Does Interface Design Influence Catalog Use? A Case Study

Abstract

A recent OPAC redesign and implementation of a link resolver at the University of Colorado at Boulder prompted the researchers to question whether the redesign influenced catalog use. Authors evaluated transactional log data between fall of 2005 and spring of 2008. Searches for keyword, title, author, subject, LC call number, and ISSN/ISBN were tracked for each semester during weeks two and three of the semester, a mid-semester sampling period, and finals week. The data show that keyword searches increased slightly following the redesign, and ISSN/ ISBN searches increased dramatically following implementation of the link resolver. Total searches held steady over the course of the study.t the University of Colorado at Boulder, the interface to the Web-based online public access catalog (OPAC) had not been significantly redesigned since its initial debut in 1997. In the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007, a committee undertook the project of completely restructuring the interface. The design for the new interface was based on examples from other research libraries, literature on Web site usage and design, and informal usability testing. This sparked an interest in whether the changes significantly influenced the way that users approached and used the catalog. This study focuses on a quantitative assessment of user search choice as tracked by OPAC transaction logs over three years, both before and after the new interface debuted. During the same period, the library implemented other new discovery tools, whose influence on OPAC use will also be assessed. This study seeks to reveal, to the extent possible with the data available, how users were searching the catalog before the interface redesign, how they search it after the redesign, and what this usage implies about the influence of interface design on catalog use. The authors theorized that the interface redesign would trigger an increase in keyword searches, since the new interface defaulted to keyword search. We also expected a rise in ISSN searches after the implementation of an OpenURL link resolver. Furthermore, there has been a great deal of discussion about the continued relevance of library catalogs in an environment where users are so comfortable with popular search engines. This