Implications of Default Search Options in Ejournal Platforms
In my last post, I reviewed a handful of ejournal platforms (and one ebook platform) to see what default options were available that affected whether the search results would show all content or only the content the library had licensed or purchased. I also wanted to see which platforms let the user change the settings for available content. There were some platforms that I think did this the…
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Options and Defaults for Showing Only Licensed Content in Ejournal Platforms
Depending on the interface and system you’re talking about and depending on the user type you’re talking about (the casual searcher who needs just one or two sources quickly or the dogged searcher who needs an expansive search set), it’s an interesting question about how to handle default search options that control whether results show all possible results or just those your library has…
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Selecting All Results on a Page of Search Results
I’ve been wondering about the pros and cons of having a search results page that lets the user select all the items on the page (so they can be saved, exported, etc.) A quick survey of some major database platforms, discovery services, and our catalog shows that this feature is not available in every interface:
Interfaces that have it:
- Factiva
- LexisNexis Academic
- ProQuest
- Web of Science
Interface…
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Advice for UX Shops of One in Libraries
On Twitter recently, I was asked for advice about setting up a new one-person UX shop in a library. I’ve only recently emerged from the UX-shop-of-one world, thanks to the addition of a part-time UX designer to my “team” and am not entirely sure how much my experience yields universal insights. So consider the following caveats about how institutional differences will affect the usefulness of any…
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No Longer a UX Shop of One
Last fall, I was given the OK to hire a part-time user experience designer, which meant that my library’s user experience team was no longer a one-person operation. For the past four years, I’ve been working mostly on my own, although I frequently did projects that paired me up with others in the library (such as the time I worked with the head of access services to set up our new online…
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Pull quote: “One thought I’ve had is to have students trace the history of a retraction …. Find the original paper, see what news outlets covered it and whether they reported the research accurately, find out how the study was challenged and on what basis, and do an analysis of what factors played into the controversy. Then have them interview a faculty member about their experiences publishing research (something I already do pretty regularly) so that they get a perspective on how it normally goes. I hope that by learning how someone they know experiences the peer review process and digging into what happens when it goes wrong, students will be able to see some of the complexity of the culture surrounding scholarly work and where the failure points may be - without leaving them in a crisis of faith.”
(via Schooling for Scandal | Library Babel Fish | InsideHigherEd)