Library User Experience Research blog: Welcome!

How do our patrons categorize library terms?

In August and September, we ran a survey from the Library's homepage asking students and faculty to categorize terms used throughout our website and instruction. The goal was to gain some insight into how our patrons interpret these terms and which are a point of confusion.

Respondents were simply asked how they would categorize 16 items. We focused in on content types and research tools, and omitted terms where we had high confidence in how our patrons would categorize them (e.g. article and book). Here's an alphabetical list of the terms; the order of the items was randomized in the survey for each respondent:

• Data
• Database
• Databases A-Z
• Dissertation
• Encyclopedia
• Google Scholar
• Journal
• Literature
• Publication
• Research starter
• ScholarWorks
• Statistics
• Tests & Measures
• Thesis
• Thoreau
• Ulrich's: Verify Peer Review

The four categories were intended to reflect how most libraries--including Walden--organize these items on their websites: by content type and by research tool. I've read usability studies that have found students often don't think in terms of these categories they're researching, which is one big appeal of the discovery service. But we don't know what we don't know, so we'll start from our current approach. The categories:

• Content I can read or view for information
• Search tool or resource I can use to find content
• The item doesn't fit into the categories above
• I'm unsure what this is

One challenge we had was coming up with clear wording for the 4 categories. It's difficult to know for sure, but it seems like most respondents understood them based on the results.

Here's a screenshot of two items from the survey:

Our survey sample size is pretty small, but it's enough to get a decent sense of which terms are more widely understood and which ones need attention. The majority of respondents were students, which was our target population:

So what did we find?

The full results data is at the bottom of this post.

First, the positive:

• Overall, there were no glaring miscategorizations by the majority of respondents. Of course, some of this is subjective, but generally there was consensus on how we understand most of these terms.
• Databases A-Z and Google Scholar had the level of consensus as search tools used to find content (96%), followed by Database at 70%. This is helpful to know as we've had many conversations over the years about whether patrons know what the word "database" means. This indicates that there's at least a basic level of understanding. No one responded that they didn't know what these three items were.
• The majority of users (61%) understand that Thoreau--the brand for our EBSCO Discovery Service--is a search tool, and at the same time a significant percentage (17%) said they didn't know what this was. That's only 4 people in our dataset, but that's enough to garner it more attention. It also aligns exactly with what we found during the usability test we conducted in Atlanta: many students don't know what "Thoreau" means and, even if they know it's search tool, they don't clearly understand the purpose or scope of the tool.
• I was personally happy to see that 64% of respondents appear to know what ScholarWorks is (or at least know it's a search tool). ScholarWorks is Walden's open access institutional repository. With more marketing, this could easily increase.
• Literature was broadly accepted as a term to describe something that can be read or viewed for information (77%). This is another term we've had discussions about, so it's helpful to get patron feedback.

Items where there was a lack of consensus (i.e. respondents categorizing them in a variety of ways):

• Ulrich's: Verify Peer Review had the least amount of consensus and the highest percentage of respondents who were unsure what this is (22%). I'm not that surprised. Part of this is because it's a unique tool and performs a unique function compared to our other database offerings. Generally, if branding is used instead of descriptive terms and the branding isn't widely known, users are easily confused. Our current label has both branding and description, but we might be more successful by making a small change like "Verify Peer Review with Ulrich's" or "Ulrich's Periodical Directory: Check if a journal is peer reviewed" Not very concise or elegant, but it communicates the purpose clearly.
• Tests & Measures was also all over the place. 35% categorized it as content they could read or view for information, and 48% said it did not fit into the other categories. On the plus side, vew few respondents reported not knowing what it is (4%). I'm not very familiar with tests and measures, so I'll be interested in our librarians' feedback on how and where we represent them on our website.
• Similar story for Research Starter: Lack of consensus, and several respondents don't know what this is (22%). I think this one suffers from lack of marketing, but there could also be confusion about the similarly titled research starters found in EBSCO products.
• For library content types that contain more granular content types, there was less consensus about if it was a search tool or content they could read. This includes Journal, Publication, and Encyclopedia, which you can search within to find articles, etc.. This also aligns with the findings of the Atlanta usability testing; students made a strong association between "journals" and "publications". Both user research activities informed the recent homepage updates and the new Publications guide.

And finally, an oddity:

• A significant percentage of users said that Dissertation (24%) and Thesis (27%) do not fit into the other categories. Why didn't a quarter of the respondents say these items can be read for information? I'm honestly not sure. Perhaps because many students are actively working on these, they view them totally separate from other types of content like journal articles and books. Academic coursework? That said, the majority did respond that dissertations and theses can read or viewed for info (52% and 64%). For now, we've decided to move them under "Publications", which allow us to continue to call them out them on the homepage.

What's next?

There are a few insightful opportunities above to explore further, particularly around Thoreau, Ulrich's, tests and measures, dissertations and theses, and our Research Starters. I'd like to learn if Walden students think in terms of content type and research tool when they're on the Library's website. If they don't, how do we clearly present these things to help students efficiently do their research without giving up and turning to simpler, less reliable tools and sources?

That is the million-dollar question that all libraries would like to know and why we continuously get feedback and data from our patrons through activities like this.

Survey Data

Screenshots of the data below, and an accessible Excel version of the survey results.