I am beginning to think about this year’s usability testing, which will again be aimed at the use of subject guides. We last tested the use of subject guides in 2007. I’m looking for people who would be interested in working with me on this. If you might be one of those people, please read on.

Last time we tested to see if students were actually finding and using the subject guides, as well as what they did once they found them. This year I think our aim should be to start from the guides themselves, to see if and how students are using them for their course work, and how they react to changes made to the guides with the conversion to LibGuides.

To achieve this I think we need to see students working in their own subject area. Therefore we might need to allow a bit of flexibility in what we ask the students to do, so that it matches the resources on their subject guide. I’m thinking along the lines of:
1) Try to get students from various disciplines. Find out ahead of time, what courses they are doing, and what recent assignments they’ve done, then create a series of tasks based on a particular subject guide that matches their course work.
2) Have a series of questions that test specific things eg finding journal articles, but within the context of each specific guide. For this I need help from people actually working with the students and subject guides.
3)Get them to explore the guide as well, and comment on what they are seeing, and how they might use some of the features.

We are thinking that we may be able to test more students than usual, particularly so that we can have a separate series of tests that focus on one of the more heavily used guides and its use by a group of students. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who would like to work with me more closely on this. We will probably only be able to focus on one guide, so may have to make a choice if more than one is suggested.

Testing would probably be done in mid to late September. I’m going to be on leave for 2 weeks from next week, but please email me if you are interested in being involved, and I’ll get back to you either this week, or in late August.

Catherine

Just tested JSTOR again and it seems to be back. 4.09pm

We seem unable to connect to the JSTOR database at present (3.45 Tuesday 5 May). There is no-one in collections right at the moment who can make enquiries about it, or add anything to the record to show that we have a problem. I will email collections to ask for them to check it tomorrow morning and follow up with JSTOR if it is still not working tomorrow.

Catherine Jane

On our main databases page we have a heading Databases Quick Links in the right nav bar.

I have had a request to remove TopoMap from this list and add Google Scholar. I’ve also been asked to add Google Scholar to the list of databases in the G alphabetical list. I seem to remember that when Google Scholar first came out there was some (heated) discussion about whether it was a kosher database, which is probably why it’s not there already.

I think that all librarians should have a chance to comment about these two suggestions, so here’s your opportunity. Please add a comment to say whether you agree with either or both of these suggestions.

If I don’t get any comments by the beginning of next week, I’ll assume everyone agrees and will action both suggestions.

Catherine

Just a reminder that all published and linked subject guides on libguides will have what they call a “Friendly url”, which should be used when referring by url to all libguide homepages. This friendly url consists of our base libguides url – http://canterbury.libguides.com/ followed by the the course code letters eg http://canterbury.libguides.com/educ. This should be easy for users to remember and relatively easy to deduce what the url of another subject guide would be.

Where there isn’t an obvious course code, or there could be more than one course code used we’ve tried to assign intuitive “friendly urls” eg http://canterbury.libguides.com/esol.

Unfortunately these only seem to work for the homepage – any other tabs require the use of the more complex url in the format http://canterbury.libguides.com/content.php?pid=[number]&sid=[number].

Please be aware that published subject guides will always have the string “content.php” in the url and not aecontent.php which is the url of the author’s edit screen. You should never give out a url containing the string “aecontent.php”. Conversely, if the guide isn’t published, a url containing “content.php” will return an error message to the user.

If you’ve got any questions about the url to use, please contact Library IT.

Catherine

Library IT is getting a number of enquiries about images that don’t look right on libguides, and also finding examples of other images that could potentially cause webgate or other problems when the page is downloaded.

Images on the web can be tricky, so if you are in the least bit unsure about using an image on a libguides page please contact Library IT and ask for help before you put an image up.

Just a few of the many things that need to considered with images on the web and in libguides:
1) You can’t just copy and paste an image into a libguides edit screen. We are seeing examples of where it looks like this has been attempted, and while nothing displays, there is funny code that needs to be tidied up. Talk to Library IT is you need some training on how to put images in libguides.

