TIS Lab

Recent Arrivals

We’ve launched our Recent Arrivals app, which features any item that’s been added to the catalog in the past 30 days along with any item that is on a designated new book shelf in a branch library.

Users have the option to filter these results by branch location, material type, and language. Results can be sorted by title or date added to the catalog. Any search combination, which can be defined as narrowly as Italian DVDs at the Fine Arts Library, can be saved as an RSS feed.

We intend this to be a new discovery tool which aids in browsing our enormous collection. The Millennium Catalog excels at searching for known authors, titles, or keywords. This is geared toward the student or faculty member who is interested in seeing new acquisitions in a particular branch or language.

Several of the branch libraries have been keeping manual lists of new materials on their sites. The new application can be incorporated into any branch site so that it only shows new materials for a single location. An example of a branch library already taking advantage of this can be found at the recently-redesigned Fine Arts Library. We hope we can incorporate the new app into other branch pages and free up our busy staff for other duties.

Some of the morphing the project took over the its course:

• Initially it was going to be only for new books but we identified the need to represent all materials
• Choosing an application name proved difficult (New Items? New Books & More?) and Recent Arrivals was decided by a bibliographer vote
• We identified early on the importance of showing an item’s availability status in our results, rather than requiring users to click through to the catalog to see if it could be checked out. We were able to accomplish this via MAJAX an AJAX module for the Millennium catalog.

One randomly-selected recent arrival is currently being highlighted in a homepage feature each time the page loads.

Homepage Feature

In the past, the UT Libraries have had a variety of independent pages that list subject-related information. These pages include databases by subject, subject guides, subject specialists, and so on. TIS identified several issues with that approach:

• Subject names were not consistent. One page might list a subject called Children’s Studies, while another might call it Youth Studies.
• Subject pages were not integrated. If a user was browsing databases by subject, there was no easy way to view that subject’s bibliographer.
• Maintenance was difficult. If a specialist changer his/her office, that information needed to be updated in several places.

Our solution was to create a single database of subjects that contains all of the relevant information in one location. This database can be updated using a password-protected web interface. Now, if we decide to change “Theater” to “Theatre”, we make that update in one location and the change is reflected throughout our site.

Below is a list of pages that are currently using the new subjects database:

• Research by Subject – In the past, this page simply linked to research guides. Now, it links to guides, databases, and specialist information.
• Subject Detail pages – In addition to listing the information from the Research by Subject page, this page also provides links to related subjects.
• Specialist Profile pages – This page serves as a profile page for subject specialists. The contact information is pulled from the campus directory, which prevents us from having to maintain that information. It also lists interests, publications, personal sites, degrees, and more.
• Databases by Subject – Previously, this page only listed databases for each subject. Now, it lists recommended databases and provides links to that subject’s detail page and the specialist profile page.

We plan on using the data from new database on several other pages in the future. For example, we will integrate it with our existing library2blackboard application and an upcoming mobile version of our site. The work invested in this project will hopefully pay dividends long into the future.

The Fine Arts Library Redesign is now complete and moved to production. Many new improvements have been made to the information architecture, design and content integration to improve user interaction and reduce maintenance efforts.

Information architecture improvements include a new site layout which chunks content together logically and allows for easier lateral navigation. A horizontal navigation was created to classify main sections. We are now using active states to highlight the main and subsections a user visits, thus providing context and wayfinding clues. The redesigned home page spotlights new applications we’ve recently developed and allows for more continuity with the main Libraries home page.

New Site

Old Site

A new design was created to integrate within the Libraries approved secondary template. This design includes a new secondary header throughout the FAL site so the user easily recognizes what branch they are in. The header includes a new logo providing the full branch name and acronym and includes rotating images of faculty and students using the library. Colors for the new design where drawn from the interior colors used in the branch. To separate the main content from the surrounding site a new treatment was designed to visually raise the main content and to separate the horizontal navigation by providing a distinct look for easy recognition.

