [project blog]
- #VUFINDKEVEN: project implementing a re-skinned VuFind interface for the Kent University library catalogue. [project blog]

There's an associated JISC/SCONUL event happening early next year which you might want to attend if you have an interest in open source and academic libraries. It's a 2-day event which is taking place in Edinburgh from Tuesday 25th January to Wednesday 26th January 2011 as part of Mashed Libraries:
- More information about the 'Haggis & Mash' event
- The registration page for the event

Theme Focus: Usability [part 3]

This is the final part of my theme focus on usability and it's a treasure trove of blogposts and reports which have been written by the good folks at the University of Edinburgh. There are officially two Edinburgh Uni projects within the JISC LMS programme {#AQUABROWSERUX and #ENCLAVELMS} but they are also running the #UX2 project so I've included things of interest from that project too.

It's a bit hard to know how to structure this post so that it doesn't get a tad confusing but here goes ...

This blogpost gives an overview of the thinking behind the user testing and user centred design approach being taken for the UX2.0 and AquaBrowser projects.

As well as sharing their step-by-step guides for developing your own user personas the team have also published their own user personas for you to compare and contrast to yours:
- UX2.0 / AQUABROWSERUX User Personas
- [Part 1] User Research and Persona Creation: Data Gathering Methods
- [Part 2] User Research and Persona Creation: Segmentation – Six Steps to our Qualitative Personas
- [Part 3] User Research and Persona Creation: Introducing the Personas

The #AQUABROWSERUX project produced a full report on their usability testing. It has some particularly interesting findings around the usability (or lack thereof) of the AquaBrowser wordcloud and how useful the participants found being able to view a book's table of contents in helping them decide whether they'd found a book that would be useful for their studies. They also posted videos showing highlights of the user testing:
Video 1: Faceted Navigation
Video 2: Information Seeking
Video 3: Word Cloud

The project team have taken a very reflective approach to their usability testing so there's lots of lessons learnt to dig through:
- Recruitment evaluation and screening for personas
- Realism in testing search interfaces
- SWOT analysis of the persona research phase of the project (which also contains a link to their interview script)

Boon Low's guide to 'in the wild' usability evaluations also makes for good reading.

The #ENCLAVELMS project produced some useful analyses of the UX2.0 and AquaBrowser usability test resport as part of their Work Package 1 Report [pdf].

I don't feel like I can really hope to do justice to all that the project teams have managed to produce so I'd encourage you to have a dig around on the UX2.0 wiki for other hidden gems. The full usability report [pdf] from the UX2.0 project would also be a good place to start.

Tabbloid #11: 10 Dec 2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

Last week's Tabbloid proves that big announcements come in small packages:
- the #ENCLAVELMS project announced that the code for their wordcloud software has been uploaded to sourceforge and are inviting suggestions for how it can be enhanced.
- the #OSSVIAB project shared news that version 3 of the United Kingdom Core Specification has been made available under a Creative Commons licence.

Tabbloid also picked up an interesting post from the UX2.0 project at Edinburgh University which reported on a number of university libraries (in the UK and further afield) which are offering services via mobile devices

Theme Focus: Usability [part 2]

This is the second installment in my round up of the blogposts and reports which focus on usability. You can read the first installment here and there will be a third and final installment coming shortly which will cover the wealth of usability resources that have come out of the University of Edinburgh projects.

Blackpool and the Fylde College project team has also followed the popular 1, 2, 3 format for their blogposts [#bfcesearch]:
- Post 1 gives a high level overview of the methodology they chose for the usability testing they carried out back in May.
- Post 2 gives some more indepth insight around the results of their usability study. I was particularly interested in their finding that the more confident a user was in searching, the more positive they were towards the interface. There are also some interesting findings around the confusion that was caused by terminology such as 'Search Scope' and the positive response towards features such as tagging once they were pointed out and explained to the participants.
- Post 3 covers what the project team learnt when they asked participants what additional links they would find useful and what format they wanted additional help to come in. The participants were shown the University of Minnesota's Assignment Calculator (which is available to download as open source software) and responded enthusiastically to it. Some users felt that contextualised onscreen help would be more useful to them than having to leave the search page to watch a video tutorial. All interesting stuff!

