http://www.endinfosys.com/usability.htm
[2006-08-21: Unfortunately the links to the site of Endeavor don’t work anymore. Usability not important anymore for Endeavor? TP]
This page contains some useful links with respect to usability. The first link on the page is to an introduction by Jakob Nielsen about the subject of usability.
In the Related Links section to the right, you will find a number of documents that describe Endeavor’s work, including a whitepaper that describes good interface design for federated searching, and a checklist on how to start usability testing at your library.
Very useful are the slides of this presentation:
Slide 12 about the value of user-centered design (Elsevier!) is very instructive. Slide 26 gives information about the equipment of the usability lab of Rochester University. Slides 31 – 33 describes the user interface of EnCompass for Journals Onsite. “Developed a user interface that supported browsing behavior of users.” Slide 32 is a screen dump of Browsing journals grouped by subject; this is relevant for our discussion about the functionality of the journal catalogue.