Matthew Reidsma

Changes to the catalog

After our last usability test, we decided to make a few changes to the catalog to remove duplicate pages and make the site a little more intuitive. The changes were:

• Remove the old “Find Books” landing page, since it duplicated information on the new catalog homepage, confused users with a visible Summon search, and had slightly different search options than the catalog home.
• Change the wording on the link to MeL to match the rest of the catalog: “Search other Michigan Libraries”
• Remove the red on the Nearby on Shelf page heading, since folks thought they had an error when they saw it.

These changes are live now, and I’ve asked Institutional Marketing to redirect the old Find Books page to the catalog to catch any folks who have old links or bookmarks. One other benefit this change has is that “Journal Title” search is now available from the library catalog homepage. (Thanks to Kim for pointing that out!)

The other ideas generated at the last test will likely be fodder for the next test later this month.