WorldCat Local usability studies - summary of findings

Recently, at the American Library Association (ALA) conference, one of my colleagues, Arnold Arcolio, gave a presentation about the WorldCat Local usability studies we've done over the past two years. Most of these studies were conducted in collaboration with partner libraries who piloted WorldCat Local. We've decided to make this summary of findings available on the oclc.org website for anyone:

http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/usability

If you have any questions or comments regarding this summary, please contact Arnold at arnold_arcolio@oclc.org.

What's next?

We are continuing to usability test WorldCat Local and to make improvements to the application based on customer and user feedback we receive through various channels. Our most recent usability testing is being completed at academic and public libraries in Illinois. A few of the concepts we're looking at involve improvements to the search results pages and library filtering, improvements to the search of multiple databases in one interface for metasearching, and improvements to the display of electroinc access on the item record pages.