Category Archives: Case studies

Pathways To Best Practice guides

We’ve recently launched a new feature on the blog – the Pathways to Best Practice guides. This series of documents brings together the resources we’ve been collecting during the project as well as examples of initiatives and the lessons learned which should help you if you are thinking of implementing something similar.

The Pathways To Best Practice are available now from the menubar, or you can access them all from the Pathways to Best Practice starting page. Below is a preview of the guides you’ll be able to find (click on the image to go to the starting page).

Pathways To Best Practice guides

Pathways To Best Practice guides (click on image to go to starting page)

Case studies page

Throughout the course of the projects we’ve been collecting a number of case studies; some of which we’ve shared via the blog, and some via the test community site. We’ve now created a page to bring all these together with a brief overview of each case study – this can be accessed from the menu bar or directly at: https://mlibraries.jiscinvolve.org/case-studies/ 

The case studies are:

The project will soon be coming to a close, but if you have any work within the area of mobile technologies in libraries that you would like to share with others via a case study, please let me know (ideally we’d be looking to get everything published before the end of September).

Copac Mobile case study

Many service providers have been through processes to determine what, if any, support their users would like to enable access to their service via mobile devices. For some this is due to customer demand (i.e. statistics showing people are accessing their services/resources via mobile devices), whilst for others this is from customer feedback or anecdotal evidence. Copac, which brings together over 70 of UK and Ireland’s research library catalogues (funded by JISC and administered by Mimas) is one such service wanting to understand what their users would like. This case study from project manager Janine Rigby outlines some of the activities they undertook as part of this mobile project and what they plan to do for future. 

Mobile Copac

The new Copac was launched on the 1st May 2012, with a new interface designed to facilitate easier navigation on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This new interface is the result of extensive user research and user interface design. Here’s our story.

Mobile at Mimas – a quick history

We’ve been monitoring the uptake of mobile technology and its impact on education for over five years. One of the first Mimas mobile developments was the mobile friendly version of our Hairdressing Training service, which proved popular with users and went on to win an award for innovation at the Handheld Learning Awards in 2008. The success of this site initiated further projects at Mimas, including the Intute Mobile Internet Detective project, which took an online tutorial and redeveloped it for mobiles.

The decision to develop more mobile friendly sites was informed both by secondary data and the analysis of our own primary user data. Throughout this time we monitored mobile usage on Google Analytics for all of our services, carried out user research and collated external evidence from sources such as professional conferences and the 2010 Horizon Report which highlighted mobile computing as a technology which was going to be adopted by the teaching and learning community within the next year.

The most compelling evidence for the growing mobile trend came from our own users, and in particular from the market research we conducted for the Mobile Internet Detective in 2009/10. This revealed that, although students were not using the mobile web extensively for academic research, they would use the mobile Internet for their academic work if:

  • their phones had larger screens
  • it was quick and easy to load and navigate Web sites
  • it was cheaper or free (included in their contract) to access the Internet

In 2009, most of our focus group participants were not smartphone users, but there was a definite desire to upgrade. Towards the end of 2010, whilst conducting studies with research students we asked what phones they used and how important mobile accessibility was to them. In a nutshell, it was clear that barriers to uptake highlighted by the Mobile Internet Detective Research were no longer significant. In the space of just two years, our users had upgraded to smartphones and now expected every website they visited to be mobile accessible.

Clearly, our services needed to be mobile.

Making Copac mobile

With Copac undergoing re-engineering and a website redesign in 2011, it made sense to look at mobile accessibility of the site as part of this process, especially when we saw that the number of hits from mobile users had grown exponentially. For example the month of March 2010 showed that Copac was accessed by a mobile device on 198 separate occasions. This is less than 1% of total visits to Copac for March, but for the same month a year later, (2011) Copac received a total of 367 visits from mobile devices. Admittedly this is still less than 1% of total visits, but still represents a dramatic increase.

With the re-engineering underway, we began investigating the various options for services to achieve mobile friendliness.

The Technology

Following the user requirements gathering exercise for the mobile development, the technical team took the findings and developed a responsive mobile design for the alpha version of Copac. This design used HTML5 and CSS to ‘rearrange’ the web page depending on the size of the screen, and was optimised to allow users to interact with alpha.Copac from multiple smartphone devices and tablets. Users would see a different arrangement of screen elements depending on the device.

Asking the users

We tested the prototype mobile Copac site with 10 postgraduate students in August 2011. This consisted of a focus group and in depth user testing exercises with students using their own personal smartphones.

These researchers rated the usability of the mobile interface highly, and the overall experience of the Copac website was positive, the majority scoring it as ‘it is nice’ and it was ‘totally easy’ or ‘quite easy to use’.

As with our previous user research, reactions to using mobile devices were mixed. Research, for them, was not done on an adhoc basis, but required much planning and organising. They tended to set aside specific time to browse resources on the internet and acquired the resources they needed to do this – a computer, a desk, notepads and reference books. Access via a smartphone was seen as convenient for those last minute panics, but not the access choice of preference when serious research is required. On a practical level the small screen alone is a big put off for serious research sessions.

