I’m working on a practicum this spring with Vanderbilt University Libraries. The libraries have adopted a search and discovery tool called DiscoverLibrary, which is powered by Primo. I’m going to get a few things done by May:
- Design and carry out a study on how students, faculty, and staff use DiscoverLibrary
- Create a guide that library staff members can use when they conduct usability tests on library tools in the future
- Tweak the search algorithm in DiscoverLibrary to see how that changes search behavior in the tool (and hopefully improves things for people using the system)
- Present the results of this information to a group of Vanderbilt librarians
Whew! That’s a lot of stuff to work on. So far, I have worked on my guide and have all the paperwork ready to go for my usability test, which should happen sometime next week.