2018-06-14 Strategic partners

Releases

• Beta release will be coming out on June 25 and will not include the request functionality due to a bug fix from Ex Libris
• Full release is still scheduled for August 6 and WILL include request functionality.

Question - Why is Blacklight better than Primo at known item searching?

• Primo is boosts the article index content more than the local collection
• We have more ability to configure boosting in Blacklight than we did in Primo
• Chad has been working closely with Brian B. and Leanne to refine this boosting even further. 

The website is being built in Ruby on Rails - just finished building a new website for the Press using the same framework.

Back-end data entry for each entity: for example: spaces. The back-end will have a list of spaces that can be edited. A space can also be linked to a person or a building. 

There will also be an approval process for content - not during the initial data entry phase, but once the site is up, any changes will go through an approval process. 

Current Work

• Groups of individuals are working on creating list of services for four broad categories
• This should be done by next week.
• Work will continue into July for creating the descriptions.
• For services that apply across multiple locations - there will be one name and description, but then multiple locations that provide the service. Each location will have its own contact information, etc.

Question - Is it normal to start at the back end of the website before knowing the information architecture?

• We are building a site that is not so much hierarchical as it is a collection of data that can be searched.
• There will be menus and navigation to browse, but it won't be a traditional site architecture.
• We know what we want on the website, but we don't know what it's going to look like yet

Some services might belong in more than one broad category. Example: course reserves - this could fall under Research and Instruction and under Access to Collections.

Took two websites that we like: Brigham Young University and Indiana University-Bloomington and Temple-fied them to get some ideas - no need to start from scratch. 

I want to do some activities to gather feedback over the next couple of months

Gabe is part of this group as part of his new role of Technology Projects Librarian. He will be working with Rachel to steer some of the redesign work.

Gabe and Rachel review the mock-ups to include more Temple-specific content - but right now we are talking about design and not content so much

it will be difficult to separate out content and design because they're so closely intertwined. How do we keep the user testing focused on design when people will also be looking at content? When we did the survey, "News and Events" was least important, but here they are placed prominently. What are the things that people are most likely going to want to do when they come to the website?

There's a lot to be learned from what our patrons want to do? What words do we put on the homepage that are meaningful to patrons? What do the patrons need to see?

On BYU page, it's egalitarian - all content is there. BYU uses color coded navigation, but every department is represented equally on the front page.

Comment about events: Event information is more a recommendation from library to the patron which could justify the real estate.

Are there stats for clicks on events on the main page and on the main university calendar page? 

We can look at the views and the referrers to see where people are coming from.

At BYU, if they didn't know where to put anything, they put it in "Services" and people seemed to be able to find it there.

Process feedback

• Question - How tied are we to do the text on the actual page? Can we change a label or terminology? - Yes, the text can be changed.
• Question - How will the description of the services going to work alongside with the higher level design of the homepage - can these be done individually? Will the type of service determine how we describe the service?

At Indiana - someone at some point decided what content deserves prominence on the front page. Whereas BYU has most of their content or links to their content on the front page.

BYU seems to be emphasizing collections. This is another decision area: should we put more emphasis on collections vs services or research guides, etc?

The two sites are very different structurally. It may be better to demo the site to individuals to demonstrate how the site works, instead of just showing a screen shot.

BYU has "Featured Services". Then they have services grouped by category and service area. These are just metadata tags that we can use to group the services in certain ways. 

One caveat with BYU is that they don't have more than one library. NYU has a nice way of showing the list of branch libraries. It's a standardized format for displaying each of the branch libraries. It will still link to the individual library's website if needed.

Staff feedback is important, but how staff interact with the website is radically different from how our users interact with the website. Staff input is helpful, but we have to be careful how we approach this. We can't always act on all of the input received. 

But we do need to have a transparent process for deciding what and where content will be posted on the website.