ILCSO Users’ Advisory Group
Report to the CARLI Board of Directors

December 9, 2005

IUAG’s last meeting was held on Friday, December 9.  IUAG has a meeting scheduled on Friday, January 13. 2006.

WebVoyage Usability Study Task Force (WVUSTF) Reports

At our November 10 meeting, we discussed the results of the WVUSTF study.  The task force produced two reports:  a 31-page report on the process used to conduct the study and an 82-page final report.  The findings reflect the “Googlization” of library users.  They are used to search engines like Google and expect other tools to work in a similar fashion.  With that said, users are satisfied with the way the OPAC is set up and are generally happy with the results they retrieve.  The final report recommends changes to improve the OPAC and most can be done with sufficient time and resources.  IUAG also believes that other libraries should be encouraged to do their own user testing on specific features of the OPAC using the approach that WVUSTF developed.  IUAG highly recommends that an ongoing standing usability testing committee be formed in CARLI to promote usability testing in the consortium.

Forums

This fall, the Cataloging and Authority Control Committee (CCAC) and Acquisitions/Serials Task Force (Acq/Ser) have held successful forums.  The CCAC forum was “Fall Cleaning: Tools and Techniques for Cataloging Maintenance,” and it was held on Wednesday November 2, 2005 at the University of Illinois at Springfield.  Acq/Ser sponsored a forum entitled “E-Resource Acquisitions: Same Questions and Different Answers” on November 29 at Heartland Community College.  The forum was successful with 48 participants from 23 libraries over the state. 

The End User Instruction Committee (EUIC) has completed all but one of its Camtasia tutorial workshops.  The last workshop will be held at Eastern Illinois University on Tuesday, December 13.  The goals of the workshops were to instruct ILCSO/I-Share member libraries' staff in the deployment of tutorials developed by the committee and the use of Camtasia Studio software to create and modify their tutorials.  So far, the feedback for these forums has been very positive. 

IUAG has been working on its first forum, Reference/Public Services Forum.  It will be held on February 24, 2006 at the Kankakee Community College.  Susan Singleton has graciously agreed to introduce herself and briefly talk about CARLI.  The rest of the forum will have presentations or breakout sessions on various topics:  usability testing results and process, RSS feeds/blogs, WebFeat and SFX, Camtasia tutorials, and OPAC customization ideas.  In the spring, IUAG will be working on two more forums:  IUAG Liaisons (April 2006) and Voyager Reports (May 2006).