Nina McHale Margaret Brown-Sica LITA Forum 2010

Forthcoming: Margaret Brown-Sica, Jeffrey Beall, and Nina McHale, “Next-Generation Library Catalogs and the Problem of Slow Response Time,” Information Technology and Libraries, Volume 29/4, December 2010,

 Are NextGen catalogs—or traditional catalogs that add NextGen content—too slow?  Do 2.0/NextGen features slow them down too much?

 Yup.  Features such as cover art, reviews, tagging, etc., can significantly increase the amount of data, and therefore time, required to return a catalog record page.  Performance factors, particularly speed, should be required criteria for librarians and vendors evaluating and designing products.

 W3C does not set forth standards  Jakob Nielsen 0.1 of a second: feels “instantaneous” 1.0 second: feels “uninterrupted” 10 seconds:  “About the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on the dialogue.”  Give the user “time-remaining” feedback Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1994) 135.

 During a busy time during the semester, we recorded response times in seconds of permalinks for three catalog records  Tested our classic/NextGen catalogs and three others  3 books, 5 catalogs, 3 times per day for 13 days=585 data points  Collecting several data points in this way using ensured that data was consistent

 Library of Congress Catalog Voyager Traditional catalog  University of Texas at Austin Innovative Interfaces Traditional catalog with added NextGen elements  University of Southern California Sirsi/Dynix Traditional catalog with added NextGen elements

 Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. Washington, DC: Special Inspector General, Iraq Reconstruction, (OCLC number )  Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books, (OCLC number )  Langley, Lester D. Simón Bolívar: Venezuelan Rebel, American Revolutionary. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2009. (OCLC number )

     ata1= {CKEY}

 WebSite Pulse™ Allows testing on any web page/site; does not require server installation  Similar services: websiteoptimization.com browsermob.com tools.pingdom.com your favorite?

 Horizontal bar: Gives visual representation of load time for each item (image files, javascript files, style sheets, etc.) Provides quick indication of “sticking points”  Table: provides specifics about file size and delivery time for each DNS, Connect, Redirect, First Byte, Last Byte, Error

 Auraria’s Skyline:  Auraria’s WCL:  Library of Congress:  University of Texas at Austin:  University of Southern California:

 After data was analyzed, we took a closer look at each individual catalog, using the Hard Lessons catalog record  WebSitePulse™ allowed us to take a glimpse at the inner workings of each catalog  Findings confirmed that extra data and load times were from 2.0/NextGen content

 Missing favicon (item 4)  seconds “uninterrupted” per Nielsen  14 items, for a total of K: 9 GIFs 2 CSS 1 JavaScript  Good performance, but an interface that only a librarian could love

 Reference & Instruction librarians’ observations corroborated  seconds  31 items, for a total of K, to load: 10 CSS files 10 JavaScript files 8 GIFs/PNGs  No single NextGen feature slowed down load time, but multitude of files created unacceptable delay

 Overall, second fastest of all five catalogs tested  seconds  Only six items and K to load: 2 CSS files 3 GIFs  Like Skyline, fast, but has that “legacy look”

 Added NextGen features: Cover art LibraryThing’s Catalog Enhancement  Supports recommendations, tag browsing, alternate editions/translations  seconds: user experience interrupted  19 items, K  Cover art nearly doubles response time Item 14: script on ILS that queries Amazon for art

 Slowest among traditional catalogs; Sirsi/Dynix takes longer to make initial connection (Item 1 on graph)  seconds (though average was seconds)  16 items, K  While attractive and well-integrated, Syndetic Solutions content (cover art, summary, author biography, and table of contents) adds 1.2 seconds to load time

“The new database seems based on Amazon.com. I don’t need suggestions, and poor ones at that, of related books when I use the library. I don’t need to see what other borrowers thought of the book. The information I need is poorly displayed. It is hard to cut and paste. It takes several screens to scan through, instead of the much quicker scroll in the traditional format…. It supplies distracting, if not useless information (a picture of the cover, the distance to other libraries—as if I need to know how far Provo is).” -Auraria Campus Faculty Member

 Make performance testing part of evaluation process for vendor products  Adhere to industry standards for acceptable response times when testing  Optimize delivery of 2.0/NextGen features as much as possible  Conduct user testing to ensure that the content is “worth the wait” to their minds

Nina milehighbrarian.net