Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
Organize information in multiple ways
Make it possible for users to find information by following a few clear paths. This increases the likelihood your users will be successful when using your library website.
Organize information by type of material, subject and course
Some users come to library sites knowing the type of material they are looking for. For example, graduate students and professors often want to search only for journal articles because they are more important in high-level research than books or reference materials. Labeling resources by content type, such as “journals, books, DVDs/videos,” guides users to materials they want.
In many cases users are unaware of what resources are available to them (Adams & Blandford, 2005). Organizing material by subject helps users get a quick overview of resources available in particular areas and can provide good starting points for people in specific fields. For example, you might provide a “Computer Science” page listing your library’s journals, key reference works, databases and selected free online resources for this area. Or, on your main e-journals page, you could list all journals in computer science.
Also consider organizing information resources by course name and number. According to Reeb and Gibbons (2004), “Undergraduate students’ mental model is one focused on courses and coursework, rather than disciplines.” They concluded from their usability studies that undergraduate students do not relate well to subject guide pages and find resources organized by course more usable.
On the Online Research Resources page provided through the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign’s Library Gateway, resources are organized by type and by subject. The page appears at
www.library.uiuc.edu/orr Crosslink information when possible
Crosslinking different types of information and offering multiple access points help users find what they are looking for (Xie, 2006).
What’s a real-life example of a situation calling for crosslinking? Sometimes users enter an Online Public Access Catalog or OPAC, thinking it searches journal or magazine articles. If your OPAC uses a federated search tool, users at this point may be in good shape. If your OPAC doesn’t search across your library’s proprietary databases, by including in your OPAC a link to your library’s main e-journals page, you help users find what they want.
For more about crosslinking, see "How Do I Find an Article? Insights from a Web Usability study" by Cockrell and Jayne (2002).
The OPAC of the Queen’s Medical Center Hawaii Medical Library includes a link to the library’s online resources. The library catalog is available at
http://hml.org
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