SUNCAT 2015 Survey Report

We’ve just made the report from the latest SUNCAT survey available on our website. The survey was conducted by Jisc in early summer and the feedback we received has been invaluable in helping us to identify any areas which need improvement or development to keep the service relevant to our users’ current requirements.

The vast majority of respondents were Information Professionals from a range to institutions, including HE, FE, the NHS and national libraries.

User affiliation2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two most popular reasons for using SUNCAT were related to:

  • Locating serials for library users
  • Checking serials’ bibliographic information

Purpose

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Respondents favourite features of the service were SUNCAT’s:

  • Speed and ease of use
  • Accuracy and currency of data provided
  • Aggregation of serials and holdings data
  • Comprehensive coverage
  • Holdings information and display

Over 70% of respondents reported that SUNCAT saved them time:

“I can go to quality records easily, trusting the information there, without wasting time browsing in places like COPAC etc�

 “Enables me to locate locations to apply to for ILLs without needing to check individual library catalogues or use Worldcat which is often unreliable�

 “There are a number of things I can see at a glance from the result page. When upgrading serial records, I can quickly move between several records in the SUNCAT display and the layout is easy to navigate.�

 “It is a more convenient union catalogue to use than copac for searching journals only, as it immediately shows all available holdings data for different institutions on each catalogue record. It also seems to run faster than both copac and Search25 much of the time�

  • 77% reported that the effectiveness of the SUNCAT search was either good or very good
  • 74% reported that with regard to ease of use SUNCAT was either good or very good
  • 74% indicated that their overall satisfaction with the service was either good or very good

Respondents were also asked how likely they would be to recommend SUNCAT and why

“In terms of locating UK serials information it’s unrivalled. Copac is not as comprehensive, Worldcat a lot more unwieldy.â€�

 “Very useful for checking journals holdings for lots of libraries at once – ideal for sourcing locating for ILLsâ€�

 “As it is based on British libraries’ holdings it often records more obscure and rarer European periodicals, especially in foreign languages, than perhaps WorldCat. It is invaluable as a source of bibliographic information on serials as well as a record of quite detailed library holdings.â€�

 “It is so useful to have all serials in one catalogue to locate which library has what you want. Also saves a lot of time.�

 “Very clear interface. Comprehensive coverage.�

Finally users were asked for suggestions for improvements to the service. These included:

  • Better deduplication of records for the same title
  • Improved exact title search
  • Improving the visibility of the advanced search and browse options
  • Enabling viewing of older as well as current tables of contents
  • Providing a reset search button to clear previous search terms

The complete list or suggestions and our response to them can be found in the full report. We will be reviewing and evaluating each suggestion to enable us to prioritise our development plans over the next year.

Overall the results of the survey are very positive for SUNCAT. Respondents continue to have a high level of satisfaction with the service, finding it fast and easy to use. The redeveloped search platform has now had the opportunity to become embedded and appears to have been well received. However, the results also highlight a number of areas where improvements could be made. EDINA is aware of and has development plans around some of these and will investigate others as potential future developments.

 

 

Five Reasons We’d Love You To Take Our MediaHub User Experience Survey

For the last few weeks you may have noticed a new link appearing on MediaHub, both in the menu bar (see image below) and popping up as you browse and search, which points to our user experience survey.
Image of the Survey Link in the MediaHub Survey

If you have already taken part, then sincere thanks from the MediaHub team! If not then we hope these five reasons will help you understand why you taking a few minutes out of your day to respond to our survey means so much to us…

1. Tell us how you really feel

Your honest feedback means the world to us. Yes, even the less flattering comments.

In the last year we have enhanced the quality of video provided in MediaHub, we’ve been developing a new iOS App (due to launch imminently), we’ve been working on our help and support resources, we’ve added new external collections… But do you like what we’ve done? The User Experience Survey works a little like a school report for us – it helps us understand if we are focusing on the right areas, if you are happy with our work, and where you think we should be aiming for. Just be honest with us, be helpful, let us know what you’d like us to be doing.

