BY Meg Mcmahon

The Context

In the Fall of 2023, Tozzer Library, Harvard's Library for Anthropology, started the thought process around a refresh for their lower level. The Librarian for Tozzer Library, Susan Gilman, and the Librarian for American Indigenous Studies, Julie Fiveash, reached out to the URC and asked for a meeting to chat about user research...

Welcome to the first research rundown from the User Research Center at Harvard Library. In this quarterly newsletter, the URC will be sharing recent research that our team has conducted at Harvard Library.

If you have any questions about the research or would like to consult with our team about helping you plan or conduct research at Harvard Library please reach out to libraryux@harvard.edu.

Survey on Student Use of AI for Academic Work

This survey was conducted in Fall 2023 with 376 undergraduate (50%) and...

BY Katie Kim, URC Intern Fall 2023

At the URC we are interested in student and faculty perspectives on generative AI. To explore how it is affecting our faculty we conducted a study in Fall 2023. During this process, I engaged in an intriguing experiment: after analyzing the AI Focus Group meeting notes myself, I tasked generative AI with the same analysis to compare the outcomes. This experiment was designed to examine how the AI's interpretation and insights might differ from a human perspective. Let's examine various aspects of these differences....

By Amy Deschenes

Each summer, our team hosts three interns from the University of Michigan’s School of Information (UMSI). These interns may be part of the library science or the user experience tracks of the program. The interns work as an online cohort for 35 hours a week for 10 weeks over the summer. Because of the participants’ varied backgrounds and distinct goals, we approach the internship with a “choose your own adventure” mindset. With a little bit of preparation before the interns start, we can determine the best projects for them to work on and...

By Meg McMahon

Recently, I have conducted two studies about online web forms. One study was for an internal form related to managing e-resource acquisition and maintenance. The other study was to create a better form experience for special borrowers on our website’s Visitor Access page. After both of these studies were conducted I attended a presentation by the NC State User Experience Research team. The talk was called "Better...

By Sara Price

Even when the weather forecast is completely clear of rain, the URC team can sometimes be seen on campus carrying around boxes containing hundreds of umbrellas. This is because we set up tables at widely attended student events in order to invite signups for our participant pool. Small incentives such as umbrellas decorated with Harvard logos, handed out in exchange for completed signup forms, help us to recruit future user research study participants.  

Building A Participation Pool

Even the best survey,...