The Jangle for Users of Sirsi project at Leeds Met University [#janglefb] was all about connecting their LMS to a widget in Facebook so it's no surprise to see that their conversations with users focused heavily on data security and the appropriateness of sharing library data within a social network:
- In this post the project team outline their approach to user consultation (focus groups and a user survey). Their list of stakeholders makes for interesting reading: the Student Union ‘Consumer Testing’ Group, a product consultant from Sirsi, academic staff and students on the Information Management MSc. It's also interesting to note that they were able to take advantage of use cases which have been produced as part of the library's 'User Communications Project'.
- This post shares some of the findings of that consultation. The consultation was on a small scale but enabled the project team to find out that Facebook was the most used of all the social networks amongst their participants. The users discussed their concerns around personal data and also identified mobile access as another route that they would be interested in accessing their library account through.

The Kent University VuFind Enhancement project [#vufindkeven] discovered back in June that £5 is all it takes to cause a 'bunfight' on campus when it comes to recruiting usability test participants. Here are the rest of their blogposts about usability testing:
- The project team reported that the results of the usability testing gave them greater confidence that implementing VuFind was right way forward. They also shared the high level findings on the Kent Uni Library blog.
- The team also ran mini-surveys on users' views about specific topics such as personal tagging. However, there was a disappointing response rate to their survey on social tagging and they've seen little evidence of tagging activity among users so far.

The Library Locator Project [#findmylibrarybook] at the London School of Economics wrote a fairly lighthearted post about how they could find some 'tame' library users and pondered whether they might be able to hijack their library colleagues' idea to run quizzes in the library using QR codes. Neil Stewart kindly pointed them in the direction of the work that Bath University are doing with QR codes.

Theme Focus: Usability [part 1]

Here is the first installment in my round up of the blogposts and reports which JISC LMS project teams have published over the course of their projects. [Slight disclaimer] It's not meant as an exhaustive list of sources but if you do come across any useful posts that I've not included please feel free to add them via the comments box.

The blogposts tend to have come from 'Strand A' of the JISC LMS Programme which is called 'Usability Case Studies in Libraries Systems (embedding "UXers" in the library)'. It's worth noting though that usability was also a key concern of projects in the other strands so it's no surprise that some useful usability posts have also come out of projects within those other strands.

Virtual Academic Library Shared Discovery Platform project(#swwhepsrch) centres around evaluating the usability of Vu-Find discovery interface for the South West Wales Higher Education Partnership’s Virtual Academic Library project:
- the project reported on how they were introducing a 'feedback' link within the interface to remedy the less than perfect (from their point of view) consultation process.
- the project are also capturing user feedback on an ongoing basis within a dedicated blog: https://ifind.swwhep.ac.uk/blog/ on the SWWHEP website. This also gives them a place to report back on any planned/delivered enhancements and provides the potential for some ongoing dialogue with users.

The Blacklight at Hull project (#blathull) followed the Hull Uni's team as they implemented the open source Blacklight discovery interface system - the project ran two lots of usability testing and produced the following blogposts. They mention one of the things that many of the other projects have noted - namely that usability tests produce a lot of interesting information about user behaviour and search strategies - the overhead in terms of time needed to sift through and make sense of that information can't be overestimated:
- an overview of their May 2010 usability tests [part 1]
- analysis of the May 2010 usability tests [part 2]
- an overview of their October 2010 usability tests [part 3]

The {takes a deep breath} Simplifying resource discovery and access in academic libraries: implementing and evaluating Summon at Huddersfield and Northumbria Universities project [#summon4HN] have uploaded a couple of resources about the user focus groups/feedback from training sessions they carried out earlier this year:
- a pdf of a presentation given by Annette Coates
- a word document outlining their methodology and giving a summary of the key feedback from users. [note: there are links to test documents/session recordings etc but they are internally hosted and therefore not accessible externally to the university]

The Coventry University Primo Implementation Project [#covprimo] have gone for the popular 1; 2; 3 approach with the following blogposts:
- Post 1 gives an introduction / background to their usability testing approach and summarises their main findings and recommendations
- Post 2 focused on the findings from the search tasks and the resulting recommendations.
- Post 3 focused on tasks which required the user to find resources within specific databases and the resulting recommendations. There is also a summary other findings that came out of post-test discussions with the users and an overview of the team's general observations.
One of the findings that really stood out to me was in #covprimo's final post which was that none of the users they'd tested knew what the term 'Tag' meant. That started me wondering whether there could be other examples of everyday library vocabulary which we might be mistakenly assuming that the users know what they mean.