Crowd of happy, rosy-faced clubbers (PYMCA, 2003)

Crowd of happy, rosy-faced clubbers (PYMCA, 2003)

2. Help shape the future

From improved citation information within the service, to those new mobile apps, your feedback throughout the year helps us ensure that MediaHub continues to meet your needs, and those of your fellow MediaHub users, fans, and critical friends. We love talking to you at events, meeting you at webinars, and hearing from you via the Helpdesk but we would love to hear from more of you and the survey helps us to hear from a lot of people all at once. And the more people complete our user experience survey, the better chance we have of understanding what you love about MediaHub, what we could do more of, what we could do less of, what we could do better, and what we should be focusing on in the future.

"Dashboard of Ford Explorer" (Getty Images, 18-12-2008)

“Dashboard of Ford Explorer” (Getty Images, 18-12-2008)

3. Show off your own achievements

One of the things we get most excited about is hearing about MediaHub is used in practice, how you are using our service in your day to day teaching, learning and research. And we are just as keen to help you share your experience and best practice with others, which is why in this year’s survey we are asking you whether you would be interested in providing us with a guest blog post or case study on your use of MediaHub. If you say yes, then your story about how you use MediaHub could be appearing on this very page and inspiring your peers and fellow MediaHub users soon!

We really would love to help you show off your own achievements, just let us know that you’d be happy to take part!

Terry Spink's parents discuss their son's gold medal (ITV Late Evening News, ITN Source, 01-12-1956)

Terry Spink’s parents discuss their son’s gold medal (ITV Late Evening News, ITN Source, 01-12-1956)

4. Help us to support you better

We want to support you whenever you need us to. We are therefore very keen to hear how you find our help and support resources – including this blog. The more we understand what you find useful, and what you would like us to do differently, the better the support we can provide. We are here to help you make the very best use of our diverse array of videos, images and sound, but you are the best people to tell us how we can do that… Do you want more webinars? Would you like more flyers and posters for sharing around campus? Would you like new widgets or digital training materials? Tell us!

Screenshot from the Explore Jisc MediaHub support video

Screenshot from the “Explore Jisc MediaHub” support video

5. Delight the MediaHub Team 

Whether you have lovely things to say, or constructive criticism to share, we love hearing from you. It really truly makes our week!

If you can spare 5-10 minutes from your day to complete our survey we promise you that we will be listening to what you have to say. Your comments help us to plan future developments, they contribute to how we plan future training, support and learning materials, and they also help us to reflect on where our own successes have been.

Some of the people behind MediaHub (L-R: Nicola, Lorna, Mark, Catherine, Niall, Viv).

Some of the people behind MediaHub (L-R: Nicola, Lorna, Mark, Catherine, Niall, Viv).

We will be closing our survey at the end of this week so thank you again for reading this far, and get those responses to us by the 12th June please!

Finally we should also add that we are, of course very happy to hear your honest feedback at any point in the year, not just whilst our survey is running. If you ever have a comment, question or just want to chat with us, you can leave a comment here on the blog, you can email us (via edina@ed.ac.uk), reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook, or give the EDINA Helpdesk a call (on +44 (0)131 650 3302).

Further resources

 

User satisfaction survey

After the launch of the new look service last spring we asked you to give us your opinion of the new interface and features. We thank all of you who responded to this survey, the results have fed back into the service and we are using your comments to inform the continued development of the SUNCAT interface.

You can view a summary of the last survey, with a list of the planned actions resulting from this.

This year we would again appreciate your input to help us improve the service by answering some slightly different questions.

Your feedback is vital in helping us to identify and prioritise areas for further development, so we would be very grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete this survey which will remain open until Friday 29th May.

We would not only appreciate your comments but would also encourage you to circulate the survey details as widely as possible, both to your colleagues and end-users.

Thank you in anticipation!

Report on the Survey of the New Look Service

We’ve just published the report from the survey we conducted on the new look SUNCAT. The survey ran from the end of May to the end of June 2014.

The results of the survey were largely very positive but it did highlight a few areas where we can focus on making improvements.

