Lessons Learnt

Mobile Discovery

This project reinforced that developing for mobile devices is complex because of the wide range of operating systems, browsers, screen resolution and processing power that are in common use at present.

We also learnt that our users do want some advanced functionality on mobile discovery tools, such as the ability to toggle between only showing search results where the full text is available and showing all results. It is always worth doing user research.

Adding audio-visual materials

Open data isn’t always easy to use, even when it is coming from your own institution. We weren’t able to complete the inclusion of OU audio-visual materials in the search results because the metadata is only available to us as linked data and OU library staff currently lack the skills to work with it.

Mobile bookmarklet

Some licence agreements with content providers or publishers prohibit storing user log-in credentials on their personal devices.

Evaluation

When recruiting users to give any kind of feedback you will get a far higher response rate if you can contact them directly than if you issue the invitation to participate through a website, online noticeboard or other “pull” media.

Good practice toolkit

The process of writing the good practice toolkit exposed me to different tools and methods which would have been useful during the project. The toolkit could have been of benefit to the project if it had been researched and written alongside the development and evaluation rather than after they were completed.