Another summer long project I participated in began before I came to Prague. In an attempt to better gather data to serve patrons, NTK has taken up a project to create something that resembles a Customer Relations Management (CRM) Platform. I worked in the Services Division of the library while I was there, and one of the services provided to patrons is consultation services, from basic reference inquiries to assistance with research and writing. Up to this point, this data has been tracked through forms and a spreadsheet, but the hopes of this project is to streamline this and make data gathering and service tailoring easier for the staff. This was the main focus of the project with hopes of expanding beyond this in the future to make the platform more viable for the Services Division and possibly the library at large.
I worked with Alena, Alexey, and Marine on this project and each of us had specified tasks. As Alena managed the project, Alexey was our platform creator, working with open source software and customizing it, while I worked on a particular portion of the form and helped Marine and Alena in user testing. Due to the lack of patrons in the summer months, full testing of the project was not capable of beginning in the summer, but developments in the project were possible.
Specifically, I was focused on incorporating the plethora of resources available to patrons into a digestible way for the form. With more than 50 databases, physical collections, and special services available to patrons, this became a daunting task in the beginning. In the end, I decided grouping these resources in like ways would be helpful and this idea was adopted after a general discussion with the group, a mock-up, and satisfactory user testing. Tracking resources used in these types of consultations could lead to more informed decisions about resource utilization for library staff in the future.
Another discussion that we had regarded the versatility of the interface. I worked mostly from a tablet while in Prague, and upon accessing the interface from here, Alexey attempted to incorporate some of the ways it functioned into the desktop interface as well.
These types of discussions in our meetings often led us to having new versions of the interface to interact with when we met. Near the end of my time in Prague, we began user testing with the staff because of the success of this iterative process. All of our testing was done in the division, as it is a tool meant for the staff there, and was done on a paper version of the interface, as the computer version was not quite ready for testing yet. The feedback we got from our 8 test cases was extremely helpful, indicating we were moving in the right direction and that some changes should be utilized.
While it was hoped that this project would be launched in October with the new semester, development is still in process with the hopes of implementation occurring soon (according to my colleagues in Prague). The interface has continued to change as the iterative process of the project has led to more understanding of how the platform can operate. A backlog of consultations and accounts has been added to the platform, which was used as a test case to understanding how the analytics could be utilized while also providing base data for the project. This will continue to be an ongoing project and there are hopes to expand to include actions such as tracking courses, lectures, workshops, excursions, queries, and meetings.
Raven K 