Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

The University of Washington Libraries have launched the first installation of the WorldCat Local beta project.  Go to their homepage and the single search box in the upper right will take you into the interface.

For those unfamiliar with it, this is the project where a few libraries, including mine, have agreed to beta-test the WorldCat Local catalog overlay–it replaces what your users would see during the search process.  New single search box, new search functionality, new results pages, new look to the title (bibliographic) level pages.  But the rest of the catalog is still the native interface–holdings pages, my account functions like holds and renewals, etc.  It’s kind of like Aquabrowser in the sense of what it replaces.

At the bottom of this page are two screenshots (though I highly suggest you try it yourself instead of relying on my pictures).  I did a search for Silence of the Lambs.  The first shot is the results page and the second shot is the bib record for the first item on the list.

There aren’t any major surprises–it pretty much looks exactly like WorldCat.org does, except with local holdings accentuated.  As someone who will be helping with the staff and patron training and transitioning, there are things that catch my attention.  There are definite pluses and minuses, as there would be with any product.

Pluses

• The relevancy ranking appears to work a lot better than III’s, especially with single-word titles
• The "Refine Your Search" options on the results page are nice, akin to those in other similar products like Aquabrowser
• The "Sort" options are clear
• Subject headings are hyperlinked, something III users have been asking for for ages
• The "Cite this Item" option is great!
• The interface has relative font sizes, which is a huge plus.

Minuses

• The top of the WorldCat Local pages has something that concerns me greatly: a warning that you aren’t signed into WorldCat and a link to sign in to your WorldCat account.  Underneath those are links from the Library to sign into the user’s library account.  Two accounts, right next to each other, that do very different things.  A usability no-no.  This becomes a bigger problem as some of the features, like "submit a review," require the WorldCat account.  Because the two have not been folded in together, users will have to juggle two different accounts.  They won’t understand why, and will be confused.  I can hear the questions now: "It’s one site–why do I have to create two separate accounts to use the same site?"
• VHS & DVD are marked with multiple item types, the first of which is always "Visual Material" — which means nothing to users and will end up confusing them
• The "Request" button is the most prominent thing on the screen–much more so than the local holdings.  I expect that people will see that button and think it means it will show them the holdings info, since the typeface of the holdings info is so small (another issue) and overpowered by the button.  If the request links were closer to the holdings information, it might lead to greater usability
• There are some visual elements of the interface that I couldn’t find ALT tags for in my browsers or the source code, like the Request button.
• The "Find in other WorldCat Libraries" link under the Request button is an anchor tag that takes you further down the same page–something that users probably won’t expect.  A little confusing.

This is just my cursory exploration of the site.  And the above is simply my personal opinion, not that of my institution or my co-workers.  And I fully admit that I could be wrong about what users will like–I’m just making educated guesses based on my experience.  But all these bumps are the things that beta tests are built for ironing out, right?