RBC Info Commons
Website
What we need to know before we
start?
by Mukul Seth
Competitive Intelligence

What do other Information Commons
websites cover?

Which topics are the most popular?

How are they incorporated into the site?
IC websites looked at
Emory University
University of Arizona
University of Minnesota University of Iowa
University of Calgary
Purdue University
University of Georgia
U. Southern California
Queen's University
Indiana University
University of Toronto
Australian National U.
U. Saskatchewan
University of Otago
Dalhousie University
Content Categories

What content is on the websites?

Which of these categories are relevant to
our Information Commons?

How important our they to us?
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Component
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FA
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# IC Websites
Popularity of IC Website Components
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Instructions/Learning Aids
Online tutorials on printing, photocopying,
scanning, using a USB drive…
 Help with applications such as Microsoft
Office, Quest, myWaterloo, UWAce, and
the TRELLIS catalogue
 Usually linked to the How to.. Pages of the
library website
see Dalhousie University

Hardware/Software
How many workstations (sit-down/standup) there are and their specifications
 Are there any special multimedia
workstations?
 What software packages they have
installed
see U. Calgary, U. Arizona

What’s New
What current events are taking place in
the library, the university, maybe the
country
 Information about new software, and
software updates
 How to get involved in the library?
see U. Dalhousie, U. Toronto

Virtual Tour
Pictures of the facilities, linked from an
interactive floor map of the library
 Or a few 360 degree views of the IC areas
and other areas of the library (would need
users to have quick time installed)

see U. Iowa, Purdue
Feedback
Enables the users to provide us with
comments and criticism
 What they like, and what they don’t like
 This information is very useful to us
because it helps us get an understanding
of what works well and what doesn’t

see U. Calgary, U. Dalhousie
Support
Chat online, Email, etc
 This is the support that is available online
 The library already has a page that has
these
 We can link directly to that page to
minimize redundancy

see U. Georgia, U. Waterloo
Links toolbar
The main library links should be made
available
 The IC links should remain consistent on
all IC pages
 The more relevant links should stand out

see U. Calgary, U. Iowa
How is the IC site linked?

What is the IC website linked as
– e.g. “Computing in the Library”

Which category does it fall under
– e.g. “Services”, “Resources”, etc…

How prominent is the link?
– Does it appear at the top?
– Does it appear at the bottom?
How is the IC site linked?
Most universities just use “Information
Commons”, or “Learning Commons”
 It is listed under different categories for
just about every university
 Some of the common ones are “Services”,
or “Quick Links”
 There was no correlation in the placement
of the IC link from the main page

Common pages
Some pages such as Policies, Floor maps,
Support will be common between the IC
pages and the Library website
 Instead of creating all new pages with the
exact same information, we should create
links to those pages

Homepage?
Is the Information Commons page the
default homepage on the workstations at
other libraries?
 Should we consider making it the
homepage on the workstations in our
Information Commons?

More Info
You can go to my website to see the data
collected for each university.


What is the IC at other universities?
Who are we designing the IC site for?
The URL is
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/~mseth