The vast majority of respondents, 88%, found SUNCAT “Quite Easy” or “Very Easy” to use. Five percent reported that they found SUNCAT “Very Difficult” to use and on further investigation this was revealed to be due to a compatibility problem with older versions of Internet Explorer. However, as soon as we noticed these responses we investigated and we believe that these issues are now resolved, see the blog post: Problems using the new service on the IE8 browser

Further, 91% of respondents indicated that they found the new service better than the original one.

The most popular features on the new SUNCAT with the highest proportion of respondents reporting that they were either “Very useful� or “Quite useful� were:

  • Links to library’s local catalogues in the holdings display (91%)
  • Icons differentiating print and online holdings in the holdings display (90%)
  • Electronic only/non-electronic only format limit on the advanced search page (86%)
  • More search options on the advanced search page (86%)
  • Library information pages (linked to from library name in the holdings display) (82%)
Feature Popularity (Percentage of Respondents Reporting the Feature as Useful or Very Useful)
Links to library’s local catalogues in the holdings display 91
Icons differentiating print and online holdings in the holdings display 90
Electronic only/non-electronic only format limit on the advanced search page 86
More search options on the advanced search page 86
Library information pages (linked to from library name in the holdings display) 82
Results automatically ranked by relevance 77
Post-search filters on left-hand side of the results screen 75
More flexible and granular library and location limits on the basic search page 68
Option to choose how many results to view per page 67
Expanded table of contents (available on more titles) 63
Auto-suggestions on entering search terms 54
Map of all Contributing library locations on the basic search page 26
Newsfeed from the SUNCAT Blog on the basic search page 17

 

Respondents were also asked to comment on their favourite features. The most popular features were the format limiting, format filtering and format icons.

“I really like being able to tell at a glance whether a library has print or online holdings for a particular journal.�

“… is especially useful as it alerts to licensing issues etc. and therefore prevents requests that will fail and saves time in getting information to the library user.�

Second to these were the additional library information pages and the links to local catalogues:

“The improved links through to library information and the links to the local library catalogue is a big improvement.�

“The new library information pages are very helpful as I work in Interlibrary loans and this feature gives me important information very quickly without having to try and locate it on the library’s own website or in the BL’s directory of library codes.â€�

Followed by the clear design, ease of use and general usefulness of the new service:

“Cleaner, easier to read and navigate�

“much nicer interface – much more obvious in terms of how to use itâ€�

We also used the survey to find out what improvements our users would like to see in SUNCAT so that we can use this information to plan and prioritise our future developments. The following table summarises the suggestions and EDINA’s responses.

Suggested Improvement EDINA Response
Ensure the new service is compatible with older browsers We have investigated this and believe that the necessary changes have now been implemented
Add more libraries We will continue to expand the coverage of the service and are currently in the process of adding new libraries
Improve deduplication We are gathering information about suggested matches on the service and will use this information to inform the development of an improved matching algorithm which should improve deduplication in the long term.
Improve holdings information Unfortunately, we have no control over this as we rely on the holdings information supplied to us by our Contributing Libraries
A bulk upload facility of ISSNs to enable scarcity checks We are in the process of developing a holdings comparison service which should assist with scarcity checking
UKRR libraries limit We are in the process of developing tailored or customised views onto SUNCAT, one of which could be for the UKRR.
Improve relevance ranking We will investigate possible improvements in this area.
Reinstate subject heading browsing This will be made available in an upcoming release
Provide better options for printing holdings dataPrinting results. It would be helpful if you could print a short summary with selected location details without the need to print irrelevant web-page data too. We will investigate possible improvements in this area.
Provide information about policies on ILL provision and licensing agreements We will investigate the possibility of pulling this information from sources such as KB+, while bearing in mind that recent changes to UK Copyright Law might make licensing information less relevant for ILL purposes.
Move the British Library code to appear beside the library name This information is displayed on the Library Information page which can be accessed by clicking on the Library name in the holdings display. We feel that adding this information directly to the holdings display could complicate and confuse the display for general users, but we will keep this request under consideration.
Split up electronic and print holdings or show more clearly We are working to improve how the format filtering works and will consider adding the format limit to the basic search page.

