NASIG 2013

Columbia University Libraries provides access to electronic resources through a number of interfaces provided through third parties that often do allow some level of library control over content, appearance, and functionality. In our e-resources and web services areas, we have deeply explored options and approaches to discoverability and design in an effort to improve our e-resource interfaces and enhance access to e-books, e-journals, articles, and more. This exploration of the relationship between e-resources and our virtual library environment became the focus of a working group eighteen months ago. The E-Resources Interface Working Group was established to help determine what content to expose and what services to implements, make decisions regarding the look and feel of e-resources interfaces, recommend policies effecting e-resources interfaces, coordinate the scheduling of significant changes to interfaces, and to communicate to staff about changes. The group is comprised of selectors from various disciplines, e-resources librarians, and the web services librarian, so the responsibilities of the group's participants are quite varied. We have encountered a range of collaboration challenges, including: members attempting to fit outside projects into their already existing workflows; determining how to motivate a working group to take on tasks outside of their normal job responsibilities; how to delineate between the responsibilities that are part of already-existing roles and job responsibilities but overlap with some of the decision-making in the working group's charge; and the challenge of designing by committee (usability suffers). Some of the issues we have explored range from ranking resources within large licensed databases to how to handle an ever-changing device landscape. We have explored how to design services for mobile and touchscreen devices, both within the committee and externally as part of our own responsibilities. We have been working on integrating our e-resource discovery tools more seamlessly into our library catalog to enhance our users' experience and increase consistency among our discovery interfaces. Having tackled several large projects, we are currently determining what the future of our approach to discoverability and design will be!