Discussion
Oct. 1, 2012 meeting: Nicole, Stephanie, Lisa
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- input from our Sept. card-sorting survey
- looking at some peer institutions
- knowledge of our own services and what the Libraries want to promote.
Card-sorting results:
Results were all over the map with many different ideas, names and solutions for grouping much of the info on our site. Our 40 users came up with over 200 different category names! There was conceptual agreement around 3 areas: (search/find/catalogs), (library locations & hours), and (about us/general info). There was not a lot of agreement about all of our guides and help and other services, such as publishing, video support, etc.
We also asked them: "what are the top 3 things you come to the MIT Libraries website to do or find?" Highest counts were for:
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D. We can still add links in the upper bar for certain important things we want to call out, such as Ask Us! (in addition to the navbar links)
Navbar draft 1
Search | Locations/Hours | Borrow/Request | Research Support | Recommended Tools | About Us
Navbar draft 2
Search | Locations/Hours | Using the Libraries | Help | Recommended Tools | About Us
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Areas of agreement
1. We agree that there needs to be a Search category. Later it may become a "discovery" search box that gets embedded into the top of pages. For now it could have a drop-down nav with names similar to our home page search box tabs. We didn't discuss yet whether this page (or a new version of it) should continue to exist: http://libraries.mit.edu/search/index.html
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a. Borrow/Request or b. Using the Libraries
This would contain info such as:
- Your account (Barton)
- Get books and articles delivered from non-MIT libraries: ILB, Borrow Direct
- Requesting/borrowing (from Circ FAQ)
- Course Reserves
- Suggest a purchase
...etc.
6. We would like a category for all of our help options and research support (including publishing), and we recommend putting all options into one category, whether they are mediated, or self-help.
a. Research Support or b. Help
This would include info such as:
- Ask Us!
- Research Guides by Subject
- Publishing help (there could be a whole section of the page for publishing links)
- Library classes & workshops (need a better page for these)
- Data: finding & managing
- Research consultations
- Subject experts, Ask the Expert
- Specifications for Thesis Prepartion (one of the top most hit pages on our site)
.... etc.
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