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Talk:Library Card platform/Design improvements

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This is an archived version of this page, as edited by Habitator terrae (talk | contribs) at 16:00, 12 February 2021 (→My Library). It may differ significantly from the current version.

Latest comment: 4 years ago by Bruce1ee in topic Clarity about JavaScript: Library Card platform/Design improvements

My Library

Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments6 people in discussion

Is anything confusing about the mockup designs? Would you find the favouriting system helpful? Are there other filters or collection tags that we should consider? Any other thoughts welcome. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 21 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

  • I like it. The favourite section is nice, I'll definitely use that. The collection descriptions will be helpful, although perhaps they could also be collapsed like in the favourites section to save space. The filters will help isolating those collections I'm interested in. —Bruce1eetalk 13:02, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • First of all, I like the whole platform, and don't want to critisice this good structured design. Filters are also OK, but I wouldn't like or use a favouriting system, which collects the data, what I access more often. Habitator terrae (talk) 17:44, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • Actually having the information on what collections are, and the filter, are much needed for My Library - most of the icons/names mean nothing to me. A nice addition would be to mark those collections that have a way have/make publicly readable references (like clipping on newspapers.com allows) KylieTastic (talk) 18:13, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • The mockup that adds descriptions to each collection addresses my biggest gripe with My Library (trying to figure out which might be useful without having to go to another page for each one), and reduces the wasted space of oversized logos. Being able to mark my most frequently used collections as favorites will be a big time saver for me. Schazjmd (talk) 19:52, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • favouriting & collection descriptions (brief) would be very helpful Redwidgeon (talk) 22:44, 6 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Homepage

Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion

Making the homepage more useful

What do you want to be able to do from the Library Card homepage when logged in? What about when you're logged out? Is anything missing? Is there anything on the screen you don't interact with? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Making the homepage easy to use

Is anything confusing for you on the logged out homepage? What about the logged in homepage? What do you want to be able to do from the Library Card homepage? What was confusing for you when you first viewed the tool? What's missing from this page? No wrong answers :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 21 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

  • I don't find the current homepage confusing, and I'm happy with it as it is. If I'm logged out of TWL, I'm logged in automatically, provided I'm logged in to one of the Wikipedias. The page has all I need: it tells me whether I have access to the Library Bundle or not; I can access My Library; and I can apply for new access. —Bruce1eetalk 13:02, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • Samwalton9, you know I am not particularly good at the technical side of Wikiworld. What I struggle most with is renewal, which I am not remotely sure is a homepage issue. In my dream world, users would receive an automated message 30 days prior to access expiration, to avoid the problem of losing access and then being locked out until it is restored. (Of course, this doesn't always work, as last year though I had a notice from OUP, it expired before they renewed my "reference" and for some reason I will never understand gave me access to "scholarship", which did not allow me to access the same materials. It's February, and I just checked my archive, so I'm guessing that is about to happen again, ugh!) SusunW (talk) 16:06, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
    • Thanks for your thoughts @SusunW:! Yes, we hear that renewals are a source of frustration for many users. Those 30-day automated messages are a feature we've implemented in cases where we know for sure that your access is lasting for a set amount of time. Most notably, for all proxy-enabled publishers this is the case. It's also turned on for a few manually-setup publishers like Newspapers.com. We're going to take a look at the renewals process and see if there are other improvements we could make. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • What I miss most is a much more detailed presentation of the collections available: Which journals can be accessed, and which reference works are a part of the collection? You might like to sort the collections according to the subject field they deal with, e.g. politics, or law, or medicine, or general reference, or general journal archive. A common usecase for a German Wikipedian would be, e.g., to find a list of German-language law journals, or German-language newspapers available in the Wikipedia Library and how to access them. So I imagine a guide according to what you are looking for: Subjects, ebooks or journals or newspapers, full-text or bibliographic database etc. This should be the starting point from a researcher's point of view.--Aschmidt (talk) 22:19, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
    • @Aschmidt: This is a great point, and something that would unfortunately probably be quite hard for us to maintain. Thankfully, I think the ability to find the kinds of narrow-scoped collections you mentioned can be solved with the search tool - there you'd be able to search content that's in particular languages, in specific formats, or on particular topics. Most importantly, EBSCO keep that database up to date for us. Does that sound like it would solve your need here? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
+1 from me. --Mirer (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

General design feedback

Latest comment: 4 years ago12 comments8 people in discussion

Do you have general thoughts about the design of the Library Card platform? This can be about any pages or workflows - we'd love to hear any and all thoughts you have about what is or isn't working for you right now. Is anything particularly frustrating or confusing? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 21 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

