Category Archives: survey

Your Contribution to Jisc MediaHub’s Quality Improvements

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Last winter some of you took the time to be part of the 2012/13 EDINA user satisfaction survey for Jisc MediaHub. We really appreciate your time and feedback and therefore wanted to share with you some of the highlights from these surveys.

In total 74 of you completed the Jisc MediaHub survey, mostly information professionals. We were really pleased to hear that most respondents found Jisc MediaHub easy-to-use, that it saves them time and that they would recommend Jisc MediaHub to others.

The survey showed that Jisc MediaHub is used by undergraduates, postgraduates and staff, including information professionals. Respondents came from a wide range of subject areas but were particularly concentrated in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences:

Graph showing survey respondents by subject area

We were also pleased to see that survey respondents are using Jisc MediaHub in a variety of ways including finding teaching materials (32%), in their research (28%) and for supporting staff and students (16%).

You can find a report on this year and last year’s user satisfaction survey results on the EDINA Benefits of Services page. We did, however want to share one last area of those surveys – some of your comments about Jisc MediaHub:

“Copyright-cleared content. Very varied range of content and I like the links out to other collections” -Information Professional (various subjects)

“The generous selection of outstanding materials� - Lecturer

“Range of material and mixture of archive and contemporary resources.â€� – Information professional, (various subjects).

As part of our continuing interesting in ensuring that Jisc MediaHub meets your needs and expectations we have also examined suggestions made by you to improve our services. These suggestions are summarised in our Quality Improvement report for 2013.   For instance, you told us that you would like us to:

Improve browsing and searching options

And we are responding by developing an Advanced Search by Place.

You can access the full Quality Improvement report for 2013 along with our responses and actions from the Benefits of Service page. Please contact us at edina@ed.ac.uk if you have any comments on these tables.

We will be asking for your help again when our next user satisfaction survey goes live later this year and we would really appreciate your participation and feedback there.

We love to hear from you at any time of the year – whether through comments here on the blog, via email, on Twitter or Facebook. Do get in touch and let us know what we are doing well, what we could be doing better or any other views on Jisc MediaHub that you’d like to share.

UK Survey of Academic: implications for SUNCAT

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Whilst it is the norm for services such as SUNCAT to carry out an annual survey (reports are here) of users and their use of the service, it is also most important for those running such services to be aware of how users (actual and potential) approach resource discovery generally.  The report entitled UK Survey of Academics 2012 ,funded by Jisc and RLUK and carried out by Ithaka S+R, is therefore of considerable interest.  The report details the findings from a survey of a sample of UK academic staff with just under 3,500 responses received.
One chapter, of particular significance from a SUNCAT perspective, is that entitled Providing materials to academics: formats and sources.  One most interesting finding is:
“In the case of journal collections, about half of all respondents–slightly more in the arts and humanities than in other fields–strongly agreed that they “often would like to use journal articles that are not in [their] library’s print or digital collections.”
(P.38)
Given that SUNCAT’s principal raison d’être is to provide information on the serials’ holdings (print and digital) of major research libraries (there are currently 90 Contributing Libraries) this makes welcome reading.  Of some worry, though, is the response that, when locating information at the outset of research:
“Overall, the largest share of respondents–about 40%–indicated that they begin their research processes at a general purpose search engine on the internet or world wide web. A slightly smaller share–about one-third of respondents–indicated that they begin their research at a specific electronic research resource/computer database. A relatively smaller share–slightly less than 15% each–of respondents reported starting with an online library catalogue or a national or international catalogue or database”.  (p.21)
For a service such as SUNCAT it is vital for all potential users to know it exists and what facilities it provides.  SUNCAT is assisted in alerting users to the existence of the service by information provided on institutional websites and EDINA is very grateful to the many institutions who have promoted the service in this way.  To assist library staff, a leaflet outlining specific ways some organisations had promoted the service was distributed in 2011 and proved to be a useful source of information.  We will be looking anew at the information in the leaflet and updating it where appropriate.  We will also be looking at other ways of promoting the service and bringing it to the attention of potential users and would, of course, welcome any suggestions on ways we might consider.
There was another response in the report of considerable interest to SUNCAT.
Roughly 3 out of 5 respondents indicated that they often or occasionally use library-provided inter-library loan or document delivery services to access journal articles and monographs. (p.39)
The importance of serving inter-library loan staff has long been recognised.  In the recent survey for the provision of feedback on the new interface  there were requests for the inclusion of British Library Codes and email addresses.  BL Codes will be made available in the initial release of the service and it is hoped to provide the email addresses in a future release of the software.
The report, therefore, is of much interest to SUNCAT.  Whilst it does reinforce some of the reasons for the establishment of the service in the first place, it also is a prompt to us to review our promotional activities to try and ensure that all who might have reason to use the service know about its existence.

