02/12/2008
RIO MINUTES
December 17, 2007
At the meeting:
Margaret Groesbeck, Susan Kimball, Beth Lang, Barbara Polowy, Bryan Goodwin (chair) and Bonnie Vigeland
Old Business:
521 Audience note for visual materials: RIO felt this was not necessarily helpful for our patrons. We prefer the 650 note "Children's films."
DEP 50: RIO voted on the following language for OPAC screens to display during the re-loading of the Depository items on Jan 3-5 when all circulation transactions will be suspended:
"Due to catalog maintenance on January 3rd, 4th and 5th, you cannot request items or renew loans online. Thank you for your patience."
ExLibris vists:
The AMC representative is organizing the visits on each campus. Dates of the visits are as follows:
Amherst Jan. 22 morning
Hampshire Jan. 22 afternoon
Mt.Holyoke Jan. 23 morning
Smith Jan. 23 afternoon
UMass Jan. 24 morning and afternoon
When the ExLibris representative visits, Smith will demonstrate a usability test with a student and UMass will demonstrate a usability test with a faculty member. Local Aleph issues in both tech services and public services will be discussed on each campus.
Five college visits for new librarians and library staff:
RIO members should collect the names of people who are planning to go on the tour of the libraries on Wed. and Thur. January 16th and 17th.
Usability Survey:
RIO will send our survey results report to the AMC after some editing to emphasize more strongly the major problems that we have identified and to clarify the scope of the problems so that we clearly establish the need for changes to be implemented. RIO would like to submit our summary as soon as possible so that the AMC can work on some of the problems we have identified over the summer. RIO discussed prioritizing the issues that emerged from the testing and focused on the following:
o Finding journals - RIO feels that SFX is the most likely solution for this problem and felt that adding records for print journals to SFX would put all the serials and journals in one place for users to search. We could then change the e-Journal tab in the OPAC to Journals, if all the institutions agree to that change.
o Random sorting of results - RIO strongly urges adopting relevancy ranking of search results.
o Modify search issues - RIO wants to see retention of the original search term and options for narrowing or broadening search with other suggested terms.
o Initial article issue - RIO wants to have the OPAC ignore the initial article in searches.
o Design issues - The survey results identify several design features that make searching difficult for our users (navigation, button size and location, font, color) and a separate survey at Amherst College found dismaying problems of accessibility.
2 other important OPAC problems, ones that were not part of the usability testing results, were noted: the email/save feature which does not work correctly and the need for a visual materials search option on the Basic Search drop down menu. RIO would like to add these 2 issues to our list of what AMC needs to address.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Friday, January 18th at 8:30 am at Hampshire College. And all RIO members will gather at the Lone Wolf restaurant on Friday, February 1st to say good-bye to Margaret Groesbeck who is leaving the committee after many years of hard work.
Respectfully submitted,
Bonnie Vigeland
Recorder for the meeting
