Submitted on behalf of Terry Reese:
Last week at a Management Committee meeting, I had the opportunity to talk about the Discovery project and think about how we tried to do this project differently than work we have done in the past and how we are hoping to do better in the future. It’s been an interesting project to move forward, in part, because it’s a project that OSUL has been thinking about, writing about, discussing…for almost 3 years now.
When we started this project almost a year ago now, we had the good fortune of inheriting a tremendous amount of good work from the Discovery Systems Management Working Group. This group has been thinking about how the Libraries could, not just make incremental gains within our current framework, but also think more broadly about what the future could look like if we were willing to take the plunge.
The Libraries website redesign offered the perfect opportunity to move this project forward, and rethink not only how the Libraries presents discovery to its users but also the way in which we provide access to our services. It was an opportunity to take our first steps in realizing one of my long-term visions for the Library –where we deliberately develop services and infrastructure to support our local community, as well as on a much broader scale. By that I mean, we will be mindful of the people that come through our doors (the carbon-based users that are the life-blood of a university) and also consider another kind of user: the developer, researcher or service that can make use of library data (e.g., the Digital Flagship initiative).
At a very high level, we have developed a library services platform, as illustrated below:
We’ve wrapped the platform around a service layer that has enabled the Libraries to build not only a new discovery tool, but to look at enhancing a wide range of other tools and communities that can now be supported through the same foundational architecture. And you are seeing this in action today with both Discovery and the Library’s redesigned website, which utilizes the Lexicon to share data between these two different projects. For the first time, we can start to see how our systems are starting to work together and how some of the hard work that we’ve committed to over the past 5 years (such as recoding finding aids into Archivist Toolkit, ingesting content into Digital Collections, adding linked data reconciliation to our cataloging workflows, etc.) begin to bear fruit. We are now in a position to think beyond our small parts of the Library and create something that wraps around the library as a whole. This project allows us to radically rethink how we present resources to our patrons and provide a variety of different pathways to content.
I am looking forward to seeing this new tool get in front of users. And not because we cross some invisible finish line when the new library website is released on May 7th, but because we’ll finally have reached the starting line. On May 7th, users will finally have access to a tool that has incorporated feedback from nearly 3 years of research, a significant data collection and analysis effort, feedback from hundreds of faculty and students outside and inside the Libraries, as well as hints and tips from colleagues outside OSU who have walked this path before us. And what’s being created is the outcome of that feedback…a project that moves the needle forward and hopefully makes the Libraries a little bit easier to navigate. At the same time, it is a starting point. In a lot of ways, what we have created is a living wireframe that will allow us to test assumptions, respond to feedback and potentially create radically new ways of presenting information to users.
So what can we expect between now and May 7?
Over this next month, you will see a number of changes to the discovery application if you visit the beta site. You’ll see the great work Jason, Phoebe, Michelle, Stephen, and Ousmane have done taking abstract concepts and user feedback and turning them into something that looks polished and ready to use. You will see features like the recently added Research Databases option, which allows users to search directly against our various research databases. Another feature is Special Collections, with better discovery and the ability to search, for the first time, deep into finding aids and across all of our collections.
As we move toward a production ready product, you might also occasionally find things not working as Libraries IT finishes putting systems infrastructure in place and finalizes workflows. We want to enable new resources to be indexed and add new features without disrupting the service for our users. Going forward, we will be actively and intentionally tweaking the service to better understand where we need to address gaps in our processes..
And how about after May 7?
As I said, this is just the starting line. The process that comes next is making sure that this service is tailored to meet the needs of our community. We can’t do that without your feedback. This will happen in a number of avenues: through involvement with the UX Cohort or via invitation to join an ad hoc group; but I would also like to invite folks to reach out directly. I’ve been greatly encouraged by the active participation and feedback that we continuously receive from individuals and communities within the Libraries. Much of the conversations over the past months have been conceptual. But after May 7, we will have the ability to not only test assumptions, but really interrogate how users find information in the Libraries. For example, we are collecting detailed analytics which we will use to learn how users are interacting with the interface. It’s time to take the research and best practices around discovery and tailor them to the Ohio State community and beyond.
Please, if you have questions or are interested in continuing to be a part of this conversation – let me know.
–tr
