Notes from January 3, 2006 Meeting of DLSC

Present: Marshall Breeding, Jody Combs, John Haar, Bill Hook, Dale Poulter, Flo Wilson, Roberta Winjum. Absent: Rick Stringer-Hye and Janice Adlington.

Agenda-- Informal discussions of:

• Upcoming meeting with Research Services committee to discuss the future of the library’s web presence.
• Development of a “Library Test Bed/Market Research” Site.

Notes:

• The committee approved the selection of an additional member for the SFX maintenance project (Rachel Vacek).
• John Haar reported that the Collections Committee has drafted a policy regarding submissions to the VU e-Archive. The draft will be on a future agenda of the DLSC.

The committee discussed the upcoming meeting with the Research Services committee. The discussion topic is the future of the library’s web presence, both in the short term and the longer term. We reviewed our discussion from our last meeting (see minutes for the Dec. 13, 2005 DLSC meeting). The upcoming meeting will occur on Thursday, January 12, at 8:30 a.m. Flo Wilson and Jody Combs will work out the agenda for the meeting. Jody, along with other members of the DLSC, will provide some suggested readings for meeting preparation.

The discussion turned to the suggestion that the library develop a separate site to be used for market research and as a test bed for proposed new services. The committee is clear that this is an initial discussion of this idea. The chair is not asking for a decision regarding implementation.

The inspiration for this idea is “Google Labs” and similar sites. The site would meet the following identifiable needs:

• To provide an additional venue to test and assess demand for proposed new services (is there a “market”?) before investing significant resources in perfecting.
• To further enlist the aid of end-users in developing and refining new services.
• To release new services for testing more rapidly, without being constrained by the academic calendar.
• To develop an additional, on-going communication channel with early adopters regarding new digital services.
• Potentially to develop another cadre of users invested in assisting with the development of new services and ideas for new services.

Examples of the type of service that might be candidates for this site: meta-searching service, Acorn spell-check service, library search browser bar, faculty delivery service, etc. Eventually, all digital projects would use this site as one of the assessment/research tools.

The committee is generally supportive of this idea and made the following observations:

• We would need to find ways to clearly separate the test bed/research environment from production services. Users should be able to easily distinguish between the two and know when to use each.
• While we already have several ways to solicit end-user input, this would provide one additional channel. It might also capture more input from “remote users.”
• The market research function seems critical. Providing a means to determine whether a service might be heavily used, before we invest significant resources to perfect the service, is potentially very valuable.
• While an organized site is quite useful, we should also make it easy to present proposed services at the “point of need.” For example, the production Acorn search screen might have a button that says “Help us Test Acorn Search with Spell-Check.” As with other web based services, we shouldn’t provide only one point of entry to services--even those being researched or under development.
• In many ways, this idea is an organized and systematic way to do what we already do. In the past, we have used focus groups and surveys to help develop and refine services. This organizes those types of efforts.
• This should not be used as a substitute for focus groups and usability studies. It is an additional venue, not a replacement.
• We need to find ways to make it clear when test services are running in a test environment (against a test server—which might be slower or otherwise differ from the production server) and when they are running against a production server. Perhaps it would be useful to have a “banner” or some other method of distinguishing between the two.
• It is important to separate the test bed/market research function from production level services, this warrants a separate site.
• We would need to develop clear procedures for moving tested and proven services from the test bed/research site to the production site.
• This would require significant investment of staff resources—in addition to other things staff are being asked to take on. However, if all project teams are being asked to research end-user/stakeholder interest before implementing new services, this might be an efficient tool for that type of work.
• We need to articulate the relationship between the production level web presence and this test bed/research site. The relationship between the projects supporting both would need to be very clear.
• Are there budgetary implications? Would we need a new server for the test bed site, for example? This would need to be determined.
• Do other libraries do similar things? A few do: BYU, Virginia, there are others. We should research these to see what we might learn from them. Dale Poulter and Jody Combs agreed to provide URLs of sites that we might review.

The chair indicated the committee would continue this discussion at the January 17th meeting of the DLSC. Our next meeting (January 10th) will focus on preparation for the joint DLSC/Research Services meeting.