Johan Ragetli Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB Joint OPAC Design Project Johan Ragetli, Library Information...

Johan RagetliJohan Ragetli

Kawartha Pine Ridge DSBKawartha Pine Ridge DSB

Joint OPAC Design Project

Johan Ragetli, Library Information AnalystKawartha Pine Ridge District School Board

http://204.187.140.69/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=kllic



Scope of Project• Migrate to new system (Dynix to Horizon)• Provide improved access to partners’

associated user groups • Increase partnership, develop consortium• Design front end for catalogue

– customize look and operation suitable to all partners

• Initial timelines = one year



Who was involved?PACLAN >> KLLiC

• Kawartha Lakeshore Library Information Consortium Over 100 locations– formerly known as the Peterborough Area

Consortium Library Automation Network.

http://www.kpr.edu.on.ca/boardinfo/services/educ/lrc/lib/kllic_main.htm



Current Partners• Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB

– A Public School Board with 7 high schools initially, but bringing a total of 100 elementary and secondary school libraries.

• Peterborough Victoria Northumberland Clarington Catholic DSB – A separate school board with 6 secondary locations

• Peterborough PL – Public Library serving a municipal population of 70

000 patrons with 2 branches and 1 township library



Critical tasks for new catalogue• One face for KLLiC consortium

- Additional faces for each location within each system

• Scoping... i.e. Ability to search one location at a time, currently not available in iPAC 2.03

• Suitable for public users & school users– Some consistency for students across systems

• Establish Consortium Cataloguing Committee• Link to other catalogues• Link to regional initiatives such as KCC

community portal



Brief ChronologyMay 2002 • Launch of iPAC.

– Single profile. – Out-of-the-box

July 2002 • Training on iPAC System Admin. • Established profiles for each location.

– Includes predefined location limiter.

Sept 2002 • Identified iPAC design team.



Design Team Goals• Clean up functional issues• Test usability

– online evaluations, feedback forms– focus group– site statistics

• Research best practices, sites that work• Create basic prototypes

– use system admin tools– customized templates using XML



Usability Testing• Usability testing… survey, re-design, test, survey…• Reading: Jakob Neilson (useit.com), Darlene Fichter

(USask), Web4Lib-ers, Horizon listserv...• Chose to do task-based testing.

– Location

– Copy information

– Navigation

– Requests

– Help features



Test parameters

• 5 Basic tasks with follow-up questions.

• Responses were timed and observed with little or no intervention.

• Staff and students were interviewed



Usability Test: Task 11. Establish/Find your location.

– Launch the catalogue– Go to your school location

Follow-up: How do you know you’re on correct page or location?



Usability Test: Task 22. Find a non-fiction title

– Find a book on reptiles

– How many copies does the library own?

– Do any other libraries have a copy?

– What is the call number

– Search a different location for reptiles

• Follow-Up: Do you feel confident you could locate the book in the

library given the information you found in the catalogue?



Usability Test: Task 33. Find a fiction title

– Find a book by Robertson Davies at your library

– How many copies are there?– Is it available (checked in)?



Usability Test: Task 44. Find PD material at LRC

– Switch to LRC location

– Find materials with subject “guided reading”

– How many hits?

– Click on “Fountas and Pinell” title

– How many copies?

– What call number?

– Available?

Follow-up:– How would you get one of these titles from LRC?



Usability Test: Task 5

5. Assess overall satisfaction.– What is your overall satisfaction with the new

catalogue?– What did you like?– What didn’t you like?– How would you improve the iPAC?



Usability Test: Summary• Interviewed 10 students, 10 staff

• No big surprises

• Locations very important

• Request buttons misleading

• 19/20 Didn’t use Help

• Tended to use default index (keyword) for all searches

• Wanted more than one limit

• Didn’t like Copy Info below Full Record

• Didn’t “like stuff that doesn’t work”: Requests, E-mailing citations



Usability Test: Next steps• Address as many issues as possible as

revealed in testing phase given the software, time, expertise

• Adjust prototype, make changes

• Repeat process again.



Design Consideration: Locations/Scoping

• Functionality versus design• Created virtual library location to act as default.

– To search all holdings.

– To represent consortium. (KLLiC)

• Initial results confirmed that switching locations was problematic.

• Added Locations page to test page based on Brad Bates work in Florida. (Polk County )

• Limited success. Only one location can be selected as a pre-defined limit.















Investigating Custom templates and stylesheets• Edit or create XSL templates and stylesheets

– To allow greater flexibility in design– Housed on web server which resides at PL location. – Discouraged by vendor. – Difficult to work with for novices and non-

programmers. – Upgrades would overwrite templates requiring any

changes to be tracked, both where pages had been substituted and where minor changes to existing sheets had been made.

– Sales people suggested that vendor would be coming up with several models to choose from in upcoming versions or iterations.





Design Consideration: Custom look• Each partner trained one system administrator• Colours, logos

– each system chose their own

• Menus, options, limits– String variables– Consistent functionality for students across systems

• Displays, tabs– Customizing result lists and information displayed on

record

• Integration with web site



















Outstanding Issues/Next steps• Deciding on global settings/functions/design• Learn XML/XSL• Remove Request buttons and “stuff that doesn’t

work”• Include Multi-pick limiters • Enhance My List• Implement Broadcast Searching, Z39.50 • Introduce Custom Help Sheets• Design Elementary schools interface• Harmonize interfaces, particularly schools



Conclusions• Usability testing provides excellent guide

for implementation

• Remember: Form follows Function

• Got $ ? Hire a web developer/programmer

• Don’t look to catalogue as a portal– Integrate with web sites and other tools

• Partners need to commit to process of testing cycle



Thank You.

Joint OPAC Design Project

http://204.187.140.69/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=kllic

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