Notes of Meeting
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Porter 428
Present: Rachel Caldwell, Helena Calogeridis, Marian Davies, Anne Fullerton (guest speaker), Sandra Keys, Esther Millar, Marina Wan
Regrets: Christy Branston , Linda Hastings
1. The Last Home Page Redesign
- Anne Fullerton discussed with the group about part of the process of the former redesign of the library's home page.
- Part of the redesign process involved recruiting a small focus group consisting of graduate students and faculty members, plus enlisting students from Systems Design 348 (2002) to test usability and navigation.
- Tasks presented in the redesign process include:
- Hierarchal task analysis (web file paths) – can steps to get to specific pieces of information be eliminated?
- Card (subject) sorting – having users organize elements of the homepage into comprehensive categories/labelling categories.
- Keeping track of user-group questions and comments.
- Recruiting users to complete tasks on home page prototypes in order to flag problematic areas. (note: this task can be done paper)
- Survey
2. Business Arising
- A section on the Staff Web has been created for the Library Web Home Page Review Group. This section still needs to be developed.
- Helena Calogeridis will be a member on the Information Architecture group (with Marian Wan and Esther Millar ).
- Sandra Keys has created a group file in RefWorks. This will be used to input/share reading materials among the three subgroups (Information Architecture, Usability Studies and Web Accessibility.)
3. Today's Task – Reviewing the current home page's main (drop-down) navigation
- Marina provided members with two handouts: Homepage Card Sort and an organized list of what each main (drop-down) navigation subject contains.
- The group discussed what needs to be removed, changed or relabelled under the following two menu items: books, articles, etc. and e-reference. Areas of concern within these drop-downs include:
- Items to be removed: E-texts, Course Reserves, Web Search Engines, Library Web Sites, Universities & Colleges, ...And more.
- The e-reference drop-down menu is not in alphabetical order.
- Indexes & Databases will eventually be relabelled as Research Databases.
- Confusion for students between searching Indexes & Databases and E-journals (students commonly will try to search the E-journal collection to find information over using the appropriate database resources).
• Other areas of discussion about the main (drop-down) navigation include:
- Are we getting rid of the drop-down style of navigation?
- Home page subject terminology needs to be re-examined – what do our users understand/misinterpret?
- Do we need to include a library website search option at the top of the homepage? How will the terms for this be indexed?
- Does the list of Liaison Librarians need to be more prominently displayed with a direct link from the home page (or from Ask A Librarian )?
4. What's Next?
- We have two meetings left for this term (Fall 2004). We will continue to review issues with the current library home page.
- We will begin to examine what will be needed for the home page redesign in the new term (Winter 2005).
- The Information Architecture, Usability Studies and Web Accessibility groups will continue to research information to relay to the Library Web Home Page Review Group for future discussions.
5. Next Meeting
- The next Library Web Home Page Review Group meeting will take place on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 from 1:30-3:00pm in Porter 428.
- The focus of the next meeting is to continue examining the current issues with the home page's current drop-down navigation.
August 11, 2005
