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

Your Contribution to Jisc MediaHub’s Quality Improvements

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.

SUNCAT Survey Report 2013

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 Benefits and Impact Survey Report

The latest SUNCAT Benefits and Impact Survey Report is now available. The report highlights:

– How the service is being used
– How SUNCAT benefits users
– The current level of satisfaction with the service
– How users would like to see SUNCAT develop

Comments from respondents include:

“There are so many search options which you can use, it just makes my job so much easier!”

“If not for Suncat I would spend a lot of my time trying to locate material”

“More than my work taking longer, the quality of my work (catalogue records) would be lower”

“It’s easy to use, has a broad scope of materials held, and is very simple to use. I recommend it to students as well as library staff.”

For any questions about the report or SUNCAT in general please contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.