joint opac design project

Johan RagetliJohan Ragetli

Kawartha Pine Ridge DSBKawartha Pine Ridge DSB

Joint OPAC Design Project

Johan Ragetli, Library Information AnalystKawartha Pine Ridge District School Board

http://204.187.140.69/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=kllic



Scope of Project• Migrate to new system (Dynix to Horizon)• Increase partnership, develop consortium• Provide improved access to partners’

associated user groups• Design front end for catalogue

– customize look and operation suitable to all partners

• Initial timelines = one year



Who was involved?PACLAN >> KLLiC

• Kawartha Lakeshore Library Information Consortium Over 100 locations– formerly known as the Peterborough Area

Consortium Library Automation Network.

http://www.kpr.edu.on.ca/boardinfo/services/educ/lrc/lib/kllic_main.htm



Current Partners• Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB

– A Public School Board with 7 high schools initially, but bringing a total of 100 elementary and secondary school libraries.

• Peterborough Victoria Northumberland Clarington Catholic DSB – A separate school board with 6 secondary locations

• Peterborough PL – Public Library serving a municipal population of 70

000 patrons with 2 branches and 1 township library



Critical tasks for new catalogue• One face for KLLiC consortium

- Additional faces for each location within each system

• Scoping... i.e. Ability to search one location at a time, currently not available in iPAC 2.03

• Suitable for public users & school users– Some consistency for students across systems

• Establish Consortium Cataloguing Committee• Link to other catalogues• Link to regional initiatives such as KCC

community portal



Brief ChronologyMay 2002 • Launch of iPAC.

– Single profile. – Out-of-the-box

July 2002 • Training on iPAC System Admin. • Established profiles for each location.

– Includes predefined location limiter.

Sept 2002 • Identified iPAC design team.



Design Team Goals• Clean up functional issues• Test usability

– online evaluations, feedback forms– focus group– site statistics

• Research best practices, sites that work• Create basic prototypes

– use system admin tools– customized templates using XML



Usability Testing• Usability testing… survey, re-design, test, survey…• Reading: Jakob Neilson (useit.com), Darlene Fichter

(USask), Web4Lib-ers, Horizon listserv...• Came up with task based testing.

– Location

– Copy information

– Navigation

– Requests

– Help features



Usability Test

5 Basic questions with follow-up questions

1. Establish/Find your location. – Launch the catalogue– Go to your school location

Follow-up: How do you know you’re on correct page or location?



Usability Test. 22. Find a non-fiction title

– Find a book on reptiles

– How many copies does the library own?

– Do any other libraries have a copy?

– What is the call number

– Search a different location for reptiles

• Follow-Up: Do you feel confident you could locate the book in the

library given the information you found in the catalogue?



Usability Test: 33. Find a fiction title

– Find a book by Robertson Davies at your library

– How many copies are there?– Is it available (checked in)?



Usability Test: 44. Find PD material at LRC

– Switch to LRC location

– Find materials with subject “guided reading”

– How many hits?

– Click on “Fountas and Pinell” title

– How many copies?

– What call number?

– Available?

Follow-up:– How would you get one of these titles from LRC?



Usability Test: 5

5. Assess overall satisfaction.– What is your overall satisfaction with the new

catalogue?– What did you like?– What didn’t you like?– How would you improve the iPAC?



Usability Test: Summary• Interviewed 10 students, 10 staff

• No big surprises

• Locations very important

• Request buttons misleading

• 19/20 Didn’t use Help

• Tended to use default index (keyword) for all searches

• Wanted more than one limit

• Didn’t like Copy Info below Full Record

• Didn’t “like stuff that doesn’t work”: Requests, E-mailing citations



Usability Test: Next steps• Address as many issues as possible as

revealed in testing phase

• What will software, time, expertise allow

• Be prepared to adjust prototype as you go

• Repeat process again.



Design Consideration: Locations/Scoping• Functionality versus design• Created virtual library location to act as default.

– To search all holdings. – To represent consortium. (KLLiC)

• Initial results confirmed that switching locations was problematic.

• Added Locations page to test page based on Brad Bates work in Florida. (Polk County )

• Limited success. Only one location can be selected as a pre-defined limit.



Investigating Custom templates and stylesheets• Edit or create XSL templates and stylesheets

– To allow greater flexibility in design– Housed on web server which resides at PL location. – Discouraged by vendor. – Difficult to work with for novices and non-

programmers. – Upgrades would overwrite templates requiring any

changes to be tracked, both where pages had been substituted and where minor changes to existing sheets had been made.

– Sales people suggested that vendor would be coming up with several models to choose from in upcoming versions or iterations.



Design Consideration: Custom look• Each partner trained one system administrator• Colours, logos

– each system chose their own

• Menus, options, limits– String variables– Consistent functionality for students across systems

• Displays, tabs– Customizing result lists and information displayed on

record

• Integration with web site



Outstanding Issues/Next steps• Deciding on global settings/functions/design• Learn XML/XSL• Remove Request buttons and “stuff that doesn’t

work”• Multi-pick limiters • My List• Broadcast Searching, Z39.50 • Custom Help Sheets• Elementary schools interface• Harmonize interfaces, particularly schools



Conclusions• Usability testing provides excellent guide

for implementation

• Form follows function

• Got $ ? Hire a web developer/programmer

• Don’t look to catalogue as a portal--Integrate with web sites and other tools

• Partners need to commit to process



Thank You.

Joint OPAC Design Project

http://204.187.140.69/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=kllic

joint opac design project

Documents