‘I would certainly use this if I could not get access to a computer, but if I could easily access a computer that would be preferred over using my phone’. Mobile user tester Copac, August 2011.

However, a small minority used their smartphones above all other devices and didn’t see screen size as an issue. They had familiarised themselves with the small screen using other websites and were prepared to persevere to get information quickly and at their convenience.

‘It’s a great idea and it works well. Good if you can’t get access to a computer and saves time if speed is important to you’. Mobile user tester Copac, August 2011.

All of the volunteers that took part in the user testing, had used their smartphones to access the internet to varying degrees. But although the majority still preferred to browse on their computers if given a choice, none of the testers said that they would never use Copac on their mobile. In fact, the majority said that they might find a mobile Copac useful and a small minority couldn’t wait to use it.

Although there was commonality between the groups, (that they all at some point had used a mobile site), all groups had individuals who were high end users and early adopters of technology and others in the groups who enjoyed their phone but, always returned to a computer when available.

Future proofing

In March 2012 Copac received 1,303 separate visits from mobile devices – an increase of over 500% since March 2010. Visitors to the site via mobile devices are also staying on Copac for longer and viewing more pages whilst they are there and, significantly, they’re also using different devices. By far the most popular mobile device used to access Copac this year is the Apple iPad – a device that is, perhaps, more suited to the demands of research than a smartphone.

Attitudes and opportunities to access the internet on mobile devices has changed considerably over the past 3 years and we are in no doubt that attitudes will continue to change. Our conversations with researchers suggest that some will welcome mobile accessibility and use it immediately, others will use it when needed and some will not use it at all. But if mobile use increases as our statistics suggest, by making the site mobile friendly the Copac service is effectively future proofed and ready for the increased uptake.

What now for mobile at Mimas?

With the new Copac now launched, the Mimas Marketing Team are working closely with the Copac service to monitor mobile usage using a combination of statistics gathered from Google Analytics and feedback from users. But it isn’t just Copac that is seeing an increase in mobile usage. The number of users accessing Mimas services by mobile devices increases daily, and as a result, more of Mimas services and projects will be exploring and using the lessons learnt from this project to implement mobile friendly designs.

You can also download a pdf version of the Copac Mobile case study.

Mobile Leeds Met Library – developing and promoting our mobile provision

This guest blog post is from Debbie Morris from Leeds Metropolitan University and discusses their research into user needs and their subsequent plans for supporting mobile technologies. Over to Debbie…

Increasingly, Library users at Leeds Metropolitan University are requesting all kinds of mobile access, from expecting that our e-books and digital readings can be viewed on a e-book reader (sounds obvious, opens a huge can of worms) to asking if their timetable is available to view on a smartphone (yes it is!).

What do users want via mobile?

Early in 2012 we conducted a short online survey about mobile access. Over 500 of our users responded.  They told us that the top 5 services they would like to access via a mobile device were:

  • Timetables
  • Emails
  • Virtual Learning Environment
  • University Portal
  • Library Catalogue / Account

Key findings of the survey found:

  • many students feel that an iPhone/Android app is necessary and that the university should already have this feature;
  • more focus needs to be put on advertising the mobile services we already have and how to use/access them (the majority of respondents said accessing timetables and emails would be of great benefit to them – these are services we already have available);
  • when creating any kind of mobile access, focus need to be placed on iPhone, Android and Blackberry;
  • there is an overwhelming feeling against charging for any type of mobile application.

Quick wins

I’m sure we are not alone in needing to look at cost-effective ways of delivering mobile provision.  With this in mind, we have started to work on some quick wins that will make improvements at low/no cost and will only take a short time to develop:

  • produce some custom Library webpages suitable for mobile access/install an open source CMS for mobile access and use this as a portal to all other Library Mobile enabled services;
  • install and configure a low-cost library system API to utilise free Library mobile apps;
  • list journals/databases with mobile access on the new Library mobile site, begin to build each subject area a mobile page;
  • increase the promotion of current services which already provide mobile access.

Long term plans

For the longer term, we are now connecting with colleagues across the University to ensure that our mobile plans complement the direction of the pan-University mobile strategy.

For further information please contact the Project Manager – Adam Watson (@adlab/a.a.watson@leedsmet.ac.uk) or Debbie Morris (@debbiemn/d.morris@leedsmet.ac.uk).

I’ll leave you with a word-cloud summary of responses from our users, when asked, ‘What could we do to improve access from mobile devices for you?’ (my favourite is –buymeaniphone!)

Tag cloud

What could we do to improve access from mobile devices for you? tag cloud

Using SMS to reach students at Birmingham City University Library

This guest post is written by Chris Langham, Deputy Systems Librarian at Birmingham City University. It is also published on the BCU eLibrary blog.

In May 2008, we started sending out Library SMS Notifications at Birmingham City University. Initially this was just for library material that was 18 days overdue, but has since been extended to include a range of other notifications. The types of notifications which we now send by SMS include:

1. Items 8 days overdue
2. Items 18 days overdue
3. Reserved material ready to be collected
4. Physical Inter Library Loan ready to be collected.

