Author: Cynthia Ng

Revised Articles Section & New Landing Page: Using a Card Sort to Clean Up

As part of the ongoing effort to improve the website, I have been redesigning the website one section at a time. Earlier in the term, I did the Research Help section. In the last couple of weeks (that’s right, only about 2-3 weeks!), I worked on getting the ‘Articles’ section cleaned up with a new landing page.

old articles page
Old Articles Landing Page

Card Sort to Clean Up

old articles menuI knew that I wouldn’t have time to do a proper card sort study, but I decided to do a card sort with the web committee. We have enough people that I divided the committee up into two groups and gave them sticky notes with the names of the existing pages.

The sticky notes consistent all the local navigation links from the left side of the existing page and the second level links you see in the expanded part of the ‘More’ menu here (right). Then, I gave the usual instructions for a silent open card sort (no talking, group as you see fit).

While the purpose of a card sort is not to help clean up a section, it really got staff to see what fit in the Articles section and what didn’t. A lot of the pages were also deemed no longer relevant.

As a group, we made decisions on what to remove, and what to move and where. Quite a lot of the content was moved to either our subject research guides or our FAQ system.

There were one or two pages that we couldn’t decide what to do with, so for the time being they’ve been left where they are for now (e.g. RefWorks page is still in the ‘Articles’ menu though not linked on the landing page).

Mockups

With the pages that were left, I created a few mockups.

The web committee met again to discuss the mockups. I already had my heart set on either #2 or #3, because the whole idea is that it’s simple and clear. Having only one search bar with just a few links give users focus on what they’re looking for. Different people had different preferences on mockups, but with some discussion, the group settled on mockup #3 with a few revisions.

Staff Feedback

As with the research help page, I posted the revised Articles mockup in the staff room to give everyone a chance to provide feedback. This time, I didn’t get any feedback that resulted in any changes, so the final page is the same as the revised version.

New Page

Even though I’m on vacation, I wanted to get the new page up before the next term, so the new ‘Articles’ landing page went up this week.

new articles page

code4libTO December Meetup Talks

BagIt Profiles – @ruebot

  • directory of data
  • bag has what you’re bagging, data, contact email/name, organization information, profile identifier (JSON via a URI)
  • pull in all the field values
  • validate
  • wrote a spec and send it to digital curation community
  • can look up profiles in the registry

Okay, I got a little lost, but you can see more on github.

Internet Archive Torrent Collections (iaTorrent) – @ruebot

Bookfinder – @TheRealArty & Steven

  • I will write this up later probably as a separate blog post, or maybe journal article

TPL’s Web Services Architecture: Understanding the Big Picture – @waharnum

  • many different systems that don’t easily communicate, which needs specialized knowledge even to do basic tasks
  • address the challenges by translation, simplication, standardization
  • Three tiers: Front End Systems (requests to back end) / TPL Web Services (REST) / Back End Systems (responds to front end)
  • Example: TPL Website -> Account Web Services -> Symphony Web Services (Symphony) – and back
  • can add new features and functions
  • helps to solve the challenges mentioned
  • also helps with reusability e.g. in addition to website, build mobile-friendly website, iPhone App
  • Might end up with:
    • Front End (Website, mobile, App)
    • Middle Tier (Account Web Services, ebook Web Services, online payment web services)
    • Back End (symphony, overdrive, payment gateway, accounting systems)
  • other benefits:
    • increase ease of knowledge transfer about how our systems work
    • follow modern best practice approach to building interoperating systems
    • reduce cost and integration time
  • reduce learning time for new staff or consultants
  • metrics: wish had resources
  • bolting together a lot of things, not using a lot of custom code

Ladder (aka MyTPL 2) – @mjsuhonos

  • wanted to solve problem: discovery layers suck
  • problems:
    • not scalable
    • inflexible
    • read-only
    • expensive
  • goals:
    • better than open source options (VuFind, Blacklight)
    • cheaper (than proprietary)
  • scalable as WorldCat
  • design:
    • schema-free/multi-schema (e.g. Dublin Core)
    • horizontally scalable (multi-node)
    • modern OSS components
  • simple data model (RDF)
  • Features:
    • hierarchical relations
    • clustering/de-duplication
    • versioning
    • real-time import & indexing
    • multi-thread/process
    • responsive UI
    • fully multilingual (18/10)
    • dynamic faceting
    • dynamic mapping modification
    • digital content storage (coming soon)
  • built on a linked data
  • not a discovery layer; it’s an integration platform