2) You shouldn’t just take a photo and upload it. Chances are the photo will be much too big, both in terms of width and height (I’ve seen images that are more than 2000px wide being uploaded to fit into an allowed space of 130px) and also file size. If the pixel size is too big and is forced into a smaller space it will look distorted, as well as taking longer to load the page, and a file that is too big will drastically slow down the page load.

3) You need to consider what format your image should be – eg jpg or gif. If you choose the wrong type, your image will also be distorted.

Library IT is reconsidering how Library staff manage images – we are considering offering some training and finding some simple software that will allow more staff to manipulate and use images. So hopefully this may become easier in the future.

Catherine

The Library’s hours page has just been updated to a new dynamic version that is pulling the information from hours information on Horizon.

Please let me know if you encounter any problems using this page, or if anything on it doesn’t work properly.

Catherine Jane

We are finding that LibGuides works better when you are editing pages in LibGuides, for a number of reasons.

It works a lot better when you are copying content from existing web pages and copying them into LibGuides. If you copy content displayed in IE, when you paste it in to LibGuides, links to other Library websites may not work. However they do seem to work if you copy the content from the page displayed in Firefox.

Firefox also seems to cope with caching better than IE, so you actually see your changes more quickly.

Catherine Jane

Each summer we review the Library’s home page, and underlying structure of the web site, to see if there are any outstanding issues and/or to see if it could be improved in any way.

After our major overhaul last summer, and after comparing the site recently to the recommendations in a recent article in College and Research Libraries (1) it is my opinion that the home page has functioned very well this year, and doesn’t need a lot of change. One change I would like to suggest is to add Reserve/Restricted Loans Items to the drop down “How do I find” box.

However, I am very interested to hear from the rest of Library staff how they have found the new home page this year, how it works for staff and users on the public desks, and any suggestions for changes or improvements.

I look forward to your comments. If it becomes apparent that there is a need for an overhaul of any sort, I’ll set up some formal meetings.

Catherine Jane

1)Author(s): Duncan, J (Duncan, Jennifer); Holliday, W (Holliday, Wendy)
Title: The role of information architecture in designing a third-generation library Web site
Source: COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES, 69 (4): 301-318 JUL 2008

Note: – I’ve since found out that we can change this via the Admin menu. Contact Library IT if you need help to change an owner.

A word of warning when you are working on LibGuide pages with another person, or for another person.

Make sure that you are logged in as the owner of the guide when you create new pages. If you are logged in as a different person, you may end up with the wrong profile on the page, and we can’t change that here – we have to ask SpringShare to do it for us. See “Selecting a different librarian’s profile” on their support forum.

This happened when Patricia and I were working on a page together. We were logged in with the Library IT login, when we created a couple of new pages. These pages now have the Library IT profile instead of Patricia’s. I’ve had to email SpringShare to ask them to change this. I have also asked if the ability to change this could be added to the admin profile.

If this happens to you, it might be helpful to ask Library IT to help you identify exactly what you need to send to SpringShare to ask them to make the change.

Catherine

The way Library news on Camelot is created and displayed has been changed today – 25 September 2008.

As was discussed in earlier postings, any staff news will now be entered into Counterculture, and the Camelot home page will display the latest postings on Counterculture. New categories have been added to Counterculture for the type of news that used to go on Camelot – see Guidelines for Camelot News on Counterculture.

The links to putting news up on Camelot using the old form have been removed and replaced with links to Counterculture. Note that there are differences in creating news items on Counterculture as compared to the way they were created on Camelot, so if you haven’t created a posting on Counterculture before, you will need to follow the instructions on how to do so. There is a link to these instructions on Camelot pages. If you have any problems, or would like some help, contact Library IT.

The display of news item headlines on lower level pages of Camelot has been removed, and replaced with a link to Counterculture and to the Counterculture rss. This is to encourage people to use Counterculture.