During our site visits to members, we noticed that different users have different search preferences. Some prefer to use simple search most of the time, others always like to begin with an advanced search looking for titles “as a phrase”, more…
Category Archives: Project Blog
Customising Libraries Australia – automatically!
Project update
Stage 2 of the project was completed in December on schedule. The three key deliverables from this stage were: the new Libraries Australia Search database (MySQL database and SOLR indexes) new Loader software. This receives records from CBS , the more…
Coming up with better designs, faster
After completing the user research stage of the project the team had a much clearer understanding of the issues we needed to address to improve the user’s experience of Libraries Australia search . My responsibility as the user interface more…
Searching with the “limit to” checkboxes
When we opened the can of worms that is asking users “what doesn’t work well?”, we received hundreds of comments which we dilligently categorised, factorised, summarised, memorised and theorised about. One of our categories was called “limits”. We ended up more…
Fine-tuning the advanced search
When you use the advanced search form to do a title/author search, or when looking for an ISBN, Libraries Australia only looks for your search terms within certain MARC tags. Libraries Australia includes more than a hundred different search indexes more…
Site visits and surveys
Site visits Back in the middle of 2012, Kenji and I got out from behind our desks and went to visit some Libraries Australia users at theirs. This was an opportunity for us to see people using Libraries Australia Search more…
Who are we designing LA search for again?
The Libraries Australia Search Redevelopment (LASR) project is based on a user-centred design (UCD) methodology. Fundamental to UCD is to have a good understanding of the types of people who use LA search, what they use it for, and under more…
Welcome to the Libraries Australia Search Redevelopment Project
A welcome from Marie-Louise Ayres, Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing Division. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my first year with Libraries Australia, it’s that our members love to communicate and are wonderfully generous with their thoughts and insights. A more…
