Accessibility, Rabbit Holes, Wormholes

Ok, wormholes is a little extreme, but I've been watching some back episodes of the TV show Sliders about traveling to parallel dimensions and whatnot. That's kind of like clicking around in new tabs, following links, and getting lost in the interwebs, right? This post addresses some accessibility concerns with the TJLP database LibraryThing records.

With our TJLP LibraryThing catalog records, we're creating a rich, interactive bibliographic information-session for users. The records that I've been dealing with describing the Wythe bequest are especially complex - filled with lots of data to tell the story of the book coming into Jefferson's library, its representation there, and then its possible dispersal to Congress or somewhere else. The records are all formatted in the same way, which hopefully prevents confusion. But with this amount of information on one record there are other variables that influence access and user-friendliness. LibraryThing is a social environment, and the catalog record reinforces this by linking to information resources - other catalog records, transcriptions, manuscript images, author pages, etc. The potential for getting lost down rabbit holes is great. So how best to account for that? In code to open in new tabs or windows? In help/user guides explaining system search and retrieval? Also, we can't account for users' personal browser settings affecting some of these actions. And do users know better/prefer to user their back arrows or close new tabs/windows?

We've tried to present a lot of useful and enriched information in an organized manner in these records. Retrieving and navigating that information likewise needs to be an organized, efficient process in order to successfully convey information in this environment. Interesting quandaries...

New TJLP Site

It's been an exciting couple of weeks for the Thomas Jefferson's Libraries Project at Jefferson Library. The Project has a new website home that recently went live on Monticello's server. This allows TJLP to grow and add content in new ways and generally become a richer experience for users. Until recently, TJLP database records were managed in the third-party content management system PubMan by dataformat.com. Database searches from the new site retrieve LibraryThing records, reflecting the recent efforts to migrate the Thomas Jefferson's Libraries Project database content there, which is largely what I've been contributing to at Jefferson Library. The new site helps explain the complexity of the Project to users, the reasons Jefferson Library is attempting to identify the books Thomas Jefferson owned in his personal libraries throughout his life, and various ways that users might navigate the site and LibraryThing in order to satisfy their information needs. The site will be growing as more content is added; likewise will the database continue to grow with records and be more useful to a variety of users. Read all about the Project.

Take a look around, and give us some feedback here. The folks at Jefferson Library are anxious to know what users think of the site!