The 'OCLC WorldCat Local: case study of implementation and usability at York St John University' project team [#yocalcat] have managed a feat of wordpress witchcraft and turned their usability report into a single blogpost. The report goes through their usability test methodology and results in great depth. The tests highlighted opportunities for improving the information skills of York St John students (particularly in terms of their confidence with using faceted search functionality) as well as identifying enhancements for the OCLC search interface. Two of the students tested misunderstood a task to find 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' and attempted to search for three separate titles. This misunderstanding was because they hadn't heard of the title before ... another example of how easy it is to mistakenly assume that something is common knowledge among students. York St John is a small university with a correspondingly small library team - they expressed concerns over the time/resource available to analyse the usability test results but they've managed to do an in-depth piece of analysis which other institutions might find a useful model to use.

Tabbloid #10: 3 Dec 2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

The main contributors last week were the #OSSVIAB project team at Swansea University with two substantial blogposts:
1) publication of the project team's scoring of Evergreen against the UKCS (United Kingdom Core Specification) functional requirements for LMS document.
2) a 'coming to the end of our project' post which reflects on the limitations of the UKCS as a standard to evaluate LMS against, and also on how well Evergreen has stood up against their scrutinising. It looks like there is a bit of a chicken and egg issue regarding a lack of functionality to fit the UK model of inter-library loans. The post also echoes the sentiments of other JISC LMS projects around continuing to share their thinking and progress after the official end of the project has passed by.

Tabbloid #9: 26 November 2011

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

'Post of the week' has to go to the #salfmeri team - if you spotted their fairly inocuous looking blogpost and clicked on the link to google docs you will have been treated to the same sight I saw:


In a single document (5 pages long) they've managed to map out their whole e-resource management process in (to my eyes at least) an elegant and understandable manner. The map is the result of many hours of interviews and investigations but it looks like that time has been a worthwhile investment.

Tabbloid #7 and #8: Double Bonanza

I have been away on holiday in a remote Northumbrian cottage so there's a double dose of Tabbloid delights for you this week:

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

Some noteworthy points are as follows:

- the #SALFMERI project are part of the Electronic Resource Management (ERM) strand and have been looking at their current procedures in preparation for identifying ERM use cases and requirements. This investigation has been a very useful exercise for them which has revealed that information on electronic resources within Salford University (and the people who use them/have a strategic interest in them) is highly dispersed and hard to find - in fact often the information is invisible because it is locked inside one person's head. The team are working towards a single process map which will draw together all of this tacit and explicit knowledge ... it should be quite a sight to behold once it's complete!

- the #CULWIDGETS team at Cambridge have been working on a set of 'permanent' webpages for their website which will act as guide for any future intrepid widget authors. The fruits of their labour look to be a pretty extensive and clearly written guide which will be accessible to non-technical staff ... quite frankly it's an inspiring piece of work and a good legacy for the project to leave behind. It will be interesting to know whether there is an appointed guardian in place to update the guide as things move forward. There's also a very handy link to the Google guide to widgets. It's interesting to note that Google have named them 'gadgets' rather than widgets ... perhaps to get over the perception of frivolity that is conjoured up by the word 'widget' (which is identified as an issue within the CULWIDGETS guide)?

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

Last weeks Tabbloid could pretty much be renamed the 'Culwidget Weekly' it features their final project posts and some widget usage graphs that offer some fairly compelling evidence for the success of a couple of their widgets (albeit with plenty of room for further improvement in the coming year). In their final project blogpost the team put their finger on something that we've observed as outside observers; namely that the end of the JISC project doesnot mean the end of the project blog (or project tweets). It will be interesting to see how many of the projects remain active after their project funding has come to an end. From our point of view it may well mean that there is more to synthesis than we'd initially anticipated and no doubt these post-project reflections and progress reports will provide us with some much valued content to draw on as we start to consider our final report. All good stuff!
The #UX2 team posted a useful reflection on their usability testing experience and provided a link to their final report. Usability testing is another of those times when we are reminded that if it weren't for those pesky users (in this case recruiting volunteers and then dealing with the sometimes inevitable number of no shows) then the task would be much simpler. Of course without the users there would be no user testing so it's a challenge that has to be overcome. And of course with a small usability study every no show has a bigger impact so we'll be on the look out for any tips around ensuring the maximum turnout and we'll share what we find. As a big fan of word clouds, I was pleased to see the inclusion of one in Lorraine's post - it really brings out the overall tone of users' feedback in an effective way.

