SFX Menu Modifcations

Kate Fuller & I saw a *great* presentation about SFX menu design while we were at ELUNA. David Walker, SFX guy for the Cal State system, morphs the existing SFX menu template into one that's more intuitive, and he explains the design considerations of each modification. I *highly* recommend that you watch David's 20-minute video -- it's a really good explanation of his revised SFX menu.

Based on David's work, and with his technical help, I have made some preliminary changes to the SFX menus in our "test" instance (that is, the menus aren't "live" in our databases, but the links within the menu are functional).

You can see what I've done here ...

• full-text available
• no full-text available

Two major changes:

• The menu language is greatly simplified and the screen is also much less cluttered. The text that is clickable is what's most important to many patrons (i.e., "full-text online" or "we may have a copy in print")
• There is a More Options section which opens when you click on it. There are two options here:
  a) "Save citation information for your bibliography" which permits users to save the full citation plus the SFX URL.
  b) "Report a technical problem with UConn Links SFX" which permits users / librarians to easily email ELibrary with problem citations they find in SFX.
When RefWorks becomes available, we will add "Save citation to RefWorks" as an third option.

These changes are consistent with the findings of the University of Michigan's SFX study. Comments from different users regarding their standard SFX menu (which is arguably more cluttered than the UConn Links menu)

1. "It is a little hard to navigate in terms of getting an article. The links are clear, but it's not always completely obvious that the link will lead you to the article" while another said "An obvious link to the full text. Something that says 'full text link' " in the SFX window.

2. One Michigan user asked for the "ability to save citations in my choice of style in RefWorks, EndNote or pasteable text" while another said "A 'save reference' option would be nice."

Please take a look at these two sample menus. Language & other suggestions are welcome!