The user research studied students from various educational levels and geographic locations. It found that Google and Wikipedia have become deeply influential resources that students rely on and trust for initial research. The search results page is now the primary destination, so libraries need to ensure the best, most relevant results are immediately available on the first page. This informs improvements to the EDS discovery tool, such as Research Starters, rich metadata in result lists, and auto-complete search suggestions to better adapt to student search behaviors and keep them engaged with library resources.

1. User Research

2. • High School, Early College, Upper-
Class College, Graduate students
• Massachusetts, Texas, California,
Nevada
• Diversity of background,
socioeconomic status
• “Describe your last research project”
ContextualInquiry Study:Students

3. The Magic 6:
Key Strategies for the
Library Customer Experience

4. The Magic 6
Zoom Out
Why and how to study users’
full digital landscape
Googlepedia
Understand the powerful
influence of Google and
Wikipedia
Results: the New Black
How the search results page
became the key destination
Understanding Motivation
Why do students “make the
turn” towards informavore?
Information Literacy
Where and when are students
learning these important skills?
The Intuitive Library Website
It’s possible. And it’s critical.

5. Googlepedia
Google + Wikipedia =
Googlepedia
The Google-Wikipedia cycle
becomes deeply ingrained
because it provides a reward.
Yes, but how do we adapt this
approach for scholarly research?
Understand and
learn from the
powerful influence
of Google and
Wikipedia.
2

6. “It’s their oxygen”
Google and Discovery
The first half of the first
page of results is critical.
Page 1 matters most
If my search fails – it
must be my fault
I “trust” it
Wikipedia is often
the first result.
Go to Images, News
etc from this page.
Users are more
likely to search
again than to look
at page 2+ of
results.

7. Because users like an overview they can understand
Wikipedia
1
2
3
Overview in “layman’s language”
Table of contents – “preview”
References and external links at the
bottom

8. EDS Research Starters

9. EDS Research Starters

10. Results:
The New Black
The Search Results page is no
longer a pass-through; it is a
destination all its own.
Discovery is a critical tool so the
best, most relevant results are
shown on page 1.
Users make decisions from the
results page. Full-text and
comprehensive metadata must be
immediately available.
How the search
results page became
the most important
page.
3

11. Skimmers, scanners, efficiency-seekers

12. User Research Improves
EDS
• Research Starters
• Brings “Googlepedia” concept to Discovery
• Research Starters provided for top 60,000+ searches
• Keeps users in the library brand
• Result List Displays
• Rich metadata and full text pdfs – users make decisions from
results list
• Responsive Auto-Complete
• Uses “big data” to improve searching
• Auto-complete suggestions by popularity
• Relevance Ranking

13. EDS: Top Search Terms
Sourced from one-week (Sept. 2014) sample of top search terms by market
Filtered to queries searched across at least 100 EDS customers

14. EDS Sample Search
Screen

15. EDS Auto-Complete

16. EDS Results List
Research Starters:
Citable sources;
68,000 entries
selected from most
popular EDS
searches