Enhancing User Interactions in Digital Libraries

Implementing Faceted Search User Interface

A digital library can be underpinned by a search platform such as Apache Solr, which facilitates faceted search services. In my previous posts, I have described the development of a Solr-based search engine infrastructure, involving metadata and rich binary documents indexing of multi-sourced data, viz., the CERN Library book data, content from a digital repository (Fedora). The search engine only provides underpinning services. It does not provide a user interface.

This post outlines the work involved in prototyping a digital library user interface - UX2 Library. It describes the UX design, development made with respect to an associated open source technology. We have recently tested the prototype with a group of users from the University of Edinburgh and published the results: summary and report. In my next post, I shall propose an agile technique based on 'user stories', to address the usability issues arising from this user study.

For a general introduction to both faceted search and Apache Solr, see "Developing Faceted Search Using Apache Solr, Part 1".

Tech Note: Developing Faceted Search Using Apache Solr, Part 2

Faceted search is becoming a de facto search feature for websites such as online stores and digital libraries. From interaction design perspective, faceted search is essentially an alternative to advanced search - “post-coordinate boolean operations via a navigational metaphor”. It has a propensity to enhance the affordance of advanced search, as less efforts are required from the users to perform the equivalent and traditionally more convoluted search tasks.

This post describes the faceted search infrastructure development of the JISC UX2 project. The infrastructure is based on Apache Solr, a Java-based faceted search platform. In Part 1 of this post, I described the general setup of Solr for multi-sourced data, metadata (MARC XML) mapping and the experience of importing the CERN book dataset using Solr's Data Import Hanlder (DIH). For the purpose of UI prototyping and testing, UX2 is incorporating the CERN dataset in combinant with existing digital library content held in a Fedora Commons repository. The rest of this post provides an account of the development of Solr, to enable metadata and rich binary documents (PDF, PowerPoints etc) from a Fedora repository, to be indexed for faceted search service.

This is also a technical report for JISC. If the content is too lengthy, you can skip to "Epilogue" to review the outputs directly.

Going "in the wild"

User research has been a key activity of the AquaBrowserUX and UX2 projects lately. In a previous post, I outlined a scope of user research involving library persona development, usability testing and contextual inquiry. The activities fulfil two general aims, 1) to bolster usability research capability and practice, 2) to evaluate specific usability issues of existing library services. The research involves various qualitative and quantitative methods such that richer case studies can be attained without relying on a single approach. We have just completed the development of library personas (approach and outcomes - two posts to come). Usability testing of AquaBrowser is currently underway.

One of our evaluation goals is to gain insight into how library services are being used in real scenarios involving authentic tasks. This post describes a pilot contextual inquiry, a field study of real users and AquaBrowser usage. The aim is to evaluate the usefulness of the system in a specific use context at the University of Edinburgh.