Content integration and reduced maintenance has been improved by integrating Recent Arrivals, FAL News, Staff Picks and Hours. All four reduce bloat by including only recent content and reduce maintenance by integrating content from the Catalog, Blog, or a central application. Staff picks can be submitted through the Catalog and programming was provided to cache and display these picks within the branch site. FAL News is managed through a blog, cached and displayed in a news page and on the branch home page. Hours is also displayed in the branch site but maintained in a central application.

TIS would like to thank the Fine Arts Library Staff and the Library Systems for their important collaboration and for ensuring the completion of this project before the set deadline.

The following post was contributed by our Outreach Librarian, Meghan Sitar…

The University of Texas Libraries have maintained a presence in Facebook for several years now, starting as a Group before transitioning to one of the newer Fan Pages.  We’ve used this space to post content from our other social media sites, including blog posts from our New for Undergraduates blog, video tutorials posted on YouTube, and event photos published on Flickr.

With the redesign of Fan Pages and the ability to publish our content to our fans’ News Feeds, it seemed like a good time to reexamine how we were managing all of this and to look for methods of automating the interaction between all of these different sites.  At the same time, we had been hearing from students who wanted to see us on Twitter, which seems to have finally gained some popularity among students on campus.

Matt Lisle, our intrepid Instructional Designer, had the brilliant idea to link Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and our Wordpress blogs together using FriendFeed.

This is where things get a little complicated.

When one of these sites posts to FriendFeed, the post is then exported to Twitter.

Using a Facebook application called Twitter Fan Page Sync, we’ve linked together our Twitter account and our Facebook Fan Page.  Twitter then posts the same information it receives from the Friend Feed to the status on our Facebook Fan Page.

Perhaps an illustration is in order?

(Click the image to see the full version)

The benefit of this system is that the cross-posting between all of these outlets is automated and no one person is responsible for repurposing the content.  The time investment in posting to any one of these sites returns a greater yield since the visibility of that post is at least doubled.

We’ve seen some problems with the stability of the Facebook application.  While the FriendFeed postings are readily feeding to Twitter and then to Facebook, direct posts to Twitter only showed up in Facebook onces we installed a second Facebook application, Selective Twitter Status, which requires tweets to include a #fb at the end.

That small nuisance aside, we’re pleased to have found a way to consolidate our social media empire into one relatively simple system.

• UT Libraries on Facebook
• UT Libraries on Twitter
• UT Libraries on Friendfeed

As reported during the last Web Author Brown Bag, work has progressed on the Content Management System for the Libraries’ site. Web Authors have added to and maintained the following sections; News Releases, Army Map Service Maps, For Undergraduates, Perry-Castañeda Library and the Computer Science subject guide. In addition, two of the Web Authors who did not edit their content before, have been editing their content in the CMS in order to provide a realistic evaluation of the system.

Title:	CMS Site Sections
Description:

Noted features include…

• Managing users/groups and roles
• Editing content in the browser
• Tagging and automating views of content (Ex: RSS, News Releases and Tag Clouds )
• Managing/inserting Media, PDFs and Documents
• Scheduling publication
• Saving and comparing revisions
• Tracking page views

Title:	Features
Description:

Additional server configurations have been performed to optimize performance, flexibility and dependability. We are now ready to start the last phase of the evaluation. Thursday, April 22, the Library will display the News Releases, Perry-Castañeda Library, AMS Maps and Computer Science Subject Guide on the development server in preparation for publishing after all stakeholders have had a chance to review. This will help determine the scalability of the CMS and provide valuable information for further improvements.

In addition to our work to identify new technologies to assist in serving library users, we will often be asked to evaluate new hardware or gadgets for how they might best fit into the services that the UT Libraries offers.  We poke them and prod them and hopefully find their benefits and weaknesses before rolling them out into service.

Our team needs to be building and testing our interfaces so that they work on these next generation devices.  Our users are accessing our sites from a growing array of rich media devices and trying to test on all of them can be a challenge.

We want to make it easy for other UT Libraries staff to get experience with the devices before they show up in our collections or in our users’ hands.  

As we add devices, we will add posts here with the tag [techlib]  Anybody who evaluates the device is welcome to post comments about their experience with it.  If you happen to want to suggest a device for us to test, you can add your comments to this post.

Our users spoke, and we listened!