Tabbloid #6 5-11-2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

Last weeks Tabbloid is on the lean side with just three entries but as always it proves that quality, not quantity, wins the day - If you are interested in the techie side of VuFind then the #vufindkeven 'Developer's View of VuFind' will be an illuminating read and certainly shows that even a good piece of software leaves plenty of room for improvement when being implemented. The #blathull team hit an important final milestone in their project last week and had a big aha/doh moment of enlightenment when they implemented a single, unified search index and their experience provides the programme with a useful cautionary tale for anyone else hoping to do the same - happily it sounds like they solved the mystery without too much head scratching :)

Last Thursday David Kay and I had a catch up meeting with Ben Showers and over a cup of hot ginger cordial we discussed the following:
- Now that a good number of the projects have submitted their final report blogposts we'll start drawing together and reporting back on any emerging themes. Those emerging themes will be posted on this blog and comments and input from the projects will be very welcome - particularly suggestions for any additional themes that you feel are key for us to include in our final report.
- In the next couple of weeks Ben will be inviting you all to complete a survey to tease out further questions that we can explore in our synthesis report and also give you the opportunity to give feedback on the JISC LMS project process (i.e. using blogs to report on your progress, and the Google code site etc).
- All projects are welcome to attend the strand events. The closest to confirmation is the OSS strand event which will take place on the 25 - 26 January in Edinburgh. The event is piggybacking on the Haggis & Mash Mashed Library event on the 25th January. The 25th will be a very much hands on event and the 26th will be a strategy-level event aimed at drawing senior library and information services staff into the discussion.

Tabbloid #5: 22 Oct 2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

This weeks round up of news from the JISC LMS blogosphere includes a couple of 'final project blogposts':
#ENCLAVE: http://enclave.lib.ed.ac.uk/?p=129
#AQUABROWSERUX: http://lorrainepaterson.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/aquabrowserux-final-project-post/

There's also a trio of thoughtful and thorough posts from the #COVPRIMO project sharing the outcomes of their usability testing.

My favourite post this week is the one from the #VUFINDKEVEN blog which shares what they found when they did a google search for their project name: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/vufindkeven/2010/10/21/goggling-at-keven-on-google/ It is heartening to know that their project impact has already spread beyond the borders of the JISC LMS programmes and been picked up by CILIP’s Multimedia Information Technology Group.

Perhaps for the remaining projects it might be worth taking a few minutes to set up Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) so that you can monitor what is being said about your project and join in the conversations as they are happening.

Tabbloid #4: 15 Oct 2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

One blogpost of note which just missed being included in the round up of news from last week was #YOCALCAT's final report blogpost which Helen Westmancoat valiantly managed to finish before heading off for a well-earned break. It will of course be included in next week's Tabbloid but here's a link just in case you can't wait: http://yocalcat.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/yocalcat-final-progress-post/

There are some really useful reccomendations and conclusions for other institutions who might go down the WorldCat Local route in the future. Some of those lessons will be equally useful for any project which involves change that impacts on the library e.g. "Ensure that all staff are involved with the processes whether on the acquisitions and cataloguing side or are involved in preparing material for induction."

Being relatively diminutive in terms of their size has clearly been a major challenge for York St John so it will be interesting to see how other larger libraries get on with adopting WorldCat Local in the future.

Growing Knowledge {British Library + JISC et al}

This 'Growing Knowledge' exhibition looks interesting - The main focus is on the role of digital technology for researchers who use the British Library but there are some interesting points about the changing expectations of researchers which I'm sure will resonate for those within academic libraries. If anyone gets the chance to visit the exhibition I'd be interested to find out whether any of the tools and gadgets they're exhibiting make it onto your library wishlist.

There are some more videos on the exhibition website: http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/ (not in an embeddable format alas).

There's a chance to see some of the tech on this Reuters video about the exhibition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A1hpXkMmvM [embedding has been disabled unfortunately]

If you haven't seen it already then it's also worth taking a look at the British Library's 2020 Vision which was crafted as the result of a year long consultation exercise: http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/2020vision/2020A3.pdf

100% Open Source - All Good?

