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

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.