Focusing on User Experience with Melody Ethley

The lion’s share of what libraries do requires a fundamental attention to the experience of the researcher, scholar, student, faculty or patron who engages either in-person or online with resources, services, spaces and expertise. That experience of the user can have a profound effect on the quality and efficacy of the work being pursued. With the growth of personal technologies and the development of user-centered design, there’s been a growing movement to place a greater emphasis on user and customer experience in all manner of industry, and libraries have begun to incorporate this strategy into their own operations with the enlistment of User Experience and Content Management experts.

The UT Libraries recently hired its first User Experience Designer, and we sat down with Melody Ethley to learn a bit more about what she will bring to improve the experience of all who enter the Libraries, be that through a door or a browser.


Tex Libris: What’s your background, and how did you get into user experience (UX)?

Melody Ethley: My background is in computer information systems. I was first exposed to User Experience design during my undergrad years. I was still trying to figure out what I’d like to do. After graduation, I had an opportunity to intern at the Library of Congress (LOC) and that was really such an invaluable experience. It was so hands-on, and I learned from a lot of well-versed UX professionals. And I also appreciated having that exposure in the library, which I had never even known about as an option for a career. After my time at LOC, I did some independent work and sought out small business owners to help them develop their websites with a UX focus. I tried to implement my processes while also considering that they don’t really know much about UX. I was eager to continue to follow the path that I was on in pursuing a career in this field and making sure that I was still moving forward while the world was kind of falling apart. I started at UTL in the summer, so I’ve been here for a few months now.

TL: Tell me a little bit about the law.gov project that you worked on at the Library of Congress (LOC). What was it like being involved in a project that big coming fresh out of out of college into this internship?

ME: It was very intimidating, I will say. And didn’t realize how big the project was until I was working on it. I was on a team of about 12 people all doing UX within their own projects at the library. My direct supervisor was the lead experience designer on law.gov at the time. I was brought in as a user researcher and content strategist to help facilitate usability studies and synthesize data from our findings. My integration into the project was very quick, you know. I did a lot of research on how various topics were found on the law.gov landing page, because there was a concern with important content being buried under the menus. And if you have ever visited the law.gov website – like many library websites – there’s a lot of content to sift through. We wanted to figure out how our novice and power users were navigating the Law.gov website and organize the content in a way that everybody could find the information that they needed.

It was a fun project. I got to sit in the Law Library and recruit participants to do our study, which was really interesting. I had to be very strategic in when and how I approached people. At first, it was a little nerve-wracking, because I didn’t want to interrupt their studies, but I was also motivated to gather as many participants as I could. I am a people person, and I’m comfortable with approaching people I don’t know, so it was right up my alley to just go in there and recruit folks for our study.

Later in the project, I inherited the content inventory, which was a big undertaking. I didn’t even realize until after I was finished with this internship that there were over 30,000 items that I helped to capture for the law.gov redesign. I spent weeks revising the existing content inventory and while it was a tedious task, I found a lot of interest in the artifacts that I uncovered while I was working on it. I captured every piece of content that I encountered – any internal and external pages, pdfs, collections, events, you name it. The Type A personality in me had to make sure any and everything was in that spreadsheet. So, at times it was like, ‘oh man, this is a lot, this is a lot.’ But I feel like I was able to kind of truncate it and break it down in a way that wasn’t too overwhelming. And then I realized that I enjoyed working within the realm of content strategy and it became an area that I wanted to explore more about in UX. It’s just another element under the big umbrella of things that you can do in this industry. 

TL: Do you think the LOC experience provided any preparation for coming to work at the UT Libraries?

ME: Oh, definitely. I didn’t have that experience working in a library coming into the UX profession. That was one thing that I was excited about when I applied here. My previous experience in a library helped me realize how meaningful my work could be in this space, and the idea of impacting so many people who are striving to reach their educational goals brings me so much purpose. And having that hands-on experience in a larger organization was great, because if I hadn’t had that experience then I would have been mostly relying on my independent projects with the smaller organizations which might not have served me as well in this role. I think that my experience at LOC gave me the reassurance and confidence in my capability to do the work at the caliber that it needs to be done.

TL: Does the approach to UX differ for an organization like a library?