The following observations (September 2010) from a large US university library with a strong commitment to open and community source may be of interest to jiscLMS colleagues …

We, and several other academic sites, tried to get Evergreen to run under RHEL (Red Hat Linux). We managed but it broke with every upgrade and we had concluded that we would have to pay for someone to modify the open source software to run under RHEL before we could put it into production.

We were considering Postgre but … we could not have run it without finding a support vendor. Think about it, if the RDBMS broke because of an operating system or other upgrade we don't have the programmers to go into the code, even if it is open source, to fix that so we could keep running. Since we have a campus license for Oracle it would not necessarily be cheaper for the library to run an open source RDBMS.

[Therefore] based on our preliminary evaluation of Evergreen, it was a problem for us that it was not developed under RHEL and Oracle. Practically speaking it may sound like a good approach to go with all "open source" software but it is not always. For mission critical systems you need to be sure the software is supported since you do not have programming staff to be writing security and other types of patches that are essential. This is not to say you absolutely can't use Postgre or MY SQL, but it does need investigation and justification to make the correct choice.

News from out there in the Solr system

The following news will be of interest to jiscLMS colleagues working with Blacklight or VuFind or with Solr in other contexts.

October 8, 2010 – Message to Code4Lib list from Joshua Greben, Systems Librarian/Analyst, Florida Center for Library Automation (jgreben@ufl.edu)

Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA), supporting the 11 State Universities of Florida, has switched search engines from Endeca to Solr. We went live with the Solr version of our locally developed discovery application (which we call Mango) in August. The motivation to switch to Solr was driven primarily by cost cutting efforts, not only to save the ongoing maintenance fees but additional fees that would have been incurred with increasing size of our data base, currently 11 million records.

We used Blacklight as a jumping off point for our implementation of Solr, changing it quite a bit to work with our existing Mango discovery application, and Mango required some modification to adapt the calls to the Solr search engine. Mango is a Tomcat application that also uses various APIs and data service layers to bring in outside content such as Google Book covers, journal article metadata, and real time ILS (Ex Libris Aleph) item availability.

We work closely with public and technical service librarians at the eleven State University Libraries in Florida to develop new features and services in Mango that make it a useful and informative service for our users. The State University Union Catalog can be found here with links to the eleven University Library catalogs: http://union.catalog.fcla.edu/

Tabbloid #3: 8 Oct 2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash

Last week's round up of JISC LMS blogposts was slim in terms of pages but weighty in terms of content. The stand out points for me were:

- The #VUFINDKEVEN team at Kent had to deal with an overloaded server which was caused by a "carelessly placed tome of Blackstone’s Statutes" which had been left on the OPAC terminal keyboard. Their tale of woe has inspired me to invent the 'Blackstone Principle' which is a sister of Murphy's Law and states that not everything that will go wrong can be anticipated or tested for.

- The #CULWIDGETS team proved once again that a picture can say a thousand words ... their Google Analytics graph shows that usage of their widget has taken off in a most pleasing manner now that the students are back on campus. They're hoping to get 2,000 unique users a month by Xmas so it will be interesting to see how the graph alters as each month passes.

- The #AQUABROWSERUX blog delivered another admirably thorough post - the focus of this one was on interview-based tasks vs pre-defined scavanger hunt tasks, the article argues that the interview-based task gives more valid results but that you sacrifice the opportunity for quantitative results ... in the past I've worked on projects which have successfully blended both approaches within a test session so I'd be interested in hearing other people's experience too.

- Both the #JANGLEFB and the #VUFINDKEVEN blogs gave their reflections on the Programme meeting which was held in Glasgow last month. It is encouraging that they both found the two day event useful for the realisation that other projects are facing the same challenges that they're facing. Hopefully this blog and the forthcoming thematic events will continue to provide that useful function.

Pondering the One Minute Pitches

I've been thinking about the 'One Minute Pitches' that each project was asked to complete following the Glasgow event. Given that I did a (short) Three Minute Pitch at the event it only seems fair that I give the One Minute Pitch a go too.

I felt that Cambridge Uni used imagery very effectively to explain their #CULWIDGETS project in Glasgow so I'm having a go at that approach too:



Just in case you need a hand with the visual metaphors, here's what I think we're aiming to do with our project synthesis liaison work:
- look at things from a different angle and share that view with the programme.
- adjust our lense so that sometimes we're picking up on detail and sometimes the whole picture.
- share any external messages which seem appropriate (however tangentially).
- and, at the risk of getting a bit deep, to 'look through a glass, darkly' across the programme strands and within each project to reveal the gems that you're all unearthing as your projects progress.

