Useful and Usable: Usability Testing for Library Website Redesign

This presentation will describe a website usability study that we conducted at the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries last year and how the results led to a recent redesign of the Libraries’ website. Usability testing is a method of evaluating a website to determine if it is organized in a way that is intuitive. While the results of the study pertain to our website and campus population, we will highlight those insights that might apply to other academic libraries during the course of our presentation. We will also provide tips for doing a website usability study with only a small team on a shoestring budget

Improving Screencast Accessibility for People with Disabilities: Guidelines and Techniques

Screencast video tutorials are increasingly popular in libraries, but may present access problems for people with disabilities unless specific accessibility features are added during screencast creation. This article reviews existing standards for accessible web-based multimedia and gives guidelines on how to create accessible screencasts based on these standards

Improving Primo Usability and Teachability with Help from the Users

In the aftermath of a consortium migration to a shared cloud-based resource management and discovery system, a small college library implemented a web usability test to uncover the kinds of difficulties students had with the new interface. Lessons learned from this study led to targeted changes, which simplified aspects of searching, but also enhanced the librarians’ ability to teach more effectively. The authors discuss the testing methods, results, and teaching opportunities, both realized and potential, which arose from implementing changes

Enhancing the Informatics Evaluation Toolkit with Remote Usability Testing

Developing functional clinical informatics products that are also usable remains a challenge. Despite evidence that usability testing should be incorporated into the lifecycle of health information technologies, rarely does this occur. Challenges include poor standards, a lack of knowledge around usability practices, and the expense involved in rigorous testing with a large number of users. Remote usability testing may be a solution for many of these challenges. Remotely testing an application can greatly enhance the number of users who can iteratively interact with a product, and it can reduce the costs associated with usability testing. A case study presents the experiences with remote usability testing when evaluating a Web site designed for health informatics knowledge dissemination. The lessons can inform others seeking to enhance their evaluation toolkits for clinical informatics products

DHBeNeLux : incubator for digital humanities in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg

Digital Humanities BeNeLux is a grass roots initiative to foster knowledge networking and dissemination in digital humanities in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. This special issue highlights a selection of the work that was presented at the DHBenelux 2015 Conference by way of anthology for the digital humanities currently being done in the Benelux area and beyond. The introduction describes why this grass roots initiative came about and how DHBenelux is currently supporting community building and knowledge exchange for digital humanities in the Benelux area and how this is integrating regional digital humanities in the larger international digital humanities environment

Past and Present Milwaukee Civil Rights Education: the Significant Arenas of Community Activism and Current Digital Archival Collection Assessment

This thesis explores civil rights education as practiced by civil rights activists from the 1960s to the present day using the city of Milwaukee as a geographical focus. The first part of the thesis focuses on the civil rights historical narratives employed throughout the second half of the twentieth century, with a focus on activists in Milwaukee. The first chapter describes the various social realms in which activists employed civil rights education including law, religious organizations, and schools. The second chapter uses 1964 Milwaukee Freedom School curricula as a case study to analyze a historically significant form of civil rights education. The second part of this thesis analyzes the more recent creation of a digital collection as an effective and increasingly relevant educational tool. The final chapter uses the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights Project collection as a case study to consider how digital archival collections can become effective educational tools in academic institutions and beyond. The final chapter contributes to existing literature by modeling assessment methods specific to a digital archival collection. The thesis argues that the March on Milwaukee digital collection is distinctive because of its community outreach initiatives, which have extended a target audience beyond the confines of higher education to at-risk high school students. This thesis finds that local activists, teachers, and scholars have used civil rights narratives to educate and motivate people residing in cities such as Milwaukee, WI, to actively reflect on the causes of racial inequality as well as possible solutions. The case studies involving the 1964 Milwaukee freedom school curricula and the current March on Milwaukee digital collection provide specific evidence of community-driven education that have successfully engaged people who have traditionally been underserved by academic libraries and archives. The thesis analyzes a wide range of primary sources, including archival documents and newspapers, in addition to germane secondary works relevant to the history of race relations in Milwaukee and the United states. This thesis also uses interviews, historical scholarship, and current assessment models relating to digital collections. The evidence gathered from March on Milwaukee developer interviews and secondary scholarship on digital collections supports the idea that Milwaukee civil rights histories have evolved and continue to be relevant in 2014. The thesis concludes that the success of future digital archival collections will depend not merely on making information available to site visitors but also on the ability of librarians and archives to reach out to communities through partnerships and collaborations similar to those associated with the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights Project. Assessment of engagement efforts of this kind will require librarians and archives to complement quantitative measures with qualitative approaches that consider not just how many people access a site for how long, but also the extent to which people engage meaningfully with the information and find it useful and relevant for their own lives

Developing a Penang Cultural Tourism Website Prototype: A User-Centred Design Approach

Most Malaysian tourism website designs are text-heavy. They deliver information but reflect little regard for usability. Malaysian web designers and developers are unaware of the importance of user-centred web designs necessary in order to promote cultural tourism. This paper details the development of a Penang cultural tourism website prototype that employs a user-centred design approach. The website aims to disseminate information about the multicultural traditions of Penang, which include the performing arts, crafts and festivals. In the use of personas, this article seeks to examine the effectiveness and functionality of web pages and subsequently develop a Penang cultural tourism website prototype

Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies

Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies was a collaborative, multi-year open textbook project that engaged faculty authors, librarians, a university press, and OER professionals. The resulting textbook takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of LGBTQ+ issues that helps students grasp core concepts through a variety of different perspectives. The text offers accessible, academically sound information on a wide range of topics, including history, culture, and Queer Theory; an exploration of LGBTQ+ relationships, families, parenting, health, and education; and how to conduct research on LGBTQ+ topics. This case study will cover the project’s transformation through years of development, including engaging a large group of participants, working with a funding body, releasing a beta edition, incorporating feedback, and partnering with a university press