As chair of Milner Library’s Federated Search Committee, I have been heavily involved in the customization, implementation and assessment of Search It, Milner’s federated search engine. It’s really been a great experience. The committee spent about 5 months customizing Search It (January – June 2006). Search It was implemented on June 5, 2006, and since then we’ve done two rounds of assessment – usability testing in August 2006 and focus groups in June & September 2007.
The feedback that we received from the assessment was so valuable and interesting!! Thankfully, Angela Bonnell and I were able to share some of this information at the Internet Librarian 2007 Conference in Monterey, California on October 29. Our presentation was titled Federated Searching Feedback from Usability Testing and Focus Groups … not as creative as what we proposed, but we were sharing the time slot with another presenter. Check out the presentation … the statistics and quotes are fascinating … at least I think so. =)