After several comments came in via the website from users who missed being able to Renew items from the homepage, we decided to add it back! 

Some background:

When LIBsearch was introduced a couple months ago, the quick links box went away.  We had tested whether users could still Renew items without a dedicated link and they had no problems with the task.  However we recognized the potential that this particular link might be missed and planned to assess adding it back in conjunction with upcoming homepage content modifications. 

Our thinking was:

Since it is not a link just for Students or just for Faculty/Staff, it didn’t belong down in that lower left section.  There was a suggestion to add a Renew button to the LIBsearch box but we wanted to keep that functionality of the search box as searching only. 

So, after reviewing our page’s architecture and some other sites for guidance, we elected to add it to the top right utilities area of the site on all pages, as shown below.

We see this as a solution that allows us to add back in a popular link in the most logical place within the current page.  When the homepage modifications take place, it is possible the Renew link will be featured elsewhere, in a more logical place.

Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.  We hope this makes our users happier and aids in easy and satisfying use of our site!

In order to improve the current Libraries website, it is necessary to take inventory of the site as it exists today. The Libraries website has over 80 web authors and thousands of pages. Keeping track of such a huge, evolving site can be a daunting task, to say the least.

an example of a map of a website

The deceptively simple way to inventory a website is to click through it and draw a map showing every page. Imagine clicking every link on www.lib.utexas.edu and making a note of where they all go. Fortunately, there are specific tools that exist to do things like this. Those tools are called Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs), and one just happens to sit in the TIS suite.

But before putting me, the TIS GRA, to work mapping the Libraries site, the technology pros in TIS suggested that it might be worthwhile to investigate software that will automate the task of creating a website map. An automated tool would be much faster than a GRA and might be just as effective.

one type of content visualization

I found a couple of automated tools designed to help assess the information architecture of a website. I evaluated them and summarized my conclusions in a report. The automated tool I found that best fits the project requirements crawls the Libraries website and creates a surprisingly accurate map of the content. It also generates nifty visualizations of that content, which can be useful when demonstrating the depth and breadth of such a huge site. These visualizations make it easier to see overlapping content, organizational flaws, and pages that might get overlooked by human eyes. And did I mention the software does all this automatically? No GRA required? Sounds like a good deal to me.

Update 4/24/09: So far I have created 14 separate maps and have received some great feedback.

Spurred by the realization that our home page lacked a clear starting point, and that patrons are confused about their various search options, the Libraries recently decided to implement a tabbed search box.  We wanted it to be prominent, simple, and intuitive. 

A working group was formed to determine what tabs and sub-choices we should include as well as to make recommendations on functionality and aesthetics. 

After taking inventory of our searchable services and reviewing other academic libraries, we fielded an online survey to get feedback from our staff and patrons on what tabs to include, what they should be labeled, etc.  View a PDF of the results or see them online. The second link includes the ability to read open comments we received.

We created a working prototype and tested it with users which lead us to make some structural and graphical changes.  See the first round of testing’s script and results summary, which mainly showed us that the search box needed to be more prominent in the overall design.  In the second round of testing (script &  results summary), users had a 94% success rate overall and completed most tasks in a straightforward manner using our new LIBsearch box.  Feel free to contact me, Jade Anderson, directly if you’d like more detail on the testing methodology or results.

We went back and forth a bit about branding it–users had varying opinions on the matter–but we did end up branding it LIBsearch in the end.  The tabbed search box that we are pushing live in a few days will be monitored closely and is subject to alterations based on feedback and analysis of use. 

In current times where technologies evolve at a lightening pace and we strive to provide usable and relevant web services to our patrons, we are more interested than ever in your ideas and feedback.  Let us know what you think of our newly redesigned search by commenting, filling out an anonymous one-question survey, or emailing lib-searchbox at utlists dot utexas dot edu.

A few months ago, we announced that the University of Texas Libraries created an application that would integrate subject-specific library information into Blackboard courses. Finally, we’ve gotten around to sharing our code.

• First, read our previous post that explains how to use template variables in Blackboard
• Then, go to http://code.google.com/p/library2blackboard/ to obtain a php script, 2 sample xml files, and an html file for testing.