Faculty Focus Group Comments

What section of the website do you use most frequently?
Biosis
Homer Catalog Search
About the Library (hours, staff)
Online databases (resources)
ILL
ILL doesn’t meet windows certification, always have to say okay when logging in)
Using the Library
Off Campus Access

What improvements can we make to the home page to better suit your needs?
Customize site – adds to clutter, explain what customize means
Create separate entry environment depending on role at UConn, e.g. student, faculty (similar to students.uconn.edu and faculty.uconn.edu)
Make it less busy
What do the categories mean? Not intuitive, some appear to be redundant.
Mixing criteria and priorities (of categories) contributes to business
News – wants to see new online databases advertised here. What have we just installed? What new databases do we have? Also include a way to get to previous notices that some might have missed when they were news.
Less text under news - just give me two lines and that’ll be enough for me to know if I want to read further = makes page less busy.
Promote staff – have a get to know staff section and quick link to it.
Grey bar near top of page – Homer – online – etc. One should be able to mouse over them and have a drop down menu appear, then Quick Links would not be needed, again = less busy if do this.
If a database is not in most frequently used section it is clunky to get to the one you want. Navigation needs to improve.
Continued - What improvements can we make to the home page to better suit your needs?
Back button not the best way to navigate – there should be some standard navigation tools on left side of page (or somewhere)
Help/Search w/in databases put there by vendor not so helpful. Library should put in more useful help, at least in most frequently used databases.
Live Reference help misplaced, lost in page, doesn’t stand out.
Right side of page is “no man’s land” eye does not go there.
Put in News & Updates – when databases are bought/removed, no longer subscribed to.
Reformat page so one doesn’t have to scroll.

What improvements can we make to the Libraries’ website to better suit your needs?
Where books are located should be prominently displayed on the website.
Where to go to renew books online – it’s buried, you have to know where to go.
Homer/MyHomer is NOT intuitive. What is is? Change MyHomer to MyAccount, perhaps?
Request a purchase is buried. Have to go to site index to find it.
Better way to organize “Using the Library” page.
Get rid of jargon and fix design – links on links, things are buried
More jargon in Homer – what is Boolean and relevance searching?
What are “Current Awareness and Alerting Services”?
Need standard navigation.
Within Homer, is there capacity to browse call numbers? If so, tell people how to do it.
Search type scroll down box in Homer is too long – bottom entries are lost.
In general, avoid pages that scroll.


What is missing from the website that you’d like to see there?
More key links to help and/or more obvious help
Other online resources by discipline, e.g. for History, CT Historical Society, Mansfield Historical Society.
More than one news headline under “News”.
Using the Library doesn’t have info re using the Library’s website. (Library’s website is very complicated and how to use it should not be buried several links in.
As soon as someone customizes by subject the most frequently used databases would change to coincide with that subject.
Suggestion box for us to tell you what we think.
Ability to truly customize page.
Call it off campus access rather than VPN.
No way to get back from Camtasia (and others). Should open in new browser window so you are not stuck there. Goes back to improving navigation.
No easy way to get to Help from the Homepage. Not all help is located under help. Help needs to be reorganized and go from general to specific.

What other internet resources do you use for you class work or research?
Perpetual calendar
Gazeteer
Icon in general, Heritage Quest in Icon, specifically
Historical maps
Phone books
More is less, don’t want to add clutter

Additional comments
Will this process be repeated at regional campuses?
In general, make it simpler, less cluttered, easier to navigate.
Will there be a survey of faculty and students re changes to the Libraries’ website?