1. Primo v.3 Highlights June 2010
Primo version 3 has been recently released and includes many enhancements that respond to our user comments and will improve the user experience with Primo. I want to highlight some of those improvements for you and give you a feel for the new interface.
Please keep in mind that these screenshots have been cobbled together from my testing experience in Jerusalem and from various ExLibris documents and presentations. Nothing has been customized with TUG branding or wording or with any TUG specific links and examples. Some options may appear in the images that are irrelevant to the TUG experience.

2. What’s new in v. 3? Renewed user interface
Changes to how resources are delivered to the user
New searching and sorting features
New administrative features
I’m going to spend quite a bit of time on the new user interface and how users access resources (points 1 and 2) and then briefly mention some other new features. Primo version 3 is the result of a total user interface re-design. Some of the changes that are important are invisible to the user, they involve a clean-up of the CSS and other under-the-hood details which make it easier for our staff to work with and increase accessibility. The word that most people use for version 3 is “cleaner”. To that I would add: more intuitive.

3. Stream-lined search box & sign-in area
Top left
Slimmer banner
Top right
Let’s begin by looking at the top of the Primo screen. Here is the top left where you would see the UW or UG or WLU logo and the search box.
Animation 1: notice that the banner is much slimmer giving it a more streamlined look
Animation 2: if we move to the top right we can see the area where Primo has the toolbar, sign-in and e-shelf
Animation 3: notice that the sign-in has moved to the top right instead of taking up so much real estate. It is also the location that most people expect to find a sign in for many web resources today.
Animation 4: across from the search box, now that the e-shelf area isn’t in the way, there is some banner space for libraries to place information, links etc. In this example they have an RSS feed to the library’s news.
Sign-in/e-shelf moved to top right
Banner space for communication

4. Changes to brief results
Slimmer search box means results immediately visible
Refine my results area (facets) more streamlined
Number, sort options & top facets moved to centre above the results
Resource icon combined with cover image to reduce visual clutter
There have been some drastic changes, I think improvements, to the search results.
Animation 1. Notice how the slimmer banner and search box mean that users see some of their search results right away; no more guessing whether your search has been performed if you have a smaller screen resolution
Animation 2: information relating to the number of results, your sort options and the top facets (online; available) have been shifted to the centre tile directly above the search results for increased visibility
Animation 3: in primo version 2 there is a resource icon (book, journal etc.) on the left and a cover image on the right. Primo 3 has reduced visual clutter by combing them together. If there is a cover, a cover image with appear; otherwise the resource icon will appear. In either case, the label for the resource type will be there
Animation 4: the refine my results (facets) area is cleaner looking in layout

5. Fewer pop-up windows
When you click on an option in the brief results, the information opens within the results screen rather than taking you to a new window
In the redesign ExLibris responded to the complaint about the number of pop-up windows and the need to go back and forth between results and details. There are fewer pop-up windows in Primo 3. Instead, with each result there are tabs for: online, request (hold, recall etc.), locations, details, reviews & tags, etc. With a click on the label, a box expands within the results screen itself to show you more information.

6. Online links and physical locations available from the brief display
If something is both online and in print, users can see tabs for view online, for requesting (holds/recalls) and for locations
In the last example the item was a physical resource, so no “view online” tab displayed. In this example the resource is both online and physical. I know this because I can see both a “view online” tab and a “request” tab.
The user can know this very quickly by the ability to click on the locations tab. In version 2 we can only view other locations from the brief results for physical resources; as soon as the resource was online then the locations button went away. Now we have access to all information
Animation 1. Another thing to note is the presence of multiple links in this example. In version 2 Primo picked the first URL in the record, which was a problem for multi-volume e-books and other resources with multiple links. Now the view online tab lists all available links from the cataloguing record.
If there are multiple URLs in the catalogue record, all URLs will display to the user