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SUNCAT Redevelopment Feedback Survey Report

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We made a preview version of the new service available at UKSG in early April and just closed this off a few weeks ago. During this period we put up an online survey and encouraged emails to the EDINA helpdesk to ask our users for their views on the functionality and ease of use of the redeveloped service. A full report is now available on our website.

Overall, the response was very positive and any significant issues which were raised, EDINA were already aware of and are currently busy trying to resolve for the next release, due this autumn. Over 70% of the respondents reported that the preview service was better than the current service and we hope to improve this figure further as we iron out the glitches.

“Very bold design, clear and simple. A great improvement. Will encourage use of the service.”

 

We are happy that the vast majority of respondents found that the basic search facility was easy to use, 89%, and that the newly introduced post-search filters were found to be useful to 83% of respondents. Respondents reported that both the pre and post search filters would be good tools for reducing large result sets and filtering out holdings which might not be of interest, e.g. electronic or print holdings.

“Having the basic phrases in the first drop down box allows an easy search but also one that can still be refined without having to go to advanced search. Limiting locations and institutions is useful, especially for us as a public library as we know a number of locations will not lend so we can limit to those that do.”

Some respondents reported issues related to the display of the results list and the advanced search and work is on-going to resolve these. We were already aware that the Exact Title search was a little too exact – requiring exact matching on punctuation and letter case! Further, the relevancy ranking was not always working as expected, so these are another two areas we are currently concentrating on getting optimised.

The feedback received has been extremely useful in confirming areas we had concerns about and so helping us to prioritise immediate fixes for the next release, while also highlighting other interesting suggestions we can investigate for future releases.

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SUNCAT redevelopment survey reminder

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The survey on the preview of the redeveloped SUNCAT service and the preview itself is available until Monday 13th May. Please do take a few minutes to have a look at the service and let us have your feedback. All comments are very welcome and will provide us with vital information on any areas which require further development. Thank you to all who have responded so far.

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

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SUNCAT Redevelopment Feedback Survey Report

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We made a preview version of the new service available at UKSG in early April and just closed this off a few weeks ago. During this period we put up an online survey and encouraged emails to the EDINA helpdesk to ask our users for their views on the functionality and ease of use of the redeveloped service. A full report is now available on our website.

Overall, the response was very positive and any significant issues which were raised, EDINA were already aware of and are currently busy trying to resolve for the next release, due this autumn. Over 70% of the respondents reported that the preview service was better than the current service and we hope to improve this figure further as we iron out the glitches.

“Very bold design, clear and simple. A great improvement. Will encourage use of the service.”

We are happy that the vast majority of respondents found that the basic search facility was easy to use, 89%, and that the newly introduced post-search filters were found to be useful to 83% of respondents. Respondents reported that both the pre and post search filters would be good tools for reducing large result sets and filtering out holdings which might not be of interest, e.g. electronic or print holdings.

“Having the basic phrases in the first drop down box allows an easy search but also one that can still be refined without having to go to advanced search. Limiting locations and institutions is useful, especially for us as a public library as we know a number of locations will not lend so we can limit to those that do.”

Some respondents reported issues related to the display of the results list and the advanced search and work is on-going to resolve these. We were already aware that the Exact Title search was a little too exact – requiring exact matching on punctuation and letter case! Further, the relevancy ranking was not always working as expected, so these are another two areas we are currently concentrating on getting optimised.

The feedback received has been extremely useful in confirming areas we had concerns about and so helping us to prioritise immediate fixes for the next release, while also highlighting other interesting suggestions we can investigate for future releases.

SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk or the SUNCAT blog at http://suncatblog.blogspot.com

SUNCAT redevelopment survey reminder

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The survey on the preview of the redeveloped SUNCAT service and the preview itself is available until Monday 13th May. Please do take a few minutes to have a look at the service and let us have your feedback. All comments are very welcome and will provide us with vital information on any areas which require further development. Thank you to all who have responded so far.

SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk or the SUNCAT blog at http://suncatblog.blogspot.com

Feedback on the New Look SUNCAT

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As we posted a few weeks ago a preview of the new look SUNCAT service is available at http://test.suncat.ac.uk and a huge thank you to all who have sent us comments so far.

We’ve now put up a short survey and would be very grateful for your input which will help to guide the ongoing development of the service. If you prefer you can also let us have your comments via the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk

We would also encourage you to circulate details of the preview service and the survey as widely as possible.

Both the survey and the preview will only be available until Monday 13th May, but development work will still be continuing and so we will have more posts to keep you up to date with progress.

Please take a few minutes to let us know what you think!

SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk or the SUNCAT blog at http://suncatblog.blogspot.com

SUNCAT Survey Report 2013

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We’ve just published the report from our Benefits and Impact Survey for 2013. The survey was launched back in November and closed at the end of last month.

