We have added a direct link to "My Account" to the Library Services section of the home page, coordinating it with a label change in Primo from "My Library Card" to "My Account" this week. When tested, participants struggled to find out how to see a list of checked out materials, and they expected it to be with the "borrowing" links in Library Services. They said they've struggled with this particular task and have relied on links in emails to get to it.
Since My Account is often considered a core task of the library, we felt adding this link would be beneficial and are also considering trying it in the search box.
Footer modifications
A few months ago, our attention was called to the footer that the archival units are inconsistently represented, and in usability testing we saw users struggle with the two "Andersen Library" entries, missing the "Horticultural" and "(off campus)" cues to quick skimming.
Working with WCMC, our goal was to get the two Andersen Libraries side by side so users might see them both and need to determine the correct one. To do this, we removed "Elmer L." for the West Bank location, just for the footer purposes of alphabetizing them together, and emphasized the archives are in that location so the text is "Andersen Library (Archives & Special Collections)" above "Andersen Horticultural Library (off campus)". We hope this eases the issue of people arriving at the wrong location, since they are so far apart from each other and archives has a larger global audience with people traveling far to see materials in person.
So the question remained about the 8 archival unit links (out of 17 total archival units). Why the inconsistency? In the past, several were under "Special Collections & Rare Books" umbrella but are now stand alone units. Our footer simply didn't reflect that organizational shift. It also doesn't reflect that Business Reference and Government Information exist differently now and should be reconsidered. Because archives is represented on the WCMC, we felt more confident in approving the removal of the 8 archival links in conjunction with the new Andersen Library (Archives & Special Collections) label and recent ASC website redesign that lists all the archival units on the main page. However, for now we will retain the Business Reference and Government Information links. A separate project is now underway that will influence those decisions. We also added "(off campus)" to Itasca for consistency.
WCMC agreed the footer should resemble the structure of the Libraries & Collections page, but that the page needed to be redesigned. Once that is in place, the footer will reflect those changes. We should see those changes in the future.
P.S. Another minor tweak is the Libraries website search in the footer no longer reads "Search University Libraries website" but rather "Search University Libraries services", which may provide enough clarity to users to reduce confusion between the two search boxes. We have larger website search changes coming up that may dictate a more dramatic shift for that search.
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