Quicksearch December Update

Thanks again for to everyone for their continued use and testing of Quicksearch!

Many things have happened in the Quicksearch Project in the last month.  We have rolled out important new features, conducted user studies, and addressed over half of the 100 or so issues reported by you.   For example:

  • Quicksearch can now display special circulation messages generated by Orbis status patrons.
  • Search results in the Articles+ column are now pre-limited to Yale licensed materials, eliminating a major source of confusion in Quicksearch results.
  • Jenn Nolte and Katie Bauer coordinated an initial round of user testing, with help from a number of staff from around the Library system.  More details about the results of the user studies will be available soon.

We still have a lot of work left to do.

For example, we are working to improve relevancy ranking for popular journal titles like ‘Nature,’ ‘New York Times,’ and ‘New England Journal of Medicine’ that are difficult to find in Orbis.  Other improvements currently in progress include:

  • Improved response time.  Thanks to everyone who has reported slow response time; resolving this problem with our Solr index is our number one priority.
  • Displaying all fields in Quicksearch that display in Orbis
  • Identifying Chrome-specific problems with displaying certain non-roman characters
  • Improving the Orbis record extract to include fields like 856 links in MFHD records.

2015 promises to be an exciting year full of anticipated new features: a ‘Resources about Yale’ facet focusing on Yale-oriented special collections, implementation of dynamic statuses from Morris using the Innovative Interfaces API, requesting directly from the Quicksearch interface, and more.

My thanks to all of the members of the Implementation Committee, Discovery Metadata Committee, and numerous volunteer testers who have worked so hard this year on the implementation of Quicksearch.

While we continue moving toward our goals, please understand if our progress slows somewhat during the coming year. The library has several time-sensitive projects moving forward in 2015, and at times other projects will have to take precedence.  Thank you for your patience, continued participation and support.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!

–          Kalee

On behalf of the Quicksearch Implementation Team:

Kalee Sprague (Chair)
Lakeisha Robinson (Technical Lead, Ex-Officio)
Katie Bauer
Steve Disorbo
Arcadia Falcone
Yue Ji
Scott Matheson
Jenn Nolte
Bob Rice
Quicksearch Feedback form: https://yalesurvey.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_ePRYbhHrT3D2eEd

Current list of Reported Issues: http://tinyurl.com/lit-qs-issues-xslx

Current list of Requested Features: http://tinyurl.com/lit-qs-requests-xslx

 

Usability Testing for QuickSearch beta

Staff from various parts of the library, including Medical, Law and Bass/Sterling have just completed a round of usability testing for Quicksearch. In this initial round of testing we wanted to look at some basic questions about this type of search, which combines results from the catalogs Orbis and Morris, and the article search from Summon called Articles+. Would students understand what was being searched? Would the Bento Box display make sense,  and would they be able to successfully navigate between the sections to find books and from the catalogs on the left and article results on the right. Would results be judged relevant to the search? Would testers understand the display of information about where to get a book or find fulltext of an article? Would testers be able to order material or email citations?

We are in the process of collating results from the first 12 tests, and we’ll be debriefing with staff who participated. We’ll follow up with a synopsis of results soon.

Here are the specific questions asked:

1. When you are starting research for a class, where would you typically start?

2. Now let’s look at the Quicksearch Beta search interface http://search.library.yale.edu  Based on what you see here, what library resources do you think Quicksearch Beta will search?

3. Have you recently done any research for a paper or class? I’d like you to try QuicksearchBeta to research this topic, or if you’d rather some other topic relating to yourmajor/discipline or just a topic of interest to you.

4. Let’s talk a little about what you see on the page. What are your initial impressions of what isdisplayed?

a. Do you find books appropriate to the topic?     b. Do you find articles appropriate to the topic? c. If you were writing a paper on this topic how satisfied would you be with these results?
5. Please see if the library has the book: “Backlash” by Susan Faludi. Where is it in the library system?
6. Please find the most recent issue of New England Journal of Medicine.
7. Please do a search and find what books and articles the library has about (choose one).
CEO compensation
Ebola hemorrhagic fever
effects of climate change on developing nations
a. Let’s look for some print books. Are any of these books about legislation/laws?
b. Please select a few books from this search. How would you save them for later use?
c. Let’s look for some articles.  Can you limit results to only scholarly publications?d. Are any of these articles about legislation/laws?
e. Please save a few articles to your list of saved items
8. Can you find a way to email the saved items to yourself?
Post test Questions
1. In the future would you use this tool? Why or why not?
2. Compare the experience of using Orbis to the Quicksearch Beta. Do you prefer one of these?
3. Compare the experience of using Articles+/Summon to Quicksearch Beta. Do you prefer one of these?
4. What did you like about Quicksearch Beta?
5. What is one thing about  Quicksearch Beta would it be most important to improve?