Speaker: Eddie Neuwirth, ProQuest
Linking is one of the top complaints of library users, and we’re relying on old tools to do it (OpenURL). The link resolver menu is not a familiar thing for our users, and many of them don’t know what to do with it. 30% of users fail to click the appropriate link in the menu (study from 2011).
ProQuest tried to improve the 360 Link resolver. They focused on improving the reliability and the usability. They used something called index enhanced direct linking in Summon (basically publisher data) that bypasses the OpenURL link resolvers from 370 providers. These links are more intuitive and stable than OpenURL. This is great for Summon, with about 60% of links being IEDL, but discovery happens everywhere.
They also created a new sidebar helper frame to replace the old menu. The OpenURL will take them to the best option, but then the frame offers a clean view of other options and can be collapsed if not needed by the user. It also has the library branding, so that the user is able to connect that their access to the content is from the library, rather than just that Google is awesome.
Speaker: Jesse Koennecke, Cornell University
They are focusing on the delivery of content as well as the discovery. Brief demo of their side-by-side catalog and discovery search due to nifty API calls (bento box). Another demo of the sidebar helper frame from before, including the built-in problem report form.
Speaker: Jacquie Samples, Duke University
Does the website design for the Duke Libraries. They’ve done a lot of usability testing. The new website went out in summer of 2014, and after that, they decided to look at their other services like the link resolver. They came up with some custom designs for those screens, and ended up beta testing the new sidebar instead. They have a bento box results page, too.
The FRBR user tasks matter and should be applied to discovery and access, too: find, identify, select, and obtain. We’re talking about obtaining here.
Thanks, Anna — I love how this post links off to another post from 2004 introducing the concept of getting library links into Google Scholar and this newish thing called Firefox. Sort of goes to the point that we haven’t been innovating much around linking for the last decade or so.