I am a big fan of Wordles as a method of getting to the heart of what is being said ... the wordle below was made by taking the text from all the One Minute Pitches that were featured in the Tabbloid in my last post:


It's possibly not an artefact that should be subjected to hours of academic scrutiny and analysis to distil its hidden depths but the things that stand out at first glance are interesting - I'm taking it as a good sign that 'students' feature so prominently, given the user centred nature of the programme

Tabbloid #1: 29 Sept 2010

As promised, here is the first Tabbloid which is made up of recent JISC LMS project blogposts. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that it was produced a couple of days ago ... there is a reason for that but it's not a very interesting story. There is a version with today's date but it only has two news items in it {say no more, best laid plans and all that}

The wonders of modern technology mean that I can embed the document here, so I will:

Open publication

The version with only two stories in it is also available to read or download from Issuu.com.

This is the first time I've seen a Tabbloid publication so I'd be interested in getting your feedback on how useful/readable it is. Ben Showers is looking at creating an email list so that this can be emailed to you hot off the digital presses every Friday. I'll also post it here for your perusal and as a virtual archive.

Coming Soon: the JISC LMS Red Top

In an effort to keep the JISC LMS projects as connected as possible, Ben Showers will be producing a Tabbloid 'magazine' which pulls together project blogposts, tweets etc into one easy to read document once a week.

The first issue is planned for the end of this week and will draw on the one minute pitch blogposts that you've been producing.

In other words, if you haven't already written your one minute pitch then the next few days might be a good time for you to get yours done :)

As soon as the Tabbloid round-up is off the presses we'll be posting a copy here. The plan is for an edition to be automatically produced once a week ... welcome to the future ;-)

Conversations for a very short lift journey

At the close of our recent JISC LMS Programme Meeting in Glasgow the projects were all set the task of writing a "One Minute Pitch" blogpost. The challenge set by Ben Showers was for them to head back to their project teams and craft a short blog post which sums up:
a) why their project is important;
b) what the main outputs of the project will be; and
c) why others outside of their project team/institution should be interested.

I thought it might be useful to pull together a list of one minute pitches ... gold stars to all those who've done theirs already :)
- #COVPRIMO: http://covprimo.blogspot.com/2010/09/covprimo-one-minute-blog.html
- #YOCALCAT: http://yocalcat.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/yocalcat-oclc-worldcat-local-outputs-one-minute-blog/
- #CULWIDGETS: http://culwidgets.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-minute-pitch.html
- #JANGLEFB: http://jiscjanus.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/one-minute-pitch/
- #CREDAUL: http://credaul.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/elevator-pitch/
- #ENCLAVELMS: http://enclave.lib.ed.ac.uk/?p=109
- #BFCESEARCH: http://www.blackpool.ac.uk/blog/en/one-minute-blog/280910
- #SWWHEPSRCH: http://swwhepsrch.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-and-what-is-swwhepsrch-brief-pitch.html

In addition to these one minute pitches, some projects have done post-event blogposts:
- #FINDMYLIBRARYBOOK: http://findmylibrarybook.blogspot.com/2010/09/jisclms-programme-meeting-7-8-september.html
- #CULWIDGETS: http://culwidgets.blogspot.com/2010/09/jisc-lms-meeting-in-glasgow.html

And some people (well a certain person) even managed to do a mid-event blogpost:
Dave Pattern's blogpost (inspired by Lynn Connaway's talk): http://www.daveyp.com/blog/archives/1428

If your project has written a one minute pitch which isn't listed above then please let me know by leaving a comment - I'll be adding more as I spot them.

I'm mindful that it's possible not everyone will be aware of this '1 min pitch' task due to early departures and whatnot ... just shout if you want to join in but need clarification :)

{Helen Harrop}

Our world re-mapped

Here is the jiscLMS world view (map, PCB, network?) taking account of feedback in Glasgow.

Please let me know if there are errors, omissions, etc.

Please also check out your institution's entry in the HE Library Technology wiki (great work Ken!). You know the story ... if it's wrong edit it.

It would also be excellent for the jiscLMS ERM strand if you would enter your ERM system details in the other helibtech table.

David

A map for Glasgow

Here is my attempt to map together the projects and the products involved in jiscLMS.

