An evaluation on the Web page navigation tools in university library Web sites In Turkey

Web technologies and web pages are primary tools for dissemination of information all over the world today. Libraries are also using and adopting these technologies to reach their audiences. The effective usage of these technologies can be possible with user centered design. Web pages that have user centered design help users to find information without being lost in the web page. As a part of the web pages, navigation systems have a vital role in this context. Effective usage of navigation systems protect users from being lost in the web page. This study gives information about Turkish higher education institutions’ library web pages and their navigation systems. This study also contains evaluations of these web pages from web usability framework. This study provides an insight about design of library web pages in terms of usability factors and navigation systems. Today many libraries are used web technologies effectively. There are many libraries that are using web pages and web 2.0 technologies for their audiences. This study in general meaning contains how user centered design can be done and how navigation systems effectively can be set for web pages of LIS institutions in Turkey higher education institutions sample

How to Stop Being a Librarian: Student-Centered Library Guide Design and Content Curation

Objective: The objective of this paper is to discuss information seeking behavior of digital-native students verses librarians and how this affects the design, layout, and content of effective library guides. Topics covered will include effective content curation for guides, web-user’s behavior patterns, design consistency, and tips & tricks for integrating design and content best practices across a library guide system. Methods: Springshare’s LibGuides is a platform that allows librarians to create and design topic-centered web pages called Library Guides which contain curated content; including library resources. While librarians generally follow webpage design best-practices in their library guides to increase their usage, these efforts may be undermined by the content that is later added to the guide. According to Sinkinson et al, most library guide content reflects the information seeking behavior of librarians instead of the information seeking behavior of their students. This leads to guides that students found “overwhelming and cluttered” despite librarians recognizing that students have different user behaviors and needs when designing their guides (Portal Libr Acad. 2012; 12(1):63-84. doi:10.1353/pla.2012.0008). This paper will discuss how librarians can use basic web-user behavior patterns, such as page scanning, viewing patterns, satisficing, and scrolling, to help them step into a student mindset to better curate their guide content and reinforce its use with their guide design. Basic strategies for implementing these changes across large library guide systems will also be covered. Results: A comparison of guide content clicks from Springshare’s LibGuide statistics platform, before and after the adoption of student-centered, best-practices guide design layout and content curation, shows a significant increase in the use of guide content. Conclusions: Using basic web-user behavior patterns, librarians can create best-practices for guide development that contain student-centered content along with guide layouts that assist students in finding convenient, curated, library resources

User-Centered Comparison of Web Search Tools

This study explores a user-centered approach to the comparative evaluation of the Web search tool ProThes against popular all-purpose search engines Yandex and Google. An original research design was developed. Data were collected from 12 volunteers who performed 48 search tasks in total. Main outcomes include: (1) search strategy supported through ProThes can be quite effective for focused Web search and (2) ProThes’ interface and system performance must be improved.The research was supported in part by the Russian Fund of Basic Research, grant # 03-07-90342

User centred evaluation of an automatically constructed hyper-textbook

As hypertext systems become widely available and their popularity increases, attention has turned to converting existing textual documents into hypertextual form. An important issue in this area is the fully automatic production of hypertext for learning, teaching, training, or self-referencing. Although many studies have addressed the problem of producing hyper-books, either manually or semi-automatically, the actual usability of hyper-books tools is still an area of ongoing research. This article presents an effort to investigate the effectiveness of a hyper-textbook for self-referencing produced in a fully automatic way. The hyper-textbook is produced using the Hyper-TextBook methodology. We developed a taskbased evaluation scheme and performed a comparative usercentred evaluation between a hyper-textbook and a conventional, printed form of the same textbook. The results indicate that the hyper-textbook, in most cases, improves speed, accuracy, and user satisfaction in comparison to the printed form of the textbook

E-methods in literary production: integrating e-learning in creative writing

This paper discusses the integration of e-learning in creative writing. The online approach to the teaching of creative writing takes into account today’s Malaysian youth and their fascination with computer technology. It is this appeal of innovation in electronics and knowledge that leads an educator to design an on-line approach to a creative writing course. The theoretical construct used to support the discussion is Anderson’s theory that on-line learning is knowledge-, community-, assessment-, and learner-centered. The writer, who is also the course developer, analyses a poetry-writing activity, which students undertake, and the e-portfolio used in the course. To analyze the processes involved in this creative writing exercise Macherey’s (1978) Theory of Literary Production is adapted and utilized. This theory, which regards literary production as a process imitating that of a production line, provides the methodology and conceptual framework for analyzing the raw materials collected by the students and their transformation during the writing process. This paper thus addresses the benefits of e-learning in a creative writing context