From: <M....@ls...> - 2009-10-27 16:53:48
|
Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on this' option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was reporting a broken link. Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality used? Thanks, Michael. Michael Fake Library Systems Manager London School of Economics & Political Science T: +44 (0) 20 7955 6447 E: m....@ls... Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm |
From: Demian K. <dem...@vi...> - 2009-10-27 17:14:52
|
We definitely haven't seen heavy use of the functionality at Villanova either. I think there's a network effect on this kind of thing -- people are more likely to use it if they know it's there and see other people already using it. The comments tab doesn't really stand out in VuFind, so I suspect few people look at it. Even if it does get used, there's no top-level "see recent comments" page to bring together user-entered content and show what's possible. I think if we want to see heavier use of the social elements of VuFind, we need to make them more visible and interactive than they currently are. Of course, I don't claim that the average student is going to be very interested in contributing to discussions taking place in a library catalog even if we do address the visibility issues... but if we want to pursue these features further, I think that's the next step. - Demian > -----Original Message----- > From: M....@ls... [mailto:M....@ls...] > Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:53 PM > To: vuf...@li... > Subject: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality > > Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on > this' > option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought > students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the > books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over > a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 > hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. > > To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what > happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was > reporting a broken link. > > Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to > our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality > used? > > Thanks, > Michael. > > > Michael Fake > Library Systems Manager > London School of Economics & Political Science > T: +44 (0) 20 7955 6447 > E: m....@ls... > > > Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic > communications disclaimer: > http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > ------- > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart > your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and > stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > VuFind-General mailing list > VuF...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general |
From: Greg P. <Gre...@us...> - 2009-10-27 23:38:00
|
We actually moved our comments out of the tabs so they are visible on the record screen normally below the tabbed area. We've still only got 9 comments though in the last three months. http://libcat.usq.edu.au/Record/vtls000310415 I've always been of the opinion that social metadata would be more popular in public libraries... and even then your online community has to have a respectable size anyway. In an academic context I sat in on some user testing at a neighbour university last year and one of the students actually said they would never leave comments on good resources, because then other students would want the resource and it would be harder for him to get. Greg Pendlebury Electronic Services Officer (Systems Team) Division of Academic Information Services University of Southern Queensland Phone: +61 7 4631 1501 Fax: +61 7 4631 1841 -----Original Message----- From: Demian Katz [mailto:dem...@vi...] Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 3:15 AM To: M....@ls...; vuf...@li... Subject: Re: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality We definitely haven't seen heavy use of the functionality at Villanova either. I think there's a network effect on this kind of thing -- people are more likely to use it if they know it's there and see other people already using it. The comments tab doesn't really stand out in VuFind, so I suspect few people look at it. Even if it does get used, there's no top-level "see recent comments" page to bring together user-entered content and show what's possible. I think if we want to see heavier use of the social elements of VuFind, we need to make them more visible and interactive than they currently are. Of course, I don't claim that the average student is going to be very interested in contributing to discussions taking place in a library catalog even if we do address the visibility issues... but if we want to pursue these features further, I think that's the next step. - Demian > -----Original Message----- > From: M....@ls... [mailto:M....@ls...] > Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:53 PM > To: vuf...@li... > Subject: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality > > Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on > this' > option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought > students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the > books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over > a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 > hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. > > To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what > happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was > reporting a broken link. > > Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to > our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality > used? > > Thanks, > Michael. > > > Michael Fake > Library Systems Manager > London School of Economics & Political Science > T: +44 (0) 20 7955 6447 > E: m....@ls... > > > Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic > communications disclaimer: > http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > ------- > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart > your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and > stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > VuFind-General mailing list > VuF...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ VuFind-General mailing list VuF...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general This email (including any attached files) is confidential and is for the intended recipient(s) only. If you received this email by mistake, please, as a courtesy, tell the sender, then delete this email. The views and opinions are the originator's and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Southern Queensland. Although all reasonable precautions were taken to ensure that this email contained no viruses at the time it was sent we accept no liability for any losses arising from its receipt. The University of Southern Queensland is a registered provider of education with the Australian Government (CRICOS Institution Code No's. QLD 00244B / NSW 02225M) |
