ACRL/NY User Experience Discussion Group

“Meet and Greet”

Date: Oct 7,  2011

Time: 9:15am-10:45am

Place: Mercy College

Co-Chairs: Mark Aaron Polger and Albert Tablante

Guest: Stephen Francoeur, User Experience Librarian at Newman Library, Baruch College, CUNY.

Present: Lauren Yannotta, Judith Schwartz, Danise Hoover, Linda Miles, Danielle Becker, Zinnat Sultana, Faithe Ann Scobbo, Jenna Rey Greer, Romel Espinel, Catherine Stern, Stephen Francoeur, Anne Swain, Linda Perahia, Zaakea Al-Barati, Carmen Hendershot, Gloria Meisel,

Co-Chairs: Albert Tablante, Mark Aaron Polger

Meeting Summary: Mark Aaron Polger

1. Stephen Francoeur gave an engaging discussion of mobile-friendly LibGuides and mobile friendly databases. He illustrated that students don’t want to peruse the A-Z listing of databases but want a selected list of mobile-friendly databases to be accessed on their mobile devices. He informed the group that Google Chrome best mimics the mobile experience when testing whether a web site will work on a mobile device.

2. For those who do not subscribe to Libguides, it is $1500/yr (approximately) and there is an e-reserves module that can be added.LibGuides can be tailored for course specific instruction. Content authors log in through a content management system to add content without needing to know HTML.

3. Queensborough Community College Library’s entire web site is a LibGuide. Brooklyn College Library uses their own “home made” version of LibGuides called “SRMS” and their entire web site uses the “SRMS” system. The College of Staten Island Library’s list of research guides also uses Brooklyn College Library’s “SRMS” home made system.

4.      Steven Bell , Associate University Librarian for Research & Instructional Services at Temple University’s Paley Library, a well known speaker and researcher with usability testing, has done usability testing on Research Guides. He found that students don’t like to scroll and that the LibGuide content should be right on the screen for users to access. Bell is also cited for encouraging librarians to teach from specific web sites and not from LibGuide pages.  LibGuides pages should be considered a “Springboard” page where users access for short periods of time.