ME: I would say that UX is fairly the same across all industries. Of course, there are nuances, but the core concept and idea remain the same – to deliver a delightful experience to the user. UX in the library is going to be very similar to UX in a private organization. When I think of UX, I think of how I can bring together the needs of the user, the needs of the organization, and the constraints of a specific product that I’m working on. And when I say users, I’m thinking of all my users – so here at the Libraries that is staff, leadership, our patrons. Then how can the organization benefit from the work that I’m doing, even if it’s just in the smallest way? I think all three of those components are what embody UX at its core. And of course, considering that there are nuances in everything it’s difficult for me to pinpoint right now, but I’m sure I will gather these things as I navigate my first few projects.

I’m excited to spread UX around the organization and to inform everybody about all the possibilities of UX. I feel like there’s still kind of like a foggy notion about it, you know. I’m going to be working a lot on the library website and to make sure that our resources and services are useful, and accessible for not only our patrons but for our staff too, because as I see my role, everybody is my user, not just the students – it’s also my colleagues, leadership, and really anybody who has a stake in the Libraries. I think about how I can make each person or group of people’s lives a little bit easier with the work that I do.

TL: That’s good because I generally just make their lives more complicated with what I’m asking them to do – kind of like this right now.

ME: That’s why we’re on a team. Hot and cold.

Read, Hot and Digitized: Mapping Emotions in Victorian London

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

As readers, we often subconsciously craft physical spaces – whether real or imagined – in our minds in an effort to find meaning within or forge a connection with the text. The same can be said of the real-world cities in which different works of fiction take place. London, replete with a rich history of representation throughout the arts, is a standout example of one such city that writers return to time and again to inspire adaptations, reimaginings and original content. One need look no further than recent shows like Sherlock or Penny Dreadful to evince this. Keeping with this interest, researchers have created a tool that allows people to quickly and easily look back at those original texts that helped shape popular conception of London in the form of an interactive map of specific sites.

Mapping Emotions in Victorian London is a digital project created at Stanford University that uses literary excerpts from 18th and 19th century novels to map the emotions associated with different public spaces throughout London. The interactive map, hosted on History Pin, allows users to geospatially visualize data from those passages and read the excerpted passages in one streamlined interface. The map itself was created using Google Maps but features multiple levels of overlaid antique, illustrated maps, which shift depending on the scale selected, lending a visually pleasing touch to the tool without sacrificing utility or data integrity. Using it is as simple as selecting a date range and then clicking through numbered hubs on the map until you arrive at a particular site and the corresponding text.

Click on the color coded local “hubs” to zoom in and view specific sites on the map.
Once a user has selected a particular pin (indicated in pink, above left), the corresponding text selection will appear alongside the map.

Originally conceived as a small-scale project using topic modelling to extract geographical information from nineteenth century novels, “Mapping London” later expanded to encompass a collaborative effort between the Stanford Literary Lab, the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), and the Mellon Foundation. Building upon the success of their preliminary efforts (documented in a 2016 pamphlet), the site developers received a grant tied to crowdsourcing that pushed the project to new depths. Anonymous volunteers used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace to crowdsource the project by assigning emotions to the thousands of excerpted passages. The crowdsourcing aspect of the project is what took it to another level by allowing researchers to expand both the quantitative and qualitative methods used. Not only were they able to process vastly more information and include more sites and passages in the data set, but humans (rather than bots or AI) were able to accurately ascribe emotions to the text.

While the ultimate goal of the project was to expand possibilities for both close and distant reading research in the humanities, what stood out to me was how accessible and interesting the map would be to everyday readers including those outside of academia. For people new to or unfamiliar with digital projects, this is a very accessible and easy to understand collection. Furthermore, anyone pursuing a personal interest in specific sites in London, a particular author represented in the data set, or just intrigued by the concept of literary geography would have something to gain by exploring the map. It functions as a historical city tour through the eyes of different narrators, and might even introduce you to your new favorite author.

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Explore further with UT Libraries!

Learn more about the concept of topic models in Ch. 9 of Foundations of Data Science.

Blum, Avrim, John E. Hopcroft, and Ravindran Kannan. Foundations of Data Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/be14ds/alma991058049444506011

Trace the connections between social production and London-focused literature and discover how the Bloomsbury district of London developed in relation to the city’s literary output.

Ingleby, Matthew. Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Production of Bloomsbury : Novel Grounds. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/apl7st/cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9781137546005

Take an in-depth dive into the world of literary spatial studies with Lisbeth Larsson’s investigation of London through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s oeuvre.

Larsson, Lisbeth. Walking Virginia Woolf’s London: An Investigation in Literary Geography. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017.

