Initial questions and concerns for the meeting

UT4

• Should we be testing now?
• Is the finding aid page “stable”?
• What’s on the development page that TEM is not testing with the current live view? Namely, what changes are there that we asked for after UT3 and how might they impact the test or need to be included as questions in the test.

Search problems

EA: Will there be better, more usable instructions on searching? Because she noticed that the best searching instructions (like Boolean explanations) are missing and more generic searching appeared in their place.

Finding aid display problems/questions

EA: as a reference person: is it only our finding aids that don’t have the collection number that isn’t displayed prominently or is it all of them. UTWG decided to reorder it. Ellie: we are increasingly getting people requesting the box/folder, but not collection number, not being aware of what they are looking for. They find contact information, but not the collection number. People are coming to Ellie by email and coming in with a printout.

UT5: the next test is a searching test

• We want to look at search statements: better explanation on the search page of how you do different kinds of searches, people are used to Googling everything and this does not work the same way, so you get very different results. If you use the simple search screen on the homepage you aren’t going to get any reliable results unless you use/know about Boolean investigation. It was suggested that this was especially important for users like genealogists.  
• Question: what might this test look like and how would we design it?
• Focus on this general theme: if you put in this search statement, what do you get? Or, was that what you wanted/expected?
• Additional focus: ask users: how would you search the sites and find the instructions for how to search the site?
• Focus on the search in our webpage itself: from main page and from finding aid page. Give them some constructed searches and allow them to explore their own topics.

Additional assistance, educational tools, tutorials for users

• When you get the help feature it no longer has any listing of what terms work and don’t, no explanation in the help section for how to search.  

• What kind of education tools do we want?

** ACTION: Do test after the first of the year: end of Jan/ beg of Feb

** ACTION: Megan can ask and host the test at OHS—no IRB approval needed.

Further discussion about searching

• These are lingering questions from UT2: asked questions @ searchability then, found that users have the same search expectations for NWDA as they do for using Google, expect that it would function like that. But the reality was that the NWDA search was completely different from what you have in Google. The recommendation was that NWDA site uses search logic that people expect. If this is actually still an outstanding issue and it hasn’t been implemented, we can recommend it again without testing bring up to Al.
• We wanted it to work like Google, using phrasing and not searching: Anne Frantilla had several collections that had scrapbook collections for city life. She and Tony did searches for scrapbook city life and wanted to make the order irrelevant so that it would be a true keyword search. In other words, so you would get the same results regardless of the order of the terms.

** ACTION: this isn’t working, it is still outstanding from UT2. (Look on the tools for members site, the reports are still there.) Let’s check it out and make recommendation.

Other things to test/ consider for usability

• Browser operability: difference between using I.E. or Firefox: should we survey project directors? Differences may be minor to researchers and more major to us: question is does it work or not work? Does it block the functionality of the site?

** ACTION: the five of us can do testing within our group, and then TEM can email project directors with our findings and asking them what they’ve found. Bundle this into a timeline as well as add it to the other things we’d like to result.

** ACTION: find out what the protocol is for sharing/consulting with Al about the projects that we are working on and what the timeline is. Where is that centralized list?

** ACTION: find out if there is a Mozilla site that will check operability.

** DEADLINE: November 20: testing of the search functionality/performance like Google and browser operability (are there differences between the display base don browser, is it getting in the way of people actually using our site: functionality, or is it something they can live with). Then email it to project directors and have them return it to us by December 14^th.

Repository survey: who is our researcher audience? (JAB)

• It has been a long time since we have done this in the consortium and there are new members.
• Need to look at who our users are and who do we want our target audience to be?
• IMLS Planning grant initiative: show who our user group is for targeting our digital initiative. March deadline for the grant.
• What will the survey look like? Predefine categories of users for repositories, keep it simple (3-4 questions). Make them distinguish between their main user group and their main NWDA user group is.
• Ask what are the current/main user groups, who is not being represented, and who would people like to see represented better.
• Proposed questions:

1.      Identify the institution type

2.      Who are you primary user groups? Ranked?

3.      Place a priority on those you want to serve with this digital medium.

4.      Pick from a list/specific in a text box what types of online content these users are interested in using, what do they want to do beyond finding aids?

** ORDER of ACTIONS

1. Survey of repositories
2. Survey of users: poll the users themselves, no matter how they reach the site (directly through internet search engine, main search page). Ellie gave out survey and hasn’t gotten responses.
3. Web Analytics/metrics for stats

** ACTION: our deadline for recommendations is December.

** ACTION: Send link for U Mich survey: for survey of users to our site.