I imagine there will be errors and omissions, which we can correct as part of the meetings - but at least it's there to be shot down ;)

I'll explain the key early in the event!

We'll blog an 'synthesised' version after the event so everyone can comment further.

David

Looking forward (to Glasgow)

Hello again

Reading all those posts prompted a bunch of questions that we ought (I think) be addressing at the Glasgow programme event (and online so everyone can join in), whether in the background of other discussions or as topics in their own right.

1.

Reliability and sustainability – What’s biting you? Vendor code, scripts you’ve written, OS stuff you’re trying to use, integration, automation, back up, unidentified gremlins, other things? We’re looking for ‘industrial strength’ services not just pilots so we may need to be realistic about the prospects

2. Sources of knowledge – What works for your implementation? This programme is seeking to adopt an open source / community model but where does the key knowledge lie? Perhaps you are the UK expert, or someone in your tech team, a vendor, another jiscLMS project, an online community or forum?

3. Search – Do we need to worry? Many of you are deploying discovery services based on the catalogue and / or a wider world. You are therefore offering two services (or more). In the ‘old days’ we would have lost sleep over issues such as consistency of results (e.g. LMS v. Blacklight), differences in search strategy (What does simple search actually do?) and performance (initial results, record display). Are the differences significant? Do we care – and more important – do our users care?

4. Search – What about Google? For all our good work, improvement on the core LMS OPAC and user focus, are we any nearer making our search services more attractive than Google?

5. Extra Opportunities – To grasp or not to grasp? Most of you will have identified opportunities arising from the execution of your original plan (e.g implementation of a search service or a widget). Those opportunities may be changes to processes (we could / should now do ‘x’ differently in the library) or additional applications (we could integrate with reference management, Facebook, etc). Have got a list / what are you doing with it?

6. LMS ‘Families’ – on speaking terms? The LMS might not be the centre of our thinking anymore, but it is still an elephant in the room. Should we be speaking to the other projects using the same LMS? There may be tips to share or issues to escalate. I've started to draw a diagram to map the linages between projects in terms of LMS, search products, etc - hopefully I can improve on the photo above by Tuesday :)

Finally, here’s something to consider on the train or plane or pedaling the Brompton to Glasgow … and if you can’t join us why not blog this during the week …

Make a list of three things only (and ideally agree it with your team)

1. The best thing that has happened in your project
2. · The worst thing
3. · The most significant surprise out of ‘left field’ – good or bad

Have a good weekend - David

Looking back (at over 300 posts)

Hello everyone

I’m David Kay and I’m working with Helen Harrop, supporting JISC in the synthesis of the jiscLMS family of projects – and therefore, echoing Helen’s first post (and JFK), I guess I should say ‘Ich bin ein Synthesiser’.

As well as working with David Flanders and Ben Showers to plan the Glasgow event, I’ve just been looking back at over 300 posts for a dozen projects involving 15 institutions in the user interface and web areas (Strands 1 & 2) … so what are my impressions? I’ll go for a neat number, so here are five …

1) There is significant convergence (therefore potential synergies) across the UX and web strands, catalysed by the user requirements that are on everyone’s minds – predominantly making both the local collection and the wider mass of e-resources more coherently visible to users, especially undergraduates

2) There is encouraging enthusiasm amongst your teams and your trial users for the tools and applications that are central to this effort – we clearly have some good platforms on which to develop services and to share lessons learned

3) Both developing and exploiting open source is proving a worthwhile journey – though not everything is perfect out there in terms of documentation, support and the extra nuts and bolts needed for integration (no one expected that ;)

4) There are some very powerful vendor components that we’d be foolish to ignore – such as Aquabrowser and Worldcat – though I wouldn’t call them ‘solutions’ because they are part of a rich picture for the libraries deploying them

5) We should be sharing findings and issues and Glasgow next week not only within the programme strands (UX, Web, ERM, OS) but also – and perhaps most important – on crosscutting themes such as the underlying LMS (e.g. Millennium, Talis, Voyager), community-based support strategies (e.g. for Vufind) and user-focused ‘testing’ approaches

But ‘looking forward to Glasgow’ is my next post so enough for now …

David

live music, live systems and real live users

While I was standing in muddy, windswept fields in Wales and Yorkshire enjoying live music (and a pint of ale or two) the JISC LMS projects have been zooming forward at a rate of knots. Some of the significant events from the last week or so are:

