The Accessibility Toolkit: This toolkit is for librarians and academic IT professionals new to accessibility in libraries and who are looking for guidance on where to begin. It is also for people looking for resources on specific aspects of accessibility work.
Cognitive Diversity and Neuroinclusion: This resource is not an exhaustive or rigid list, but rather a starting point to enhance support for cognitive diversity and neurodivergent individuals. The suggestions in this toolkit may not be appropriate for everyone, nor should they take precedence over the stated needs of the person before you. Instead, let these ideas guide you on how to develop support approaches and gather feedback for improvement.
PDF and Digital Materials Remediation Checklist: This checklist provides guidelines for creating digital materials such as ILL scans, controlled digital lending, and theses. The checklist is meant to help train and educate workers on tools that can help make a document accessible and issues to look for when reviewing a document. It is intended to be adaptable, so depending on different situations (i.e., there are never images in what you are creating), items can be removed or added.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
DEI Key Terms and Concepts: Part of the DEI Standing Group’s charge is to develop and promote a shared understanding of key terms and concepts related to DEI and anti-racism. The definitions shared in these pages are in support of that charge. Just as our understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism grows and expands, the definitions on these pages will change and adapt to reflect continual learning. As such, these definitions will never be “final.”
Open Call Presentations – many of the DUX Open Calls contain short presentations or demos arranged by the Discovery Training Standing Group (DTCSG). Look for them listed in the details section of the Community Call Recordings page.
Primo Reference and Instruction Survey Report (2018-2019) – In January of 2018, the Discovery and User Experience Team conducted a survey aimed at gathering information from an important group of stakeholders that interact directly with our students; Reference and Instruction Librarians and Staff. This effort concluded with a final report detailing the team’s findings after a year long analysis period.
Synonyms in Primo Searches – Primo has built in synonym types for searching, including numbers (1=one), US or British spellings (color=colour), hyphenations and spaces (web site=website), and common mis-spellings (archaeology=archeology). This is a link to the full list of synonyms applied to Primo searches, Alliance-wide, as of December 2021. Members desiring an addition to the synonym file may submit their suggestions using this form. Because these additions impact all Alliance institutions, the User Experience Standing Group will present requested additions to the community by email or during open calls to confirm that the addition is desirable across our membership.
User Experience
User Experience in Physical Spaces: Communities experience libraries as more than online spaces. This project focuses on ways to support library workers in our efforts to improve the user experience of our physical spaces.
User Experience Research Methods: Resources to support library workers with user experience research methods, starting with UX Sampler Sessions. Topics includes observational, participatory, survey, data-driven, and research methods in both demonstration and documentation formats.
User Testing Toolkit: Created by the User Testing Toolkit Project Group in April 2018 to provide Alliance libraries with resources to perform user testing at their institution. The toolkit is broken down into the following sections:
Sample User Testing Documentation: These pages collect sample documentation used by institutions in the Orbis Cascade Alliance and generic templates found in other user testing resources.
This guide is for librarians and archivists who want to understand what goes into user testing coordination and implementation.
Supports how to perform user testing with any type of library and archives patron in order to understand what success and challenges they have with different kinds of interactive digital systems like online library catalogs, digital collections repositories, library websites, and finding aid repositories.
