“star topper” by LMU Library
used on a Creative Commons
BY-NC-SA license
(Photos of tree construction.)

M-libraries (libraries on mobile devices
Library on the Go (pdf) “explores student use of the mobile Web in general and expectations for an academic library’s mobile Web site in particular through focus groups with students at Kent State University. Participants expressed more interest in using their mobile Web device to interact with library resources and services than anticipated. Results showed an interest in using research databases, the library catalog, and reference services on the mobile Web as well as contacting and being contacted by the library using text messaging.”

library/mobile: Tips on Designing and Developing Mobile Web Sites shares “Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries’ experience creating a mobile Web presence and will provide key design and development strategies for building mobile Web sites”.

Usability
Infomaki: An Open Source, Lightweight Usability Testing Tool describes a tool developed by New York Public Library to spread the usability testing load among visitors to their website – visitors are asked if they want to answer a single question; if not, they’re not bothered again; if they do answer it they’re given the option to answer another one. Because it’s not asking much of an investment in time a lot of people will do it, and then because it’s so easy a lot will answer more than one: “In just over seven months of use, it has fielded over 100,000 responses from over 10,000 respondents.”

University of Michigan has made available two reports about the usability of their LibGuides.

Search interfaces
Google Labs is trialling Image Swirl which adds an “images related to this one” functionality to their image search in a lovely visual way.

Merry Christmas!

Deborah