- 26th August: York St John University carried out usability testing #yocalcat
- 27th August: York St John University went live with their local WorldCat implementation #yocalcat
- 27th August: The #AquaBrowserUX results of live user testing were published
- 30th August: Edinburgh published part two of their guide to creating user personas #AquaBrowserUX #ux2
- 31st August: Northumbria University's Summon instance (NORA Power Search) went live. #summon4hn
- 1st September: There has been a lot going on with the VuFind KEVEN project at Kent University and the new interface goes live on the library website tomorrow https://catalogue.kent.ac.uk/ #vufindkeven

And that's probably not everything! I'll post any other significant updates here as and when I spot them.

The AquaBrowserUX 'contextual inquiry' usability results made for very interesting reading:
- there's evidence to support my pet theory that users have a low awareness of library catalogue search 'brand' (in this case, AquaBrowser).
- the users wanted to start their search with a blank slate and went to unnecessary lengths to achieve this objective.

A blogpost on the #SWWHEP project blog about user feedback on their iFind advanced search has got me thinking about just how difficult it is to make search intuitive and simple as soon as you go beyond the 'one box fits all' Google-style search interface. I thought it might be useful to post links to a few of the other projects' advanced search pages to allow for easy comparing and contrasting:
- #SWWHEP iFind advanced search
- #YOCALCAT advanced search
- #SUMMON4HN Nora advanced search

It will be interesting to share usability tips between the projects and look at what the logfiles reveal about how often users actually use the advanced search feature vs the simple search.

As part of the synthesis role I'm carrying out Dave Flanders has given me a mandate to be slightly leftfield so I'm also going to share a couple of advanced search examples from outside of the #JISCLMS programme:
- International Children's Digital Library advanced search
- The Leeds Library advanced search (using Heritage LMS)

Initial observations and noticings {HH}

I've started the, ever so slightly daunting, task of looking through all the JISC LMS projects so that I can start synthesising with alacrity. I'm starting to get into the habit of logging everything I do on the project website change log and I'm tagging relevant web content on Delicious with a little note to remind myself why I thought it was worth tagging. If there's anything that I think is relevant to a specific project then I'll highlight it to them directly but I'll also try and remember to add those links to Delicious so that it builds into a useful source of information.

Here are the project websites that I've commented on so far:

• http://yocalcat.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/usability-update/#comment-8
• http://enclave.lib.ed.ac.uk/?p=94
• http://covprimo.blogspot.com/2010/07/naming-our-primo-installation.html
• http://lorrainepaterson.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/user-research-and-persona-creation-part-1-data-gathering-methods/

Some very early observations/possible themes I've identified for me to explore over the coming weeks:

• I'm wondering whether the short project descriptions for each project could be stripped back so that they would genuinely be understandable to someone without specialist LMS domain knowledge/an understanding of JISC. If projects can really get to the heart of what their projects mean for users then it will make it easier for them to talk to others about what they're aiming to do.
• There are some good tips for successfully engaging users in surveys and usability studies being captured in the project blogs - I'm interested in distilling some of those tips to share among the projects and the wider world.
• Where a project has some heavy lifting to do in terms of the review and analysis of usability data and additional cataloguing I'm wondering whether co-opting students in a 'citizen scientist' could help by providing the project with additional resources (at the same time as further increasing the engagement of students in the project and giving them a 'living' information literacy learning experience).

In response to a request from Owen Stephens I've been keeping a look out for any projects which are using or planning to use JUICE - I haven't spotted any yet so please let me know if your project is.

Je suis une synthesiser

Hello world, my name is Helen Harrop and I am a synthesiser. More accurately, I am carrying out the 'Synthesis Liaison' role on the JISC Library Management Systems (#jisclms) programme. I officially started this role two days ago so I'm currently in start up mode and feeling my way around the project website. To help me get my head around the role and the various strands of the programme I drew a diagram:



My role is shown by the chevroned hoop running around the outside. If I had more time and my artistic skills were up to the task then I'd probably have drawn it as a 3d model with lots of connected ribbons weaving to and fro between the strands. This will have to do for the moment but I might try and make something with plasticine and shoelaces at some point in the future. Suffice to say that my role is a kind of serendipity stimulator ... all will become clear in the fullness of time but, for now, this is just a quick post to say 'hello, I have arrived'.