7. OPAC via Primo (OvP): seamless interface experience
Users can click on the request tab on the brief display to see the request options (based on our TRELLIS configurations)
Apart from cleaning up the design of the interface and reducing pop-ups, the most significant change in Primo 3 is something called OPAC via Primo (OvP). In version 2 when a user wants to see a holding or place a request he is taken to a pop-up window, called the vprimo window, which is a voyager window and isn’t styled in a primo look and feel.
In Primo 3, primo draws the information from voyager into Primo itself to give the user a more seamless experience. For example, clicking on the request tab for this item will display all of the available request options for this item based on our TRELLIS configurations. In UW case it would probably be hold, request, course reserve request
Animation 1. Holds and recalls are placed within the Primo screen. Circulation will be happy to know that the pickup location is mandatory! Any other voyager forms, like the course reserves request, will open in this box but will actually send the user to TRELLIS. For version 3.0 ExLibris only designed OvP for the most commonly used request types.
Holds and recalls are placed within the Primo screen; any other requests are done through a TRELLIS screen

8. Item level information & requesting
On the locations tab users can see the location & availability or can view the holdings statement and see each item by expanding the location.
On the locations tab you can see an availability statement, like you can in version 2, showing location, call number and availability status. However, you can also expand the information to see item level details for each holding.
Animation 1: when signed in, the user will see beside each item any request options that are relevant to the item and to their user account. This is based on TRELLIS configurations. They have the option to placing the request at this level instead of using the request tab. (clicking hold will open the request tab with the specific copy selected)
When signed in the user will see request options relevant to their account and to the item.

9. E-shelf, queries & my account
Tabbed display to better separate the three areas related to the user
There haven’t been any drastic changes in the e-shelf but the information is divided in an easier way by separating the e-shelf, saved queries and account information with tabs. Within my account, information is accessed through a left-hand menu for loans, request, fines etc.

10. New searching & sorting features
Alphabetic sort of search results by author or title
Can add a date ascending sort (earliest date)
Left-anchored search on title
Caveat: with version 3.0 this is a search on the MARC 245 tag only (main title)
Improved did u mean suggestions
Those slides give you a preview of some of the features of Primo 3. I also want to mention a few other features. Users can now sort their search results by author or title. This is a request that came in through our comments so we’re really happy to be able to supply that feature. We also have the ability to add a sort by earliest date to help our humanities researchers.
We’ve received a lot of feedback about the difficulties of finding known items through key-word search for some titles. We’re happy to report that ExLibris has listened to the need for an OPAC-like browse search and has supplied it for titles. Only one caveat: for version 3.0 in order to get this done they have only indexed the MARC 245 tag (main title) for this left-anchored search. However, it is a start and I think it will help many of our users. We’ll make sure an enhancement request is entered to improve upon the “title starts with” search to include uniform titles and alternative titles.
Some of our users are annoyed when primo gives them a suggested search with gives them no results! Primo 3 has a smarter did u mean functionality that knows not to suggest a search that will produce zero results. In the test database in Jerusalem I found that I got fewer unrelated did u mean suggestions; it seems to have improved overall.

11. Administration features
Can define back office user roles
Export/import of user contributed data (e.g. tags)
Report features to audit back office use
We devote a lot of staff time to primo and it is a complex product, so we are happy to find that there are some new features relating to primo administration.
In primo version 2 we only have one user type, admin. Version 3 allows a much more granular definition of roles such as super admin, normalization & code tables, views, report viewing etc. These can also be filtered by institution, for example if we only want Laurier people to be able to edit the Laurier view.
There is a new feature for allowing export and import of data like tags and reviews.
There are reports that will allow sys admin to tell if someone has made changes to configurations such as tables and normalization rules. That is, we can see what has been done in the back office software of primo.

12. When? Upgrade on staging (test) server: July 5th
Upgrade on production?: aiming for Fall
How can your departments help?
Testing!
Training!
We know that we will be upgrading our staging server on July 5th. Due to the many improvements in the UI it would be great to have it in place on production for Fall. However, much of that depends on staff resources. I will be going over the plan with the Primo team on Friday and will also be talking to people at the 3 institutions about staff resources for testing in the second half of July and for doing staff training. If anyone wants to volunteer, please let me know!

13. Thank you!
If you think of any questions later, please use the feedback form or send an It would be helpful if you put “primo v3 question” in the subject line.