From: Andrew N. <as...@gm...> - 2009-10-27 17:41:29
|
This doesn't surprise me Michael. Im curious if your users are using the tagging and add to favorites functionality as well? Thanks for sharing! Andrew On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 12:52 PM, <M....@ls...> wrote: > Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on this' > option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought > students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the > books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over > a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 > hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. > > To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what > happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was > reporting a broken link. > > Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to > our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality used? > > Thanks, > Michael. > > > Michael Fake > Library Systems Manager > London School of Economics & Political Science > T: +44 (0) 20 7955 6447 > E: m....@ls... > > > Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic > communications disclaimer: > http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > VuFind-General mailing list > VuF...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general > |
From: <M....@ls...> - 2009-10-28 14:23:29
|
Hi Andrew, Thanks - and thanks to everyone else who commented on this. Interesting to hear what other people have been experiencing. I note that one of the comments that Mark highlighted on his catalogue was an author commenting on their own book! Tags do seem to be more popular than comments - currently c.1,000 in the database, although I haven't investigated whether these are being used intensively by a small number of people. However it's also worth noting that we only allow tagging within favourites lists, as we felt that the distinction between tagging favourites and tagging books more generally would confuse everyone. My guess is that some of our users find tagging of favourites to be a useful way of organising these lists - but that we wouldn't see very much general tagging if that were available. Michael. ________________________________ From: Andrew Nagy [mailto:as...@gm...] Sent: 27 October 2009 17:41 To: Fake,M Cc: vuf...@li... Subject: Re: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality This doesn't surprise me Michael. Im curious if your users are using the tagging and add to favorites functionality as well? Thanks for sharing! Andrew On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 12:52 PM, <M....@ls...> wrote: Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on this' option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was reporting a broken link. Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality used? Thanks, Michael. Michael Fake Library Systems Manager London School of Economics & Political Science T: +44 (0) 20 7955 6447 E: m....@ls... Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ VuFind-General mailing list VuF...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm |
From: Till K. <kin...@gm...> - 2009-10-27 18:02:10
|
M....@ls... schrieb: > Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on this' > option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? Some colleagues developing a "next generation catalog" in the Beluga Project at Hamburg University Library (http://beluga-blog.sub.uni-hamburg.de/blog/ german only) are doing a lot of user research. In focus groups they found out that their local users don't want to leave comments or tags in the library catalog or share reading lists. They were quite surprised by those findings. Users explained, they'd prefer to annotate resources in contexts they actually use them (eg. in elearning platforms or literature management software), but not in the library catalog. Another point was, that they see the library catalog as a kind of "authority" and don't want to have the integrity of that "offical data" compromised by uncontrolled comments and user contributions. Of course, these were only single opinions gained in focus groups... Anne Christensen presented some of the findings of the Beluga project at the ELAG conference this spring, look around slide 20 of http://www.slideshare.net/xenzen/next-generation-catalogs-what-do-users-think?type=presentation Till |
From: Mark T. <mt...@nl...> - 2009-10-27 20:15:53
|
Hi Michael, We haven't seen a huge amount of usage of our comments functionality either--about 120 comments in the time we've been live (although we delete ones that are obviously just tests or misplaced requests for help using the Library/Catalogue). That said, I've seen enough nice comments to justify leaving the feature there. Some examples of how they get used: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2277047/UserComments http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/4475277/UserComments http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2761956/UserComments http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2486700/UserComments http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1352782/UserComments http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2727796/UserComments We've also had a few people who aren't patrons express an interest in being able to add comments. We're reluctant to enable anonymous comments, but have hand-wavy ideas about letting people sign up for a limited access account--something that would let them make comments and set preferences but not request collection materials. Cheers, Mark "M....@ls..." <M....@ls...> writes: > Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on this' > option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought > students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the > books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over > a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 > hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. > > To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what > happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was > reporting a broken link. > > Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to > our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality used? -- Mark Triggs <mt...@nl...> |
