Notes 9/21/07 Meeting

Present:

Tiah Edmunson-Morton

Megan Friedel

Laura Zeigen

Tony Kurtz

The group

• TEM appointed chair.
• What do we want to know?
• How can we make this the culmination of all the tests?
• Where are we going? Do we have a firm idea of what the NWDA and Orbis want from us, our group, our testing, the site, etc.: Discussion of how the new group is different: we will be more heavily involved in making the changes that are recommended, get the results implemented. We can revise the tools/ content pages (ie tools for members, tutorials).
• What has happened/ what are the current issues? Problems now with search feature: search from main site, then search from finding aid page, all your terms are highlighted.
• What was recommended from UT2-3, but not implemented? Revisit recommendations from UT3 that were determined to not be stylesheet issues.

Testing

• Who are we going to test? Possible to get regional, national, international users? Contact history/geneological societies, international history students, international faculty. K-12. Public librarians. Multiple types of repositories.
• How can we use real researchers? Learn their topics and design the search around them. How do we contact them/ not test the same user base: travel to do tests with real researchers, testing their real searches, make them more meaningful.
• What could the test look like? Navigate through the homepage/search finding aid, 1-2 constructed searches. Then navigate them through a search engine search and drop into the finding aid, 1-2 constructed searches. Then allow them to do their own search.
• General timeline: how many tests/year, what is the timing? Sept 07- Sept 08. We can do the tests at the same time, maybe different kinds.

      Functionality testing

      Theoretical testing

      External site search

• Specifics:
  • Test finding aids with new version of the finding aid stylesheet-- using same test. For example, consider what is a good default view for the finding aid now that it can be collapsed/expanded-- usability of the initial view. Difference between browser views (move from IE). Regive the last test to make sure it actually worked to make those changes. IRB ammendment?
  • Test search functionality: search from main site, then search from finding aid page, all your terms are highlighted. How do users search our finding aids. For example, do we want to do truncated searching or phrase searching, how would we test that?
  • Free-form search from external
  • Test the new web design: see if it works for people

     

Actions

• TEM: email NWDA survey, UT3 results, link to PB wiki site, add notes to PB Wiki site.
• Is there a required approval from/to Orbis, do we need to include the larger body?
• Ask Jodi about other groups & their timing, does a web design group still exist? Should I be on that?
• Ask Jodi: when you are in a finding aid, in the subject section, is it possible to have the general subjects linked to bring up all other related collections? Is there a policy that would restrict this? Is it technically possible to do this? Is this a functionality that is relatively easy to implement?
• How quickly can we put a survey on the site to get direct user feedback (not just those who have visited/contact repositories)?