SMS gets through to students

While this service was primarily targeted at students, any borrower with a mobile number in their library record can be sent these notifications.

In February 2009, we started sending SMS notifications for library material which was 8 days overdue. Following this change, we saw a drop in the number of 18 day overdue emails of between 25% and 50%. Library material was getting back into circulation sooner and students were paying less in Library fines. After we started sending out SMS informing borrowers that their reservation was ready to be collected, we found that there were fewer uncollected reservations and reservations were spending less time on the shelf waiting to be collected.

The service has been almost universally popular among students and there have been very few drawbacks to sending SMS. Although, the cost of sending SMS inhibits us using it for sending other reminders, such as sending an SMS reminder on the date that the item is due. Another concern is the accuracy of student mobile phone numbers. Students give mobile numbers at the start of their course or on course application, and they don’t always inform their Faculty when they get a new mobile number.

Is anyone else using SMS in this way? Any feedback to share?

Cambridge Judge Business School mobile app

Meg Westbury

Meg Westbury

This post is a guest blog post from Meg Westbury, Projects Officer for Cambridge Judge Business School Information and Library Services. She tweets at @meg_librarian and blogs at Library Pie.

Founded in 1990, the Cambridge Judge Business School is a world-class business school offering a wide-range of graduate and undergraduate degrees in business and finance. Information & Library Services seek to support the mission of the school by offering a wide variety of electronic and print resources, along with regular workshops in new and social media and experimenting with innovative ways of marketing its services. Over to Meg…

We want a mobile app – library specific or wider organisation app?

In the summer of 2011, we decided to make a library app.  We had just revamped our blog/website, but were not happy with how the site looked on mobile devices.  We thought that an app would be the best way to deliver mobile content, as we reflected that we personally didn’t do much on our smart phones if there wasn’t an app for it!

We planned to develop the app separately from the business school at large, as we thought it would be done quicker that way, but political and collaborative pressures led us in the autumn to team up with other departments to create a school-wide app, one component of which would be for library services.  The app committee that was formed consisted of people from IT, Information & Library Services and staff from the school’s various programmes.

Who is our audience?

From day one, the app has been thought of as being for current students enrolled at the school.  Another approach could have been to make an app for external audiences, which largely presented information about the school’s programmes.  But we wanted to make the app super useful – a Swiss army knife of sorts – that would help students get to information and services they needed quickly.

What do they want?

Initial focus groups

To understand students’ needs, we set up two focus groups to have discussions about what ideally students would want out of an app.  We asked for volunteers for these groups, and we gave them lunch: an approach which yielded two focus groups of about 5 students each, with representation across the school’s programmes.

At the focus groups, we tried to make questions open ended, concentrating on asking about what information students regularly needed to find and what they currently found difficult about the process.  The results were helpful though predictable.  Students mainly felt frustrated about all the different places they needed to go for information (e.g., the school intranet, the library portal, their course VLE, etc.).  With an app – i.e., with a single press of a button – they wanted all their most important information at their fingertips, especially information about timetables, library services, school events and room bookings.

The focus groups were helpful and gave us a starting point for discussions about what the app should do overall, but we still didn’t feel we had a strong sense of what to prioritise and put into the first release.  The focus groups generated a lot of ideas – too many really for the first version of the app —  and we weren’t sure how the larger student body would rank those ideas.

Wider survey

So in January 2012, we developed a general survey for students about what ideally they’d like in an app.  After asking about what programme they were in and about their usage of mobile devices, we asked them to brainstorm how an app could help them and then, in the next question, listed all the suggestions from the focus groups and had the students rank them using a point system.  (We offered 3-£20 vouchers to Amazon as an incentive to complete the survey.)

137 students completed the survey, representing 23% of the students.  53% of the respondents were from the MBA and EMBA programmes, with the remainder from the various Masters, MPhil and PhD programmes.

In terms of mobile device usage, 60% said they use Apple iPhones or iPads, and another 18% use Androids.  12% use Blackberries and 1% use Windows phones.  The remaining respondents use other devices such as the Nokia Symbian.

Not surprisingly, up-to-date information about time tables was first in both the suggestion- and ranking-portions of the survey.  Not-so-predictably, however, was how high library services ranked.  In the free-suggestion part of the survey, library services were the second-most frequently requested feature for the app (tied with information about school news and events).  In the ranking part of the survey, 4 of the top 10 features prioritised by students were aspects of library services.  Wow.

What library services did students ask for?  The top requests were the ability to

  • Access ebooks the library offers, especially those on reading lists
  • Access mobile-friendly research databases
  • Request and renew books
  • Ask a librarian a question

We at Information & Library Services were pleased (ok, chuffed!) with the results, not least because they showed the school that we are not an antiquated little department, quietly guarding our dusty collection of books (which is how we seem to be perceived by some parts of the school).  The students clearly said that along with other crucial information they regularly need, library services were an absolute necessity for their success as students.

So what now?

We are now working intently to have a version of the app ready for the new students in September 2012.  We are proud that the first release will feature library services so prominently.  It feels like a nice reward for all of the outreach, marketing and good public service we’ve done over the past years.  The students very clearly value our resources.