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/apl7st/cdi_swepub_primary_oai_gup_ub_gu_se_260720

Experience historic London firsthand through descriptions compiled in this fully digitized guide book from 1902, courtesy of UTL’s “Travel at the Turn of the 20th Century” digital collection.

Karl Baedeker (Firm). London and its environs. 1902. “London and its environs – Collections”. University of Texas Libraries Collections.

https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utlmisc:40a94727-537b-46b1-b688-fe6b440bd2d8

If old books are more your cup of tea, check out the Harry Ransom Center’s extensive eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections with works from many London-based authors, including Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Lewis Carroll, and many more.

Celebrating Ada

Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Since 2009, its purpose has been to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM. The day is named in honor of Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician and writer who is best known for creating the first computer algorithm.

UT Librarians Gina Bastone, Lydia Fletcher, and Hannah Chapman Tripp organized the 2021 Ada Lovelace Day Wiki Edit-A-Thon to build on the success of the 2019 event. The goals of the edit-a-thon were to improve the visibility of women in STEM fields, to teach first-time editors the quirks of Wikipedia editing, and to involve more gender and racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people in the Wikipedia editing process. Due to the continued uncertainty about COVID-19, we opted to make the event this year a hybrid one by offering both an in-person drop-in event where folks could learn something, grab some food, and edit in between classes as well as a Discord-based online version.

As with the 2019 event, we wanted this year’s to be largely self-guided. We emphasized starting the research process and identifying useful Wikipedia-friendly sources by offering a list of potential pages to edit, update, or create. We organized the day through a system of Google Drive links (for those engaging through Discord) and physical sticky notes (for those attending in person) to ensure that only one person would be editing one article at a time, while retaining the ability to have more than one contributor to each article on the day. For example, we had one person begin editing the article on Cora Sadosky’s research before passing it off to a graduate student in mathematics who could better understand and explain Sadosky’s works. We also worked on creating a Wikipedia page for the new Dean of the Jackson School, Claudia Mora.

Once again, we worked with student groups in the Colleges of Natural Sciences and Engineering to promote the event. Hosting the event in a hybrid format presented some new challenges, but ultimately taught us a lot about navigating engagement in the “new normal” and we look forward to the 2022 event!

STaff Highlighter: Anh Holicky

One of the greatest assets of these Libraries is the dedicated, skilled and expert staff that make the complex machinery of a world-class research library run with such efficacy and care. We’ll use this highlighter as an occasional space to gain some insight into the work and personality of a selected member of this incredible staff.

Today, we meet Anh Holicky, a member of the Content Management team who began her career at the Libraries in 2006.

What’s your title, and what do you do for the Libraries?

Anh Holicky

My title is Senior Content Management Specialist. I am managed the Receiving and End Processing unit at PCL/Content Management/Acquisition. My team and I handle receiving the acquired materials into our ILS and physical processing each item before items can be shelved and circulated from the libraries. 

What motivates you to wake up and go to work?

It is my habit to show up when I am expected. However, I enjoy being at work and feel happy when my team and I work together to accomplish our goal. I also like to challenge myself to getting better at handling tasks. 

What are you most proud of in your job?

I am most proud of helping to coordinate the workflow across teams to reduce the backlog in Receiving. And because I enjoy a well-organized work space, I hope to get it done soon.

What has been your best experience at the Libraries?

My best experience has been my first time coming to PCL as freshman to UT. I have never seen so many books in my life and I was totally in love with this place. As you may or may not know, I am from Vietnam and English was my second language. Having access to all kind of books improved my understanding of the language, the culture, and broaden my interests. I learn something new every day since I stared working for the Libraries many years ago. From the Libraries, I discovered the importance of equal access to resources, learned the value of organization, and got to work with interesting, engaged, and service-oriented people.

Which do you prefer: on campus or remote? Why?

Before the pandemic, I would say on campus. Currently, I would prefer the hybrid working arrangement that the Libraries made it possible for the employees this year. Its model enable me to stay in touch with my team and allows for face-to-face interactions. It’s also allow me to have a more work-life balance. And on my telework day, I get to go to work right away and do not have to waste time sitting in traffic. 


What’s something most people don’t know about you?

I don’t think most people know that I am a fan of WWE entertainment. It is such a fun sport to watch. I love seeing the interactions between the wrestlers and the audiences and how engaged the audiences to the wrestlers performance. And it’s best when you can watch the performance in person.

