Library Terms that Users Understand

John Kupersmith, Reference Librarian, University of California, Berkeley

Your site may have superb content, elegant design, and cutting-edge technology, but do the users understand your text and know what the links mean? Kupersmith's widely used Web site is a clearinghouse of data mined from usability studies that indicate which library terms users do—and don't—understand. This session is packed with ideas and best practices for improving your site's terminology and incorporating this factor in your usability testing.

Kupersmith is the author of the page Library Terms that Users Understand at:
http://www.jkup.net/terms.html

Links:
Powerpoint presentation and handout.

Other blog entries:
See Also...
Library Web Chic
Schwagbag

My notes:

Searches for journals and databases are successful only 50% of the time. Why? Site organization, designs where links are hidden or not easily available, excessive verbiage, but most of all, terminology.

According to Jakob Nielsen, in studies a sample size of 5 will give you 80% of the problems on your site.

Acronyms and brand names were most often cited as problematic. The term "database' is, too, because it's used for a collection of data and a collection of articles and users don't realize they can find articles there.

Some terms not understood at all. Brand names like "Expanded Academic" aren't understood until the user learns the code. Terms such as "periodical" and "reference" don't mean anything.

The word "resources" means nothing to most people – in a test of possible useful terms, nobody used "resources".

"Catalog" means everything, the books, journals, articles, everything.
"Database" is run into in too many contexts to understand.
"E-journal" is misunderstood in a hopeful sense.

What are understood are verb phrases involving the word "find" and target phrases like "books" or "articles", and annotated links (short annotations, not too wordy). Other attractors are terms like "Journal," "Services," (for course reserves and other such services) and "Search."

"Electronic Resources" is a weak attractor.

Another way to look at it is - what do students say? They tend not to understand categories like 'Arts & Humanities' and 'Science & Engineering.' They are literal-minded - looking for the word 'journal' when an assignment to find articles is given. They are used to and looking for instant results, and don't know the language or mental models librarians use when organizing libraries and websites.

Librarians are often concerned about dumbing down websites, however we're contaminated as designers by what we know, by our specialized language and mental models.

Best practices: test users' understanding and preferences.

Testing:
link choice (preference) - is a microusability test - give users a description of the page to go to, give them a list of alternative link names and ask them to pick which one they'd try first.
link naming - give a link name and ask them to explain what they think it means.
card sorting - difficult to get clear consensus. if you do, esp. w/ terminology, send it to him.
category membership testing - pre-existing list of top-level categories into which to sort.

Use natural-language terms on top-level pages - 'borrow from other libraries' or 'find books' in addition to the catalog name - Berkeley's solution is to retain both. Use target words like 'Book' or 'Article.' For reference-email, chat, phone next to the reference link. Introduce more precise technical terms as you go along, and provide intermediate pages: 'find books' leads to page of options with the catalog, ILL, worldcat, etc.

Provide alternate paths to resources within the website. 'Find journals' usually means people expect to find articles, not journal titles. Use 'find artcles' *and* 'find journals'.

Enhance or explain potentially confusing terms - additional words or graphics, mouseovers with ALT and TITLE attributes, glossary of terms on HELP page.

Be consistent throughout website, printed material, and signage. (For us - keep Ref & IC together on webpage under "Information Commons" heading?)