Heritage U of T – @ajmcalorum

  • News Announcement and Promotional Video
  • previously not centralized: hard drives, flickr, etc.
  • need central repository for tri-campus initiative with search & discovery, preservation, long-term access to content and metadata, support for multiple formats (e.g. images, books, documents, video, exhibits)
  • Drupal + Solr (search) + Fedora Commons (collection management, batch ingesting, metadata crosswalk, digital preservation) == islandora (digital asset management system)
  • pilot: 8 parent collections (by format, by campus)
  • exhibits in Drupal, not through islandora/fedora commons
  • modules: internet archive book reader (OCR on the fly), galleria, colorbox
  • official launch: 2 weeks ago

That’s it! Food and drinks time!

Notes on Building the Information Literate University

Bill Johnston & Sheila Webber

Information Literacy

It’s big and complex. A lot has been done and researched, but not put together.

The information literate person is an information culture needs a broader, more creative and critical information and media education, not only to enjoy the economic benefits of digitally based infrastructures, but to fully engage either the social, political, and creative dimension of the developing information culture of the 21st century.

Hoping to lead to wise and ethical use of information.

Information Literacy as Discipline

  • professional associations and journals
  • international community
  • academic departments
  • graduate students
  • id with the discipline
  • distinctive language
  • knowledge and research base

Continuing to use the term, because it’s used at the international level. In essence, doesn’t really matter what term we use if we can connect the different areas. Partly, because there is no real alternative term. What you need to keep in mind is that the meaning may change depending on the context (work, subject, country), and users will express different needs.

Information Literate University

This includes graduates, academic peers elsewhere and wider society, but more specifically include:

  • Info Literate Curriculum (in curriculum, as discipline)
  • Info Literate students
  • Info Literate Research
  • Info Literate staff & managers
  • Staff development for IL
  • Management for IL (strategy, policy, resourcing, infrastructure, knowledge & research)

To move towards such a university, need to think about what forces can bring about this change, including:

  • whole course redesign
  • strategy for education (in institutional plan)
  • specific student learning environments
  • theoretically informed case studies

Institutional Strategies

A chance for opportunity spotting. For example, cross disciplinary research, and cross organization research. Another example is engaging students through thinking about how to integrate learning instead of just one off workshops, and using tools to enrich learning. Information literacy might be the discipline of the librarians (as faculty). Zones of action might include workshop model of educational development for librarians with subject/university focus with themes of assessment and online learning objects.

Mainstreaming IL

Many ways to to engaging academic staff.

  • pre-empt negativity
  • identify downside of not shifting
  • identify lecturers who have refixed the rate (combining staff time, etc.; transmissive vs. constructivist)
  • develop scenarios for refixing the rate

Teaching-Learning Environment

Student spending more time engaged in:

  • acitivites designed for deep processing of info
  • developing knowledge of reliable sources
  • etc.

Need to think about:

  • specific pedagogic approach

    • a

  • infrastructure such as classroom setups
  • e-learning: process of; focus on approach, not learning objects

Conclusions

  • Think BIG
  • Associate IL eith global themes, educational achievement, and institutional success
  • teach, learn, research, and communicate through IL
  • Challenge doubters and convince supporters

Workshop Notes

In the afternoon, we worked in groups to come up with different strategies to mainstream information literacy.

Aims and Strategies

  • Research a core group at every level and convince faculty of the value
  • Have students understand that the information they are looking for is available at the library
  • Education of the faculty
  • Building relationships with faculty
    • sharing successful stories and strategies
    • become more embedded: courses, research
    • building enough of a relationship to do a course redesign
  • maintain face to face contact
  • ensure programmatically implemented
  • testing critical student thinking
  • e-textbooks
  • audit course outlines and develop IL arguments or zones of intervention, then include statement
  • IL becoming component of the institutional teaching methodologies, sneaking it in
  • subject related divisions within OCUL which don’t exist
  • student survey on student info seeking and help behaviour
  • co-teaching

