I am coming back from beyond (i.e., sabbatical in Canada) to share a report that Lorcan Dempsey discussed on his blog this week.
The Discoverability: Phase One Final Report was produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries (and specifically by a sub-group of Libraries' staff serving on the Libraries' Discoverability Team, which reports to their Web Services Steering Committee.)
This report outlines analysis of current modes of access and discoverability trends for library resources and services, also sharing recommendations to maximize greater user discovery in the future. Our Web Steering Committee has produced a Tactical Plan, and many of the recommendations in this report back up one of our identified tactics: "Increase the discoverability and transparency of Libraries resources and services."
Below are the five major trends shared (taken verbatim from the report):
Trend 1: Users are discovering relevant resources outside traditional library systems.
Google was not driving users to their e-resources (journal articles, etc....) Instead, users going to e-resources were referred from the A-Z list of journals, PubMed, the catalog, Google Scholar, and citation linker. Web page referrals most frequently came from Google. Use of Google Scholar is increasing.
Trend 2: Users expect discovery and delivery to coincide.
While circulation of library materials has decreased in general at UMN, the number of recalls has exploded (undergraduate requests have increased 296% over stats from five years ago).
Trend 3: Increasing usage of portable Internet-capable devices.
UMN does not currently track the usage of their site by devices running mobile operating systems. 1.6% of the site's traffic was from unknown operating systems, a portion of which could have been from mobile devices. The authors state, "There is little reason to expect much traffic from mobile devices when the design of our web pages is not optimized and mobile usability is so poor." Nicely said. As a mobile user, I am beginning to wonder about the utility of mobile sites in general, and if an app (such as iStanford) has more utility for your core group of users.
Trend 4: Discovery increasingly happens through recommending.
This section of the report highlights the importance of exposing collections (both print and digital) through sources like Wikipedia (14.6% of users coming from another site were referred from Wikipedia). Also mentioned is the importance of affinity strings in building a system that automatically recommends relevant resources to the user, according to their profile.
Trend 5: Our users increasingly rely on emerging nontraditional information objects.
Blogs, images, video, and data were mentioned in this section (the use of ArtSTOR has greatly increased over the last year at UMN). The importance of exposing non-print, digital collections is highlighted. (This is something I'm exploring as part of my sabbatical as well.)
The entire report is truly worth a read, including Appendix B, which lists similar discoverability initiatives and imperatives occurring at peer institutions.
The Discoverability: Phase One Final Report was produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries (and specifically by a sub-group of Libraries' staff serving on the Libraries' Discoverability Team, which reports to their Web Services Steering Committee.)
This report outlines analysis of current modes of access and discoverability trends for library resources and services, also sharing recommendations to maximize greater user discovery in the future. Our Web Steering Committee has produced a Tactical Plan, and many of the recommendations in this report back up one of our identified tactics: "Increase the discoverability and transparency of Libraries resources and services."
Below are the five major trends shared (taken verbatim from the report):
Trend 1: Users are discovering relevant resources outside traditional library systems.
Google was not driving users to their e-resources (journal articles, etc....) Instead, users going to e-resources were referred from the A-Z list of journals, PubMed, the catalog, Google Scholar, and citation linker. Web page referrals most frequently came from Google. Use of Google Scholar is increasing.
Trend 2: Users expect discovery and delivery to coincide.
While circulation of library materials has decreased in general at UMN, the number of recalls has exploded (undergraduate requests have increased 296% over stats from five years ago).
Trend 3: Increasing usage of portable Internet-capable devices.
UMN does not currently track the usage of their site by devices running mobile operating systems. 1.6% of the site's traffic was from unknown operating systems, a portion of which could have been from mobile devices. The authors state, "There is little reason to expect much traffic from mobile devices when the design of our web pages is not optimized and mobile usability is so poor." Nicely said. As a mobile user, I am beginning to wonder about the utility of mobile sites in general, and if an app (such as iStanford) has more utility for your core group of users.
Trend 4: Discovery increasingly happens through recommending.
This section of the report highlights the importance of exposing collections (both print and digital) through sources like Wikipedia (14.6% of users coming from another site were referred from Wikipedia). Also mentioned is the importance of affinity strings in building a system that automatically recommends relevant resources to the user, according to their profile.
Trend 5: Our users increasingly rely on emerging nontraditional information objects.
Blogs, images, video, and data were mentioned in this section (the use of ArtSTOR has greatly increased over the last year at UMN). The importance of exposing non-print, digital collections is highlighted. (This is something I'm exploring as part of my sabbatical as well.)
The entire report is truly worth a read, including Appendix B, which lists similar discoverability initiatives and imperatives occurring at peer institutions.
hi ellysa, glad that is also on other's radar. I found this a really interesting read! thanks for sharing.