Usability testing

Approaching the two readings "Why We Are Not Google" from Swanson and Green, and "Website Redesign" from Tolliver et al., I was particularly interested in their conclusions because I view the website as being of primary importance in how patrons interact with the library in the twenty-first century.  In my personal experience, the self service model is how the majority of patrons would like to be able to go through life, be it at the grocery store or at the library.  Just as people need food, patrons need information.  It is quicker and easier to find and select both on one's own without the help of specialists, and indeed at both the grocery and library it is often now possible to "check out" without an employee, making the whole experience completely independent.

That being said, the information that one might get on one's own in the library is much dependent on how intuitive the technologies are that enable resource finding and consumption.  This is where website usability comes in.  Do patrons know enough or can learn enough on the fly to successfully make the best possible use of library resources?  Let's see what the two papers in question say.

First off, I like that the testers in the Tolliver article have multiple steps to their testing that each produce different concrete results that can be sorted and analyzed.  The specificity of issues found with the website was intriguing as well.  The trouble some patrons had because “borrowing materials” didn’t suggest checking out books, and looking for “my account” when the wording on the page was in fact “your account”.  It may sound trite, but in my own personal experience it is precisely these types of little things that add up to usability.  I was, however, surprised that they used student assistants and employees of the library, rather than actual student patrons that had no other connection to the library.  Surely they should have included that, their largest patron base.  The article also did not emphasize much where to go from there, once they had their website’s usability analyzed.  There was scant info on how to go about acting upon the information found, though I recognize that perhaps that would be a totally different study and article in and of itself.  

The Swanson et al. article was particularly apt, especially considering that I had just used a relatively new google-esque search box on the front page of Catholic University’s library website to find the article itself.  Two things immediately came to my mind upon finishing the article.  First, that obviously serious academic research is a discipline that necessitates at the very least some training to be able to make use of the many information finding resources that are available on a library webpage.  Second, that having the option of a well-placed federated search box on the homepage, as well as the links to the various databases, OPAC, and finding aids would probably be the best decision.  Why must it be one or the other?  Serious researchers who plan to dive straight into the databases don’t like having to delve through multiple pages of the library website in order to get started, and the casual patron can start with the search box.  However, there is the risk with that option that some that are less educated in the options available to them might believe that their search was futile and not realize there is another way.  I would make sure to have alerts and options clearly present to enable the patron to switch research modes at any time. 

I do agree with their ultimate conclusion that the academic library website and search is not, and should not be Google.  The nature of academic research lends itself to being so much more than that.  But that is not to say that there could be an option there to use a federated search, just in case they are attempting to find something specific, just as I was when I needed to look up two articles for class.  Quite literally, in my case, the success I had in being able to find my ends quickly justified the less scholarly means I took to get there.