Got some great early feedback; not a lot, but it did come Feedback email went to all staff involved with next generation catalogs Feedback became a part of our “summary of issues” we communicated periodically with Carli Comments were mixed: a few told us they loved VuFind, some hated, most were recommendations for improvements and features
These are so general; wanted more specific feedback
We asked nicely and Yale gave us their survey, so we decided to repeat it. We wanted our own data with little effort and we thought it would be nice to compare with Yale Yale’s survey asked users if they had completed a search in VuFind and what they thought of both VuFind and the search results
142 Participants
Survey results on facets were more mixed than we expected. But comments told us users liked facets, but often found them frustrating.
Comment: 9 Others: At least 2 of “other” stated easy search; two said they’d use both Voyager & VuFind; 1 iShare; 1 used Chicago Public Library (??) Thought VuFind easier to navigate, but Voyager better for requesting from other libraries 1 Commenter said “You should look at Aquabrowser”
They want that ubiquitous single search box Not sure what they wanted when they wanted “more information” Relevancy of user added content includes tags, reviews
Confusion of what an all fields search was – users understood term keyword more often
Why not pull out all languages in catalog on advanced screen? But you can always facet later
Really liked this feature being on results page, but needed an intermediary for reserve or reference items
No direct export!
Title is not a URL, author is—uses same color
Loves feature, but…. Users confused about close and save in adding to favorites. Also requested favorites list to be more robust and customizable.
Everyone liked facets because they helped you to discover items, but there were issues with them. Idea of facets (and users realized this) is to refine after you search, not having to refine before you conduct your search; they liked this
Many complaints about looking up items in I-Share libraries, but there were no good solutions to this problem
A lot of confusion over formats. Wanted to further limit multimedia to specific format (DVD, CD, etc) instead of film/video and music recording This limitation caused non-print items to be nearly impossible to find
Confusion over what exactly these are; They come from the bib record Topic is the subject heading Subject area is from the classification code Genre coming from 655 – Index term/form
Era was really confusing because there was no standard cataloging Also, user expected this to be the date of publication or copyright, not the era the item is about—really hard for multimedia
Why is author so futzy? No matter how you input James Joyce, this is what you get. Cataloging issues, Also pulls out items in which name is “other author”
Comments/reviews Users thought these would be helpful, but wouldn’t add them themselves. Several users questioned authority of these and thought they could be biased or even incorrect. Wanted reviews only from authoritative sources (not Amazon, but maybe Choice or LJ) Several users didn’t like them at all, saying if they wanted reviews, they’d go to Amazon.
All users hated staff view and wanted it to be less prominant
About half of users in all areas knew about tagging, and generally liked the concept. But only one said they’d actually add tags. Useful applications for tags that were mentioned include specific media format (DVD) and foreign language title translation
Library tools included iRead and LibraryThing
1 subject was a GSLIS prof—missed call number search
![Usability & Feedback: An Overview ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)