1 Innovative Uses of Metasearch: Integration of Metasearch with Other Services David Lindahl Director of Digital Library Initiatives Jeff Suszczynski Senior Web Developer

2 Understand your users Design Process –Users versus stakeholders –Designer –Usability Testing User Research –Work practice study –User Centered design –Participatory Design

3 Issues: Metasearch users must… Choose a database or subject Follow long click-paths that often dead-end Resubmit their searches mid-session Navigate results that are not organized, precise or comprehensive

4 Finding Articles Serial failure Find Articles –By database –By subject –By keyword –By course Usability Testing

5 Course Webpages Replacement for course reserves system Able to include relevant library resources on the pages Connect students to their librarian Successful Helps to solve the “choose a database” problem.

6 User Research at Rochester Study of Undergraduates Techniques Retrospective Interviews Reality-TV recording Cultural Probes Outcomes Facilities Reference Web Services

7 GUF: Getting Users to Full-text Attempt to deal with: –Follow long click-paths that often dead-end –Resubmit their searches mid-session Title links on metasearch results screen take the user to one of these: –Full-text –Print-holdings information with map –Pre-filled interlibrary loan request form

8 GUF: Getting Users to Full-text For full-text: follow links, prefetch pages, try another source on error; for print: check holdings statements, group editions to find a “good-enough” copy. Services consumed by GUF: –OpenURL resolver –Print holdings database (developed for GUF) –Library catalog –OCLC xISBN service –Google Spellchecking –FindArticles.Com

9 Navigating Results Navigate results that are not organized, precise or comprehensive How to solve this? –FRBR –Provide results that are grouped by their relationships –Better that relevance ranking –Offer the ability to manipulate the result set (interact with it to narrow your search – no set limits in advance – often you don’t know what your looking for – pick a topic)

10 Innovative Uses of Metasearch: Integration of Metasearch with Other Services David Lindahl Director of Digital Library Initiatives Jeff Suszczynski Senior Web Developer