Category Archives: user experience

Designing Libraries: Finding New Adjacencies to Improve Experience

The ways in which we use libraries is changing. How we conduct research. How we use (and don’t use) print collections to seek information. How we design our physical spaces to welcome students and create a sense of belonging for … Continue reading

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Improving on the Charles Library Welcome 

Walking into the vast atrium space of Charles Library is awe-inspiring. It can also be overwhelming, particularly to new students when the semester first starts.  While we have many ways of counter-acting that feeling – helpful security guards, Emily Schiller’s … Continue reading

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Metadata display in Library Search

Background Library Search, Temple University Libraries’ discovery layer, recently underwent a significant updates to the user interface. In Fall 2023, the Discovery Oversight Group, a group responsible for providing guidance and setting priorities for the development of Library Search, began … Continue reading

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Considering the Conference Experience 

This last week I had the opportunity to experience two very special conferences in two ways – the Library Assessment Conference was held virtually from November 1 to November 3. As co-chair, I was deeply involved in the planning for … Continue reading

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Ramping Up Library Tutorials

Temple Libraries has a long history of providing high quality information literacy instruction for courses at Temple. As we continue to learn more and adapt our teaching methods, our Learning and Student Success unit recognized a need to grow our … Continue reading

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Continuously Improving User Experience at the One Stop

Staff at the Charles Library One Stop Assistance Desk serve as an essential gateway to library resources, services and spaces – for users entering the building, as well as connecting patrons to library services by telephone. While many users visit … Continue reading

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Furniture feedback in Charles Library: part II

Excerpts from the report on the fall 2021 Charles Library furniture study In October of 2021, a variety of new furniture options for Charles Library were placed on display in the first-floor event space. From 8 am to 8 pm, … Continue reading

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Discovering sources in Library Search: key takeaways from remote user interviews with history students

As a followup to last year’s Browse Prototyping project, Rebecca Lloyd and I conducted remote user interviews with upper level history students in December 2020, just as the fall semester was wrapping up. Using a semi-structured interview technique, we talked … Continue reading

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The User Experience of Request and Retrieval

Earlier this year, a group was formed to consider ways to improve the user experience of requesting and retrieving items from the Charles Library BookBot. The group was composed of Brian Boling, Carly Hustedt, Karen Kohn, John Oram, Jackie Sipes, … Continue reading

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When a Marker is More than a Marker 

User experience is all around us. In libraries, we often think the assessment of user experience relates to web interfaces, or building way finding and navigation. We might, ask, “Is the language that we use on the website clear to … Continue reading

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