 

The results of the survey are very positive for the new SUNCAT service and indicate it now provides an overall improved platform from which to continue to develop the service further.

Unfortunately there were some initial problems with compatibility with older browsers, which the survey very usefully highlighted. Otherwise the responses to the new features are encouraging, with the vast majority of respondents finding the new service easy to use and an improvement on the original service.

Key features appear as those related to identifying, distinguishing between, limiting to or filtering out particular journal formats. This reflects a high number of users wanting to focus on non-electronic formats due to licence restrictions on providing copies from electronic formats. However, the additional information provided on the library pages and the links to local catalogues also proved popular.

We will give further consideration to each of the suggested improvements and where possible investigate developing these as part of future releases. In some cases the developments are already in the pipeline and the survey provides an additional confirmation of their potential usefulness.

SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk

Two Surveys Seeking Your Views on Jisc MediaHub

This month there are two surveys that Jisc MediaHub users should keep an eye out for and may want to let students and colleagues know about.

Firstly, we are currently running our annual Jisc MediaHub User Feedback survey for 2013/14. You will see a link on the main menu next time you browse Jisc MediaHub and you may be asked to complete the survey via a pop up box during your next visit. We really value all of your comments and feedback from these surveys – they help us understand what we are doing well, what we could do better, and how you use Jisc MediaHub in your own practice.

The second survey is running as part of Project Enriched Playlists, a new project funded by Jisc, and is open to anyone working with audio-visual collections including (but not limited to) Jisc MediaHub users. The BUFVC are running a short survey to find out how audio-visual collections in Jisc MediaHub might be developed for Higher Education (HE) into ‘enriched playlists’.

They are really interested to hear the views of the following people from any/all subject areas:

  • Students
  • Researchers
  • Lecturers
  • Librarians
  • Support staff

All participants who submit a completed survey will be entered into a prize draw to win an iPad mini 16GB (Wi-Fi). Follow the link to take the survey.

This project will help us understand and document how HE would like to use and get the most out of Jisc MediaHub’s moving image, audio and stills collections. Both the BUFVC project team and the Jisc MediaHub team would be very grateful for your help. Please complete the survey by Friday 13 June 2014.

Find out more about the project via the project page, or contact Hetty Malcolm-Smith, Project Manager at BUFVC, directly via email.

 

Your Feedback is Requested on the New Look SUNCAT

Following on from the launch of the new look SUNCAT as the primary service in March, and before finally switching off the old service , we would like to gather your feedback via a short survey

Your input is very valuable to us as it is integral to the planning of our future developments and priorities. You can find summary reports of previous user satisfaction surveys and the resulting planned actions, many of which have already been implemented, on the EDINA website.

We would be really grateful for your time and comments and would also encourage you to circulate the survey details as widely as possible.

The survey will be available until Friday 27th June 2014.

You can also continue to email any comments to edina@ed.ac.uk or to use the “Contact” link at the bottom of all the SUNCAT pages.

Thank you in advance!

SUNCAT Quality Improvements

We carried out a user satisfaction survey on the service between November 2012 and January 2013. A report of the results was published earlier this year, see our post from February 2013. Overall, the response was very positive with the vast majority of respondents finding SUNCAT not only easy or very easy to use (86%) but that it also saved them time (89%). Further, 97% indicated they would recommend the service to others. However, we did also ask for comments and suggestions on how SUNCAT could be improved. This information is particularly useful for us as we work on redeveloping the SUNCAT interface. We have now analysed and summarised these suggestions into in a Quality Improvement Report with tables detailing our responses and actions. They have been graded using the following formula:

  1. Done or due for release soon
  2. Do soon, requires little resource
  3. Already planned
  4. Put on to-do list, needs more effort
  5. Not achievable or beyond scope

We are pleased to report that a large number of suggestions have been graded with “1. Done or due for release soon”, as they have been incorporated into the first release of our redeveloped service – please watch out for imminent news on this!

Please contact us at edina@ed.ac.uk if you have any other suggestions for further improvements or comments on this report.

Share