  • What would be nice is when an "Access collection" button on the My Library page is clicked, the target page opens in a new browser tab/window, leaving the library page open for further use. Because the individual and instant access collections will be on the same page, will it be easy to distinguish between them? The individual access ones don't use the proxy and require user names and passwords. Do you think it would be useful for each collection to include, alongside their descriptions, any important terms-of-use conditions we should be aware of, like the distribution of content to third parties? —Bruce1eetalk 13:02, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
    • Thanks for these thoughts Bruce1ee! Opening those links in a new tab/window is an interesting idea - I'd love to hear what other folks think about this. As for individual vs instant, that's a great point. Do you have any thoughts on how we might succinctly flag whether an access button goes through the proxy or simply directly to the website for login? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
      • @Samwalton9 (WMF): Currently the library pages use "Access collection" buttons for instant access, and "Go to site" buttons for individual access. Perhaps something like "Login for access" for individual access may be sufficient to distinguish between the two. —Bruce1eetalk 14:12, 26 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • Shooting the moon here, for me the best user interface would be if I could log on to the Wikipedia Library, and the partners would give me access when I went directly to them. The Library homepage would not be the required Port of entry. All I would have to do is login to the database that I wanted to use. Perhaps reaching the database once through the Wikipedia Library would be enough to establish more or less permanent access, until the month when the access expired. It's a dream, and an improved search function will certainly help. Larrykoen (talk) 15:27, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
    • I like Larrykoen's moonshot! For example, I click a link to a JSTOR reference. It tells me I need access. I have to go to My Library, access the JSTOR collection, then search to find the proper doc. (If there's an easier way, I haven't figured it out.) Schazjmd (talk) 19:58, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • In fact, I like the current layout of the website. I think it could do with a bit of polish, but no more else.--Aschmidt (talk) 22:21, 5 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
One problem I have had is that I find sources to use in Google Scholar but need to hop through TWL to actually get them since they aren't the same URL. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:19, 7 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Clarity about JavaScript: Library Card platform/Design improvements

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Apparently javascript is necessary for use of the Library Card platform. This took me a while to figure out. Some sort of notice would probably be appropriate. Dcattell (talk) 00:40, 10 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Dcattell: Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This is something we paid close attention to in early development of the tool, but it seems like we haven't been as careful recently. I've noted some areas I identified as not functional at T274509. Am I missing anything there? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:55, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
Regarding T274509: a fallback mechanism to retain the expected functionality is a good idea, and would seem to involve technical difficulties involving platforms of Wikipedia Library's partners. Some informational messaging to editors would be good: I expected functionality which I could have gotten by enabling JS (I'm an old school KISS fan, not so fond of JS). However, expectations are changeable. Anyway, I think you also want to look into the functionality of clicking on a reference at the bottom of an article and see what happens, even with JavaScript enabled (I am a firm believer that Wikipedia editors should actually check reference citations by actually checking them rather than just seeing if something is listed, but that is another topic). So, for instance, I go to Kunlun (mythology). I see that there is a reference citation to a source that I am (was) unfamiliar with:
  • Schipper, Kristofer (1978), "The Taoist Body", History of Religions, Current Perspectives in the Study of Chinese Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 17 (3/4), JSTOR 1062436 
I think, "ok cool!" I click on the hyperlink "1062436" (the JSTOR link opens up to the Wikipedia article about JSTOR). Following the link for "1062436", I get a JSTOR tab or window open to a page referencing the Schipper source which offers to allow me to click a button labeled "Read and download Login through your school or library". Following down this path is not helpful. If I enter "Wikipedia" as the institution, then I get a message box saying:
"Alternate access options
Although Wikipedia participates in JSTOR, they have not provided us with a way for you to log in remotely. Check your library’s website for access info or contact your librarian who manages JSTOR for your institution."
Of course the work around is to log on through Wikipedia and then do a search for the article. Not so hard. I'm not complaining, but you did ask! Anyway, cheers! And keep up the good work! Dcattell (talk) 18:01, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Dcattell: Have a look at Nikkimaria's solution to this problem earlier on this page. Create a browser bookmark with this ___location:
javascript:void(___location.href="https://wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?auth=production&url="+___location.href)
Click on the JSTOR id in the citation and you get the paywalled article. Now click on the bookmark you created and you'll get full access to that article through TWL. —Bruce1eetalk 06:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
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