The report confirms SUNCAT’s primary role as a centralised source of serials information and UK holdings, with 75% of responses stating, either locating serials and articles, or checking bibliographic information, as the primary purposes for using the service.

The key features of the service which are most valued by the respondents include:

  • SUNCAT’s comprehensive coverage
  • Its aggregation and display of serials information and UK holdings
  • The accuracy and currency of the data provided
  • The speed and ease of use of the service  

We are very happy to see that the vast majority of respondents find SUNCAT not only easy or very easy to use (86%) but that it also saves them time (89%). Further, 97% indicated they would recommend the service to others.

“It is such a comprehensive reference source it would take me much longer to check information elsewhere.”

“SUNCAT is easy to use and its coverage of UK serial holdings is great.”

“Very trustworthy, fast and comprehensive. Records are to a very high standard.”

“Find Suncat invaluable. If it wasn’t available I would try to source an alternative. Don’t know what though!”

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. A number of the suggestions related to the data provided by the SUNCAT Contributing Libraries (CLs), both requesting more detailed holdings information and also providing additional information such as licensing restrictions for electronic serials. While this area is not one EDINA has immediate control over we do take note of these ideas, in the hope that if our CLs start recording and linking such information to their serials records, we would be able to start incorporating this into SUNCAT.

However, with regard to suggested improvements related to the SUNCAT interface we are happy to report that a number of these will be addressed as part of the redevelopment of SUNCAT, announced in November and mentioned in the previous posting. These include:

  • Moving the search functionality to the homepage of the service to integrate the service and website more closely
  • Providing a print/electronic serials limit to the search functionality to enable users to pre-filter their search by format
  • Adding print/electronic icons to the holdings display to enable users to more quickly and easily distinguish between print and electronic holdings  

It is also good to know that our users are keen to see the service continue to expand and we will indeed be continuing to add new libraries throughout 2013.

Additional suggestions, described in the report, were also received and we will be investigating the feasibility of these and where possible adding them to a list of requirements for future development work.
SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk or the SUNCAT blog at http://suncatblog.blogspot.com

RDA survey

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SUNCAT is sending out a survey to Contributing Libraries on Monday, 4th
February, to discuss what the libraries are doing with regards to the adoption
of RDA (Resource Description Access), the new cataloguing rules that are due to
replace AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition).  The results will help with integrating RDA
into SUNCAT, for example, in adding new MARC21 codes for display, new indexing
routines, etc. The analysis of the answers will also form the basis of a paper
that has been accepted for publication in Alexandria: the journal of national
& international library and information issues (0955-7490), in a special
RDA-themed issue.

We would be very grateful if our Contributing Libraries
completed this survey. We are happy to receive more than one questionnaire from
any given Contributing Library, as there may be different answers from
different departments, etc. The survey will be open for 3 weeks.
SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk or the SUNCAT blog at http://suncatblog.blogspot.com

New Design for SUNCAT

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As part of the SUNCAT Redevelopment we reported on last week, we will be introducing a new contemporary design for the SUNCAT web interface.

A number of designs were produced by EDINA’s in-house designer, based on a design brief submitted by the SUNCAT team based on

Feedback suggested that the current design was well liked but was starting to look somewhat dated so some key elements of the brief included:

  • Keeping the SUNCAT logo and colours for continuity
  • Keeping the search functionality at the heart of the design
  • Incorporating other elements of the site into the search homepage to reflect a more portal style approach
  • Trying to keep the design clean and simple.

After the initial set of designs was discussed and adapted by the SUNCAT team, the selection was narrowed to two preferred designs which were then circulated to EDINA colleagues for comment.

We were then keen to consult our SUNCAT contributors to involve them in the final selection and to gather feedback which could be incorporated into the ultimate design. A short online survey was made available to SUNCAT contributing libraries for a week at the beginning of November. Sixty responses were received in total, from at least 26 different libraries.

Seventy-two percent of respondents preferred the design displayed below, one percent liked both designs equally and happily none of the respondents reported that they didn’t like either design. The main reasons for preferring the design below included:

  • Simpler, cleaner and more user friendly
  • Preferred colours and images
  • Layout of search and filters on the screen 
  • Having a map of contributing libraries and a newsfeed easily accessible on the homepage

New Design for SUNCAT Interface

We will now be looking at some of the suggestions on how to improve the design, such as:

  • Changing the colour of the “Find Now” to better differentiate it from the limit options
  • Moving the Advanced Search and Browse buttons closer to the main search box
  • Moving the Reset button to beneath the “Find Now” button.
The new design will form part of the beta release of the new platform in spring 2013, please let us know if you have any comments about SUNCAT’s new look in the meantime.
SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk or the SUNCAT blog at http://suncatblog.blogspot.com