CDLINFO

By Jane Lee, Senior Assessment Analyst

CDL’s assessment unit has been in existence for almost four years, and in that time, Felicia Poe and Jane Lee have enjoyed working with many of you in the campus libraries.  You’ve welcomed us into your libraries and rounded up students and faculty for surveys, user interviews, and usability tests.  CDL could not do our work without your help, and we want you to know that we are happy to answer any questions you may have about your own user assessment activities.

So, if you’d like to chat about users and usability, please contact Jane at Jane.Lee@ucop.edu.  She looks forward to hearing from you!

By Felicia Poe, CDL Assessment, Design & Production Manager

For the past six years, CDL has maintained a license to the WebSurveyor survey software tool, now called "Vovici", and UC campus library staff were given use of the software. CDL’s license expires on October 1, 2007, and it is our intention to transition to a free/low-cost cost web-based survey tool.  Unfortunately, this will impact those campuses that are currently using, or have used in the past, the WebSurveyor/Vovici survey software.

A bit of background: WebSurveyor and Perseus merged to become Vovici a few months ago; the merge has resulted in changes to both the software and the account structure. CDL’s current account with Vovici will expire in October, and we are taking the opportunity to explore different survey tool options. In the past, CDL’s WebSurveyor license allowed us to extend use of the survey software to campus library staff, and we were happy to coordinate usage, offer general advice on survey construction, etc. Moving forward, however, CDL will no longer be able to coordinate or offer survey tools to the campuses. There are many free or low-cost survey tools available online, e.g., SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang, and individual campuses can decide which product best suits their needs.

All current surveys will need to be completed or migrated to new software by September 15, 2007. Additionally, all data that you want to keep will need to be exported to a local campus machine by September 15. In the next week, CDL will be sending out an email to anyone who has an active/inactive survey regarding these changes.

Please note that Vovici has the ability to export to Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF formats. Survey data may be exported to a Comma Separated Values file or a Tab Delimited Text file. You can do all of this from the online interface. The Vovici Help environment has a FAQ with instructions for exporting/downloading.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you or your colleagues, and will work to notify anyone who might be impacted by this transition.

Questions about this change should be directed to Felicia Poe (felicia.poe@ucop.edu).

By Felicia Poe (felicia.poe@ucop.edu), CDL Assessment, Design & Production Manager

Position title: User Experience Design Manager
Position location: Oakland, California
To apply: https://jobs.ucop.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=51724
Close date: July 12, 2007

The California Digital Library (CDL) invites applications for the position of User Experience Design Manager. The incumbent will provide leadership in ensuring that the design of CDL web sites meet the needs of its primary audiences, including the University of California libraries, the broader UC community, external constituencies and the general public. The User Experience Design Manager will assume responsibility for defining core interaction designs and functionality based on sound usability principles, research, data and technical feasibility. Additionally, the incumbent will be responsible for managing the processes, people, and resources related to the visual design process.

HOW TO APPLY:  For a complete job description or to apply for this position, visit the University of California Office of the President employment web site at:  https://jobs.ucop.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=51724

UC Office of the President job postings: http://jobs.ucop.edu
Job requisition number: 20070238

Visit the California Digital Library web site at: www.cdlib.org

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity /Affirmative Action employer.

By Steve Toub, CDL Bibliographic Services Strategist

As part of our quality assurance process in the upgrade of Melvyl from ALEPH v.15 to ALEPH v.16, CDL requested the UCLA’s Disabilities and Computing Program to provide an accessibility audit of the Melvyl site. Many aspects of the Request site were also included in the review. The final report is now available at: http://www.dcp.ucla.edu/melvylreport/report_index.htm

CDL is pleased to confirm that although the out-of-the-box ALEPH interface had a number of accessibility issues, our implementation has turned our ALEPH-based system into one that is largely compliant with Section 508, the federal law related to web accessibility. Most of the issues raised by the accessibility audit were cosmetic usability suggestions or proposals that go above and beyond what is required by law.

Ex Libris has used JavaScript in the ALEPH product.  Although CDL has taken great pains to reduce the amount of JavaScript and to ensure that browsers without JavaScript can access all Melvyl functionality, a handful of problematic areas remain.  Investigation by CDL has confirmed that these problematic areas are controlled by ALEPH code that is not editable by CDL.  We will be reporting our findings to Ex Libris. 

CDL is committed to ensuring access to resources for all patrons; we are extremely grateful to the staff at UCLA’s Disabilities and Computing Program for the attention they gave in their thorough accessibility audit of Melvyl.

By Felicia Poe (felicia.poe@ucop.edu), CDL Assessment, Design & Production Manager

A full report of the findings and recommendations from the CDL Spring 2006 assessment project, entitled “Communication and Collaboration: Priorities and Perspectives on the UC Libraries-CDL Partnership” has been released and is available at:

http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/evaluation_activities/docs/2007/cdl_spring2006.pdf

Background:

In early 2006, the CDL embarked upon a series of interviews across the ten UC campuses. The purpose of the interviews was to gather information that would provide CDL with insight into issues vital to the campus libraries, including:
 
1) Campus priorities in regard to current and future digital information tools and services.

2) Campus perspectives on existing digital information tools and services (their strengths, weaknesses and areas ripe for improvement or innovation).

3) Campus capacity for digital information tool and service development, whether independently or in collaboration with CDL or others.

Interviews were launched by the CDL assessment team in April 2006 and typically included a campus AUL, a collection development or special collections librarian, and persons involved with building digital services and tools. In total, 51 individuals across all ten UC campuses were interviewed, via in-person visits to seven campuses and teleconferences with three campuses.

Questions about the project and report should be directed to Felicia Poe (felicia.poe@ucop.edu).

Findings and recommendations from a round of usability testing conducted on a prototype UC-eLinks window in February 2007

By Jane Lee (Jane.Lee@ucop.edu), CDL Assessment Analyst

On behalf of Head of Public Services (HOPS) and the UC-eLinks project team, CDL’s assessment unit traveled to UCSD to assess a prototype version of the UC-eLinks window.  The main purpose of this assessment was to determine if the changes made to the UC-eLinks user interface improved the usability of the interface.  Eight usability testing sessions were conducted on February 22-23, 2007 at UC San Diego in a Library Administration office in Geisel Library.  Each session lasted approximately one hour.

The following are two major findings from this round of assessment:

1.  Placing links into logical groupings improves usability, but current labels for groupings and links are confusing to users.

2.  Students face many potential pitfalls in trying to reach online full text.  The UC-eLinks window itself poses challenges.  Furthermore, even if students successfully navigate through UC-eLinks to a publisher’s site, for a variety of reasons presented in this report there is no guarantee that they will obtain the full text article they were seeking.

To learn more, please read the full report, which is available at the following URL:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/evaluation_activities/docs/2007/elinks_ucsd_feb2007.pdf