• 2:00 - 2:15pm: Announcements
• Assessment Group Update – Kathy Chiang-- Guests: Nancy Hyland, Deb Schmidle, Linda Miller, Bonna Boettcher
• Discussion about roles of PSEC Use and Usability Group and PSA Research and Assessment Group – Xin Li
• WebFeat discussion – Zsuzsa Koltay

Attendees: Anne Kenney, Pat Shafer, Kathy Chiang, Zsuzsa Koltay, Kornelia Tancheva, Scott Wicks, Xin Li

Guests: Bonna Boettcher, Linda Miller, Deb Schmidle, Nancy Hyland

Announcements

Kornelia

   -Nov. 14th forum on outreach beyond campus

   -Dec. forum on Webfeat and subcommittees work: Doc, Citation management, Digital reference

   -Nov. 29th EBSCO database training

   -Would like to participate in the training for K-12 teachers this year and to nurture a coordinated presence

   -Ask a librarian bookmark

Anne

   -Ellen Marsh – Director of Communications starts Monday November 13th

   -Notice to faculty about Blackboard use will be sent out for winter by Michelle Eastman

   -SLAC is talking about Olin Renovation; HVAC, sprinklers, etc.

Assessment Group Update

Have been meeting for just over a year

PSEC Report on WebBridge Testing

   -Accomplishments

• Worked with David Banush to build CUL usability collection
• Human Subjects review

            -2 committee members met with Sarah Demo (UCHS)

            -All committee members passed UCHS training test

            -Submitted initial approval form, consent form and existing instruments for UCHS review (received UCHS exemption)

             -Sponsored WebFeat group (see below for more detail)

                    -Submitted an amendment to our initial approval form

             -Provided information to CUGIR group on getting UCHS exemption

             -Started to write up FAQ for Library staff

• Recruiting, scheduling and paying test subjects

             -Created flyer for volunteer signup

             -Posted flyer at Library orientation sessions; signed up 131 student volunteers

             -Randomly picked volunteers to email (with consent form) for WebBridge testing

             -Scheduled students and sent reminders (determined that it would be good to have an automated signup calendar)

             -Worked with Tami Magnus to iron out payment issues (Tami has created a UCHS approved form)

             -Trained the WebFeat team on these issues (who signed up an additional 61 volunteers)

   -WebFeat/PSEC Assessment and Usability Collaboration

• The work the Assessment and Usability Committee has done to date formed the foundation from which the WebFeat Implementation Team (WIT) has carried out user centered design early in the design process of our new "Find" services. The usability subgroup of WIT (Maureen Morris, Melissa Kuo, Randi Kepecs, and Adam Chandler) has based their work on what they learned through the PSEC U and A initiative. The group was also aided by Linda Miller to revise the Human Subjects form for this round of testing, help work out payment issues, and gain access to the central list of usability volunteers. To date, two "paper prototype" cycles have been conducted with CUL patrons. The third cycle will take place November 17.

   -What the group would like

• Space + characteristics of an ideal space
• Scheduling - automated sign up calendar: Matt Connolly is working on a Web-based system that will utilize Kerberos authentication to automatically recognize test subjects. We expect the first version of this system to be available for its trial run when we sign up test subjects for the third iteration of Webfeat paper prototype testing late this month.

   -For the Future

• Administrative Support
• Ongoing cycle of recruiting
• Communication: what, to whom and how?
• Membership proposal - committee members not just public services
• Web Page
• PodCasting

   -Discussion Items - Is there a better way to divide this up? One that would combine a standing department (R and A in PSA) with a committee with rotating membership (A&U group)

• Are we providing what users want, or need?
• Is what we are providing usable and/or useful?
• Goals of organization:

             -Avoid patron 'fatique' and confusion

             -Have staff work most efficiently (not repeating any learning curves or reinventing infrastructure)

              -Allow all staff (across all departments: public services, technical and IT) to use these techniques and methodologies when needed (building the culture aspect)

• Could we divide the organizational responsibility by methodology?

              -Qualitative research techniques: focus groups, ethnographic, usability lab studies

              -Quantitative research: log analysis, surveys

• It would still be useful to have a clearinghouse/coordination function that crosses methodologies:

              -Who is doing what?

              -Who has already done what?

PSEC/Use and Usability/Research and Assessment Group

Suggestions

   -We should maintain a committee

   -Someone should be close to our users

   -Keep Assessment and Usability in charge

• Have Xin’s group chip in
• Start looking at impacts

   -Should we redesign Xin’s group?

• Maybe keep them as they are for a year or so
• Eventually Xin’s group and the usability group would feed into each other through the digital library

   -Research and Assessment

• Who would handle Cougar?
• What is our role?
• How would we define our success?
• Sarah wants them to work on high priority projects

   -We should be thinking long term

• We will need a gate keeper, quality control, this will give uniformity to what we do

   -Need to keep track of projects

   -As long as Research and Assessment collaborate they will be ok

   -Add a variety of people to the committee

Webfeat

Managing phase 1 production system

• Have been testing database connectors and will be testing response time

Phase 2 content track

• Growing from 100 to almost 500 databases
• working out simultaneous user issues with DRC

Phase 2 external search box track

• External search – ability to put Webfeat into other web pages with a custom set of databases
• Investigating how to put it on Blackboard pages
• Getting the process worked out

Phase 2 interface track

• integrating multiple find functions into Find It!
• Employing user centered design process
• 3 rounds of usability tests on paper
• 1 or 2 more rounds to be done on the computer
• January 15th implementation date

Phase 2 PR campaign track

Reference and Outreach will move up open forum to end of November to feature WebFeat discussion with PS staff and selectors