10 things we didn’t know about how students use EDS Adele Robinson, Janine Bhandol. Alan Wheeler, Alan Bullimore Academic Liaison Librarians, University of Bedfordshire

Usability Testing of EDS Why did we do it? How did we do it? Practicalities We wanted to find out how students used EDS when we weren’t there. Students were asked to complete a pre-set exercise consisting of 8 questions and were offered £10 print credit for taking part.

Some of these were more surprising than others if we are quite honest… Findings…. Some of these were more surprising than others if we are quite honest…

Students took longer to search than we thought they would…. The Ten things….. Number 10 Students took longer to search than we thought they would….

The most popular browser was Firefox The Ten things….. Number 9 The most popular browser was Firefox

The Ten things….. Number 8 Students use a whole variety of routes to find the DISCOVER (EDS) Search Box

The number of questions answered correctly was variable The Ten things….. Number 7 The number of questions answered correctly was variable

The Ten things….. Number 6 Students had problems with navigation features (missed new search instruction, date-slider, facets etc)

The Ten things….. Number 5 Students may not understand citations and how to extract the best words for searching (confusion about journal title and article title, entering place of publication as part of a book search)

The Ten things….. Number 4 Searches include lots of typing errors. Predictive results and suggestions were not used a great deal

The Ten things….. Number 3 Students could generally find the full-text link where it was available

There was confusion about formats (eg between print and e-book) The Ten things….. Number 2 There was confusion about formats (eg between print and e-book)

The Ten things….. Number 1 Students showed perseverance in completing the worksheet Hawthorne effect?

A composite illustration of common search errors Confusion between article title and journal title Place of Publisher Date range caused problems

It challenged our assumptions about how students search In summary… Enjoyable and worthwhile (especially one student who added humorous commentary into the Google search box) It challenged our assumptions about how students search It has changed the way we teach students If you would like e-copies of the consent form, exercise sheet and participant information sheet or further details please get in touch with one of us: alan.bullimore@beds.ac.uk, adele.robinson@beds.ac.uk or alan.wheeler@beds.ac.uk

References Fagan, J.C., Mandernach, M., Nelson, C.S., Paulo, J.R. & Saunders, G. (2012) ‘Usability test results for a discovery tool in an academic library’ Information Technology and Libraries, 31 (1), pp. 83-112 Fry, A. & Rich, L. (2011) ‘Usability testing for e-resource discovery: how students find and choose e-e-resources using library web sites’ The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37 (5), pp.386-401 Gross, J. & Sheridan, L. (2011) ‘Web scale discover: the user experience’, New Library World, 112 (5/6), pp.236-247 Williams, S.C. & Foster, A.K. (2011) ‘Promise fulfilled? An EBSCO discovery service usability study’ Journal of Web Librarianship, 5 (3), pp.179-198