The newly launched Publications New Zealand website is a publicly accessible record of New Zealand publications. It provides comprehensive access to a database of past and current New Zealand publications and can be used to get information about published items with a strong New Zealand connection, and see which libraries have these items. After a few stops and starts, painstaking requirements, a user interface re-skin and that devil, testing, the website was launched by the NLNZ in February this year.
As the Project Manager for the second (and final) development phase of the website I would like to talk about some of the issues we encountered and why working through them was worth it.
So, what's the National Bibliography?
The Publications New Zealand website is based on the New Zealand National Bibliography: a collection of published items from or about New Zealand. In theory it includes all the ‘stuff’ published in New Zealand, ever. It includes books, serials, sound recordings, printed music, film, audio books, electronic publications and maps. If that wasn't cool enough it also includes some items published outside of New Zealand to which we would like to claim ownership (Lord of the Rings, Russell Crowe, pavlova).
In seriousness, if an item was published outside of New Zealand it must have at least one-fifth New Zealand content, a New Zealand setting (for fiction) or a New Zealand creator. To some this collection may sound a little dry, but for a patriotic poetry-lover like myself (as well as students, researchers, publishers and librarians), it has the possibility of becoming the ‘Matapihi’ of New Zealand publications: a celebration of the published creative output of our nation.
What do I get?
In short Publications New Zealand lets you:
- Search the National Bibliography
- Browse showcases of recent or interesting material
- Subscribe to an RSS of recent releases
- Create your own lists of publications (to print or export)
- Find out what libraries hold a publication
- Do all of this in English or Maori
- Through an intuitive and attractive UI designed by Click Suite
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Henry Mencken said that. He was a smart guy. We encountered quite a few complex problems during the project and had to develop some equally complex solutions. Here are three of them.
1. Audience
The website, as it stands, is targeted at New Zealand librarians, the New Zealand public (especially young New Zealanders and those with specialist areas of interest in New Zealand publishing) and the publishing industry. We also hope that international users will enjoy being able to access information about New Zealand publications.
Defining the audience for the website was one of the true tests of the project. Although use cases were developed at an early stage there was a real risk that, as the primary audiences had very different needs, we would end up in some blurry middle ground catering to all and satisfying none.
Our Solution. Decide on a primary need/audience for each feature of the website. For example our soon-to-be launched reporting feature will be targeted at acquisition and research librarians who want to produce lists using fields such as ‘Dewey’ or other such data that general users will not use. We have made sure the feature will still be usable (both functionally and in terms of usability) by the general public, but its primary focus is to directly meet a need identified by our library users.
But! Just as with children you must not favour one over the other. Although we provide a feature targeted at librarians (that exports the full information of an item in all its lengthy glory) the search results page shows a shorter record targeted for use by the general user.
2. Ko Tanga Aotearoa
I lost sleep over this issue. Although I personally believe every website produced by a Government Department should be in both Maori and English, the original prototype was only developed in English. When halfway through the project we re-skinned the UI and had an opportunity to make the site bi-lingual, we jumped at it. This extended our development timelines substantially and I despaired of the site ever being launched, until of course the site was launched and I was incredibly proud and pleased that the decision had been made.
Our Solution. For any New Zealand website a bilingual interface allows you to engage with a core user group. To make the work as painless and accurate as possible I suggest a very practical solution stolen from our Web Content Editor: make a spreadsheet!
We wrote the content for each page and had one worksheet for content and the other for single words (e.g. ‘search’). The columns included both the English and the Maori translations, making it easy and systematic for the developer to insert them into the code. Another suggestion – get everyone (and I mean everyone) to review sign off your content before it is translated because it is a costly and time consuming to change.
3. Teamwork
The team who worked on the second phase of this project were the complex answer to our complex problem. The team was constructed of two developers, two librarians, the Web Manager, a technology specialist, a business analyst and the product manager. The complexity of producing a website that surfaced MARC records (the developers said ‘huh’?), through a UI written in XML with XSLT (the librarians said ‘pardon me?’) was solved through an iterative consultation process on, well, everything.
In the final team debrief meeting everyone agreed that the combination of skills and willingness to consult had made the project a good experience, had up-skilled each team member and was the aspect that most influenced the successful launch of the website.
Future Plans
Although there isn’t a ‘Beta’ bauble gracing the header of the website, we still have a lot of work to do. The Library received a lot of great feedback from the New Zealand library community that will help us with the website's direction. Future plans are as-of-yet unset but the reports feature should be along soon and requests for providing ways for users to link out to booksellers and directly into the catalogues of New Zealand libraries have been added to our enhancement review list. There is also a lot of interest in how the Library can work with the publishing industry with this product.
So, please go and find some New Zealand publications and tell us what you think. I am very proud of the website and of the excellent team of people who were responsible for its launch.
http://publicationsnz.natlib.govt.nz
2 comments:
Lovely post. Congratulations on the project. I also enjoyed your account of the development process.
Would love to hear more about the 'defining the audience strand" - i.e. did you use personnas and scenarios - how did you document these - through formal use case, or activity wire frames ... ???
I have a double interest in the answers.
First, because learning more about process is always helpful for everyone.
Second, because I am seeing more and more projects in the heritage/knowledge sector starting to create some real solid digital assets, I'm equally interested in talking about how we unpack these assets and identify the common learnings that happened inside the development process.
I'm also very interested in a starting a discussion on how we can share these learnings - not just around process - but also in terms of what could best be called the "soft stuff" - the unexpected outcomes - the bit that changed peoles thinking - the way the project picked up on other areas of collaboration - how it fits with the wider ecology of new web tools and methodologies - how the project is received, and what are customers or collaborators doing with the tool on offer - what are the suggestions for ongoing development etc ..
Sounds like your project could be prime candidate for this kind of thinking/learning?
Is anyone else interested in this kind of thinking?
In any event - nice one - well done - go NZ National Library !
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your comment. The first part of the project (that I wasn't actually part of) did develop use cases. These were helpful in providing us with a broad idea of audience and use.
I wouldn’t say that it was rocket science though as our projects are driven and focused by the Library’s strategies and our content lends itself to types of use. All Library projects are focused on delivering to librarians, publishers, researchers, young New Zealanders or the New Zealand public (or a combination thereof).
What was really interesting was the UI wire frames design stage where a substantial amount of time was spent working on the information architecture. As the use cases were quite high level the team ended up making decisions as we went about the scope of each feature. Working collaboratively (and quickly) meant that we were able to keep an overview of the purpose / scope of the site while figuring out the detail.
For example, the first prototype of the reporting feature was created for librarians which (in my opinion) made it off-putting for the general user. On review we decided to 'loosen it up'. While it will still meet the requirements of librarians, we hope it will attract other users. Focusing on a feature’s primary audience while trying to maintain a level of general use, was a common theme throughout the UI development.
What I am really excited about is the next phase. Some features originally scoped for the first release were moved to phase two as we wanted to get the website out there for the public to use. In my opinion this is the ideal way to develop digital products. It means users (through their use) will let us know what works for them and what doesn’t. This is a great way to informing the website’s next steps.
And that is why I really like your idea for sharing (and aggregating?) cultural sector digital assets and learnings. I am sure that other organizations have knowledge on how to develop iteratively that we are just learning. We definitely don’t communicate as much as we should and the ‘soft stuff’ is the hardest to pin down in process (meaning each team needs to relearn it).
Personally I think that we need to combine online dialogue (wiki?) with face-to-face meetings (unconferences? themed and regular sector gatherings? small working parties?) and see what comes out of it.
- Sarah
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