We received some fantastic entries! I especially appreciate the projects that employed UX research methods to inform their designs. If you are so inclined, you can vote on the projects or just have a look at the individual projects:

CataLIST

“…a recommender system could be developed to utilize this rich set of knowledge to curate subsets of the overall library collections, which could then be used to make recommendations to users. A large number of these subsets from across the university could be interconnected and used to surface new content to users, enhance their experience, and break down artificial barriers created by different subject areas.”

MyLibrary Mobile App

“Ever lend a book to a friend? Ever wish they would bring it back? Forget who you lent it to in the first place? MyLibrary will finally let you keep track of your personal collection.”

MLibrary Search
Designs for an improved multi-search interface

Aoide: Virtual Browsing Exploration for MLibrary Audio Collection

A-oi-de [ey-oi-dee] – noun: “A virtual browsing system that aims to facilitate new methods of interpreting search results through virtualized representations of audio CD materials for the University of Michigan’s Music Library.”

FilmGrid

A visual browser for Askwith Media Library

We often get interface requests that seem perfectly reasonable and simple but once we start to work out the details, it becomes clear that it’s much more complex. It seems like more and more we are faced with interface issues that just seem nearly impossible to solve. Labels seem to be the hardest of all.

I’ve come to the conclusion that an ideal label is: true, short, and meaningful but for any complex need, you can’t have all three at once.

Example:

In our library catalog, we want to provide users a clear way to easily skim search results for items that have full-text online by designating their online status using an icon and label. However, we can’t just use the label “Full-text” because it’s not true since some of these items aren’t actually text but are images, audio, video, etc. On top of that, multi-volume materials (newspapers, journals, magazines) may have mixed full-text access (e.g., vols 1-20 are full-text but 21-44 are not). We currently use the label “available online” which is short and meaningful but isn’t exactly true since not all the items in the records are truly available online. We’re currently thinking about changing it to “electronic resources,” which isn’t very meaningful. Another alternative we’re testing is “some content fully available” which is true but isn’t exactly short or meaningful. In fact, preliminary results of our usability testing shows that students recognize this is an accurate label but say wouldn’t be inclined to pay attention to it. This leads me to think that for this particular task, going with something meaningful & short (but not exactly true) might be our best option.

Suggestions welcome!

It offers standard features like catalog search, locations & hours, etc., but also allows you to view a map of where available computers are and webcams of the libraries including the line at the coffee shop. Love it.

Read about the interface: www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/about.html
View a demo of the site: www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/home/?browse=iphone

They also made a fun video to promote it:

• Adobe’s Kuler Browse color pallets or make your own from flickr photos!
  
• Kris’s Color Stripes This blog is completely dedicated to making color palettes out of beautiful photographs and is great for anyone seeking inspiration or eye candy.
• Color Blender This tool that lets you set a color and it suggests complementary colors to fill out your palette.
• Color Jack I just discovered this one and I think it’s super. Choose a point on the color wheel and it will show you different color combinations (complementary, analogous, etc.) to go with it.



• The Daily Slurp Enter a couple of colors to view a showcase of other websites sporting those colors.

http://tutorialblog.org/designing-for-the-iphone-resources/

I’d also add 2 nice omnigraffle stencils: Ultimate iPhone Stencil and Mobile – iPhone.

I started with libraries that offer mobile versions of their library website. I’m also collecting Mobile OPACs, databases and non-library interfaces – so I’ll share those another time. Thanks to Superpatron for gathering a list of mobile versions of library web sites that I used as my starting point.

I’ve noticed that many of the mobile versions of library websites are basically lists of links (a few allow searching) that have no applied style. This seems to work most of the time. However, on the iPhone at least, some were a little difficult to use. Most of the interfaces required that I zoom in to read, click links, enter a search, etc. Ideally a mobile interface should actually be designed specifically for mobile devices… and when possible, designed specifically for various types of mobile devices. Now, as a quick disclaimer, I’ve only looked at these on the iPhone so they may function and look completely different on other devices.

My favorite interface I found was from the Yale Medical Library because it has obviously been designed with the specific needs of the mobile user in mind. I didn’t have to zoom, the search box and each link is styled to be easily clickable and it fit my screen perfectly.

Here are screen shots of more or less all the ones I’ve found so far (I found a few more but they were fairly identical to another one I already had). Let me know if there are others I missed!

One of the topics of conversation was the big footer trend. Our web designer described it as kind of a “mullet” (you know, business in front, party in back) because it lets you devote all the main screen real estate to serious content and then put all the fun stuff (like news & events, flickr images, featured/spotlight content, etc.) hanging out at the bottom.

The University of Louisville has a nice example of a big footer:
http://louisville.edu/

The group had mixed feelings about this web trend. What do ya’ll think?

And BTW – Seb Chan’s Powerhouse blog Fresh + New(er) is one of my favorites and a fantastic source for interesting discussions about digital media, access systems, interface design, tagging and web2.0. I also love their opac/online collections site (really, it’s super cool, go play with it).

More info here:

• Flickr Commons
• Flickr blog post
• Fresh + New(er) blog post
]]> http://userslib.com/2008/04/07/powerhouse-museum-joins-the-commons-on-flickr/feed/ 0 http://userslib.com/2008/03/26/library-web-design-search-box-round-up/ http://userslib.com/2008/03/26/library-web-design-search-box-round-up/#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:12:31 +0000 Suzanne http://userslib.com/2008/03/26/library-web-design-search-box-round-up/ If you could only have one single feature on your library web page… what would it be?

Search, right? Except library searches don’t usually work like Google (yet)… That doesn’t mean library websites should hide their search boxes, all tucked away in the corner.

Here are a few lovelies I thought I’d highlight. I tried to stick mostly to search boxes that let the user choose which “silo” to search (so, more than just a web page search or catalog search) but a few single searches were worth including.

University of Virginia Library
Now that’s a dedication to giving up some screen real estate! It won’t even fit in my blog template. I bet this one doesn’t get missed. It also has a fresh “2.0″ feeling (as does the rest of the site). Oh, and one of the tabs is for Google Scholar… interesting!


British Library
The search box is in a very prominent location, and it’s very clear about what is being searched. The little descriptions of what each search option includes is a fantastic idea and I bet does a lot to solve those pesky terminology problems.


Free Library of Philadelphia
I’m not actually sure I like how you have to select the box to do a site search only… (I’d prefer it not have the message above about what’s being searched and instead have select boxes below that say “catalog,” “databases,” and “site search” and all are selected by default). However, I find their overall design irresistible and I appreciate that the “FIND” area is a good 1/3 of the main body content!


University of North Carolina Libraries
When you select a different tab – the options under the text box change. Nicely designed and seems easy enough to use.


Vancouver Public Library
Catalog search only, but I really like how well it’s integrated into the overall site design. Very simple, yet still stands out.


Yale University Library
This is the most simple example but simple is sometimes hard to do. It has a good amount of white space around it that helps set it out from the rest of the site.


I found a few more nice onces – All are in my Search Box flickr set.

Any suggestions for other sites that have a nice, big search box?

]]> http://userslib.com/2008/03/26/library-web-design-search-box-round-up/feed/ 1