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leveraging student data to create website personalizationIan ChanWeb Development Librarian, California State University San Marcos

2012 SLA-SD Fall Seminar Spotlight on the User: Enhancing Valuethrough User-Centric Design and Innovation

October 5, 2012

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first, a look back…

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customized start pages 1998 ~ ?

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customization & library websites

MyLibrary – Notre Dame/NCSU, 1998developed at NCSU & Notre Dame and imlemented by VCU, LeHigh, others

MyLibrary – Cornell, 1998

More ExamplesMyLibrary – Univ. of Minn. Libraries, leverages campus CMS National University of Singapore – Nexus (CMS)Karolinska Institutet University Library – DrupalPennPortal – Libraries – campus CMSDublin City Public Libraries – Netvibes Galter Health Sciences Library – self-developed

derived from Aaron Tay’s 2010-06 blog post titled “Customizable library portal pages”

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a new approach

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similar goals, different approaches

customizationUser drives content selection & layout

personalizationSystem drives content selection

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personalizationPersonalization is a process that ‘‘changes the functionality, interface, information content, or distinctiveness of a system to increase its personal relevance to an individual’’ (Blom, 2000, p. 313)

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assessment of a library portal

Galter Health Sciences Library studied the use of their portal from 2003-2008

“The automated application of specialty-based, personalized HSLs was more frequently adopted than manual customization by users” (Shedlock et al., 2010).

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users want smart systems

“Student and faculty groups both expressed a desire for systems that know the individual better and that behave “more like Amazon” in remembering who they are, what they like, and where they left off in their work” (Jafari et. al. 2006).

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what we’d like our site to do

Expedite access to our resources Connect users with individual librarians Personalize the research experience

idea

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how we did it

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project requirements (highlights)Technical Leverage existing user data transfer Integrate login with EZproxy/institutional authentication Secure

UX Don’t bother the user … but add value

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we use…

Drupal

Minimal, custom PHP scripts

Data export from ILS

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After login, users can flag databases as

favorites

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Assessment

Click tracking – CrazyEgg

Web Analytics – Google Analytics, Piwik

Talk to users… in person!

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4 days into test, we inserted the “Sign-in to access databases…” help

bubble and login button clicks jumped significantly…

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Upcoming developments

Query user data in library catalog directly and instantly update course data

Integrate saved articles from Summon Discovery Service

Provide dynamic, course-specific library widgets to learning management system

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Discussion / Q&A

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References

Blom, Jan. 2000. “Personalization: a Taxonomy.” In , 313. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/633292.633483. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=633483.

Jafari, A., McGee, P., Carmean, C., 2006. Managing Courses Defining Learning: What Faculty, Students, and Administrators Want. EDUCAUSE Review 41, 50–52,54,56–58,60,62,64,66,68,70.

Shedlock, James, Michelle Frisque, Steve Hunt, Linda Walton, Jonathan Handler, and Michael Gillam. 2010. “Case Study: The Health SmartLibrary Experiences in Web Personalization and Customization at the Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University.” Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA 98 (April): 98–104. doi:10.3163/1536-5050.98.2.003.

Sundar, S. Shyam, and Sampada S. Marathe. 2010. “Personalization Versus Customization: The Importance of Agency, Privacy, and Power Usage.” Human Communication Research 36 (3) (July): 298–322. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2010.01377.x.