From: Anne Scott(Library) <ann...@ca...> - 2009-10-28 23:20:10
|
Hi We have not started to use tagging yet but the area we think will have the most uptake is for our Macmillan Brown Library research collection of New Zealand and Pacific material. We hope librarians and users will add comments and tags to items to improve access to Maori and Pacific information where the MARC records are inadequate, for example a book may contain a small but important section related to a particular iwi (tribe) or place that is quite hard to find using searching. Even full text searching will not pick up the Maori word if an English one has been used. It also would allow comments or tagging in Maori. Cheers Anne -----Original Message----- From: Greg Pendlebury [mailto:Gre...@us...] Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 12:37 p.m. To: 'Demian Katz'; M....@ls...; vuf...@li... Subject: Re: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality We actually moved our comments out of the tabs so they are visible on the record screen normally below the tabbed area. We've still only got 9 comments though in the last three months. http://libcat.usq.edu.au/Record/vtls000310415 I've always been of the opinion that social metadata would be more popular in public libraries... and even then your online community has to have a respectable size anyway. In an academic context I sat in on some user testing at a neighbour university last year and one of the students actually said they would never leave comments on good resources, because then other students would want the resource and it would be harder for him to get. Greg Pendlebury Electronic Services Officer (Systems Team) Division of Academic Information Services University of Southern Queensland Phone: +61 7 4631 1501 Fax: +61 7 4631 1841 -----Original Message----- From: Demian Katz [mailto:dem...@vi...] Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 3:15 AM To: M....@ls...; vuf...@li... Subject: Re: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality We definitely haven't seen heavy use of the functionality at Villanova either. I think there's a network effect on this kind of thing -- people are more likely to use it if they know it's there and see other people already using it. The comments tab doesn't really stand out in VuFind, so I suspect few people look at it. Even if it does get used, there's no top-level "see recent comments" page to bring together user-entered content and show what's possible. I think if we want to see heavier use of the social elements of VuFind, we need to make them more visible and interactive than they currently are. Of course, I don't claim that the average student is going to be very interested in contributing to discussions taking place in a library catalog even if we do address the visibility issues... but if we want to pursue these features further, I think that's the next step. - Demian > -----Original Message----- > From: M....@ls... [mailto:M....@ls...] > Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:53 PM > To: vuf...@li... > Subject: [VuFind-General] Commenting functionality > > Just curious what others' experience has been with the 'comment on > this' > option (either in VuFind or in equivalent products)? We had thought > students would leap on the opportunity to share their thoughts on the > books they were borrowing, but we've had the catalogue running for over > a year (and since September it has been our main interface with c.5,000 > hits a day), and to date we've had a grand total of ... two comments. > > To add insult to injury, one of those was clearly just testing what > happens when you hit the submit button, and the other comment was > reporting a broken link. > > Should we take the hint that this functionality just doesn't appeal to > our students? Are any other sites seeing the comment functionality > used? > > Thanks, > Michael. > > > Michael Fake > Library Systems Manager > London School of Economics & Political Science > T: +44 (0) 20 7955 6447 > E: m....@ls... > > > Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic > communications disclaimer: > http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > ------- > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart > your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and > stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > VuFind-General mailing list > VuF...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ VuFind-General mailing list VuF...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general This email (including any attached files) is confidential and is for the intended recipient(s) only. If you received this email by mistake, please, as a courtesy, tell the sender, then delete this email. The views and opinions are the originator's and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Southern Queensland. Although all reasonable precautions were taken to ensure that this email contained no viruses at the time it was sent we accept no liability for any losses arising from its receipt. The University of Southern Queensland is a registered provider of education with the Australian Government (CRICOS Institution Code No's. QLD 00244B / NSW 02225M) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ VuFind-General mailing list VuF...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vufind-general This email may be confidential and subject to legal privilege, it may not reflect the views of the University of Canterbury, and it is not guaranteed to be virus free. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and erase all copies of the message and any attachments. Please refer to http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/emaildisclaimer for more information. |