Key Levers

  • new strategic plan and new administration
  • related committees in teaching, curriculum, and info literacy
  • dealing with funding changes due to university specialization declarations
  • collaborations cross-university
  • integration of tutorials, tools, and services into environment e.g. Course Management Systems
  • making use of existing communications and marketing avenues e.g. Taking advantage of assessment to get support from upper administration
  • AACSB (accreditation)
  • program/course proposals
  • program review
  • online courses/e-learning
  • copyright
  • faculty meetings
  • conferences

Partners

  • faculty liaisons and subject experts
  • library “champions”
  • other university departments e.g. Writing centre
  • librarians at other universities
  • Student services
  • Academic support
  • Teaching co
  • quality assurance framework
  • OCUL

Connecting It All

The key points to be taken forward.
Sustaining

  • Teaching chairs (R)
  • Teaching & Learning commons (Y)

Growing

  • growing learning commons to include topics of academic integrity
  • building on tri-mentoring to find out what info literacy skills employers are looking for (R)
  • meta-level points for engaging faculty in importance of IL e.g. Info society, ethical issues
  • getting upper admin buy-in and budget
  • opportunities for embedding and assessment

Initiating

  • R-Y partnership to talk about success & challenges specific to subject areas building on informal network
  • writing IL modules for courses that can be collaborative and shared
  • syllabus audit looking for IL opportunities
  • IL committee

Partnering

  • college (workshops, drop-in)
  • career centre
  • learning skills
  • tri-mentoring
  • other librarians in same subject
  • accreditation bodies: building on industry expectations
  • within the university: faculty liaisons

Developing library staff

  • more intensive opportunity to discuss these issues with outcomes of program documents or policies, etc. beyond just a one day workshop
  • retreat
  • instruction peer assessment
  • communication: key messages & how to convey them
  • time and training for IL
  • reexamine what IL should or can look like

Steve Krug: You’re NOT Doing Usability Testing? Are You Nuts?

The University of Toronto iSchool was lucky enough to get Steve Krug of Don’t Make Me Think fame. If you haven’t read it and you’re at all interested in usability, I would definitely recommend it. Anyway, here are my notes from today’s talk.

Goal

Convince you that usability testing is the most valuable thing you can do to ensure that what you’re building works.

12 Years Ago – The Debate

Realized seeing the same story over and over again. He first started by turning it into a comic. Basically the same debates happened over and over, frequently without decisions being made. It’s difficult to find a middle ground, because each person comes with their own perspective. Partly, there’s no hard and fast answer, because it depends on the context.

Usability testing eliminated most debates. Seeing users use what they designed changed their perspective and start talking from the user perspective rather than personal biases.

Keeping It Simple

Traditionally, usability is done in a lab with the minimum 8 users in a day by an outsider, ending in an expensive report which may not be convincing to the team.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy written more for people intending to actually do usability testing.

Just do it with:

  • 3 users per round
  • set up a monitor in another room to watch
  • record screencast
  • no stats, no faux validity, but produces meaningful insight
  • no big report, just debrief over lunch, report in 1-2 page email

Live Demo

Use script, which can be downloaded from Krug’s website. Instead of a website, he did a live demo on the Clear mobile app. Interestingly, the participant could not complete the task, which was interesting since the app is highly praised.

RSME: The 22-minute version

6 Maxims

  • A morning a month is all we ask.
  • Start earlier than you think makes sense. – Can start before you start by testing a competitor’s or old version, or even a sketch on a napkin.
  • Recruit loosely and grade on a curve. – Take just about anyone, and judge whether everyone would have that problem or if it’s just because not from target audience.
  • Make it a spectator sport.
  • Focus ruthlessly on the few, most serious problems. – Right away write down the top 3 problems to take into debrief.
  • When fixing problems, always do the least you can do. – The smallest change might do to solve or help mitigate the problem. Tweak, don’t redesign.

Q&A

  • James Chudley CX Partners wrote on the approach to doing mobile app testing that needs context.
  • Tools for Remote Testing – Goto Meeting, WebEx and need high quality audio
  • Analytics good to help know what to test
  • Do usability more frequently rather than testing a lot of people, because you quickly hit diminishing returns
  • Task specification – allow user to have the choices of content