Dogs or cats?

Can I say neither and is having a bunny counted? However, if I have to pick, I would prefer dog because I think my husband would love to have a dog. ?

Favorite book, movie or album?

My favorite movie of all time is Grease and I do own the DVD. It is such a fun movie to watch. It got singing, dancing, and John Travolta. 

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert? What’s your favorite food or dish?

Dinner would be my choice because I get to see my family together at the end of the day and everyone shares about his/her day whether it was good or bad. My favorite food is soup and I love to eat Pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup that you can eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or whenever you need something warm and delicious.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

In ten years, I‘d like to find myself in a position that allows me to continue my work with technical services but also mentor others in the field. I hope to share my experience and technical knowledge that help others who are interested in library technical works.

Enhancing Search to Highlight Diverse Resources

Access Systems staff have been exploring available functionality in UT Libraries’ Alma resource management system to help support the integration of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) principles into the unit’s efforts. Subsequently, they recently announced a new Featured Collections pilot in the Primo discovery interface, serving to highlight the rich diversity of UT Libraries’ collections.

Working closely with DAC and the Discovery Services Advisory Group, and employing an IDEA lens, Access Systems staff will identify, aggregate, and highlight select resources in Alma, while also coordinating with existing collection promotion efforts where possible to support messaging continuity.

The first three Featured Collections are already existing, discrete collections having bibliographic local notes and online promotional content, enabling Access Systems to readily assemble and highlight them in Primo:

  • Black Queer Studies Collection
  • Latinx LGBTQ Collection
  • Taiwan Resource Center for Chinese Studies

Future Featured Collections will be identified from the wealth of Libraries’ content in Alma and aggregated around IDEA-related themes, and will be available via a new link in the top navigation, of the Libraries search page.

The staff working on this project plan to rotate in three new features each semester. The approach for selection and rotation of Featured Collections comes from close consideration of the work required by Access Systems and Content Management staff, and sustainable capacity for such work going forward.

We’re excited to implement this new functionality in Alma/Primo in support of IDEA initiatives at UT Libraries, and hope to further promote the breadth and depth of UTL’s amazing collections. 

OPening UP for Equity

OA is foundational to advancing DEI / DEI is foundational to advancing OA

The 2021 Open Access Week theme of It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity, was developed by the OA Week Advisory Committee to echo a core value of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, that all producers and consumers of knowledge should have equal access to scientific inputs and outputs. 

Here at the University of Texas Libraries, we have long worked towards expanding access to the information resources we hold – from opening up browsing access to the book shelves in the Tower at the beginning of the last century, to opening up access to an online collection of UT’s dissertations and theses in Texas ScholarWorks at the beginning of this century.  We are not alone.  More than ever before higher education and research entities, including university presses, academic societies and publishers, want to expand equal access to knowledge. 

If one Googles “Open Access” there are over 200 million results.  One of the first results is from SPARC, who defines Open Access (OA) as the free, immediate, online availability of research.  With our society’s renewed commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DEI), the transition to making research OA without barriers is imperative.  SPARC has collected impact stories to illustrate why this transition is crucial.   In short, OA is foundational to advancing DEI. 

The UT Libraries (UTL) is committed to advancing the transition of making research OA without barriers.  UTL has an OA platform for research authored at UT (Texas ScholarWorks), and an OA platform for research authored outside of UT (Digital Collections).  However, much of the online research licensed by UTL (journal articles and ebooks) is not OA and cannot be put on either of these platforms, nor the myriad other OA platforms across the globe.  So UTL is working to transition each license we sign towards an OA future. 

How does one transition a license for research to OA over time?  One inserts DEI principles into the negotiation. 

For several years, the campus has engaged with OA issues such as:  OA publishing, open educational resources, open data, and licensing & negotiation.  Start anticipating a blog post in the future about the Sustainable Open Scholarship Working Group.  For now, here is a teaser on the work of the Licensing & Negotiation Subcommittee made up of UT faculty and staff.  The group rolled up their sleeves and articulated licensing principles that champion DEI principles, for example: 

  • Diversity – The value and importance of a diversity of published voices to be OA.  Incorporate into a license the ability for all research to be immediately available for OA on an online platform. 
  • Equity – The value and importance for all readers to have access to OA research.  Incorporate into a license that research will be accessible to readers of all abilities consistent with current legislation and regulations.   
  • Inclusion – The value and importance for all authors to be able to designate their research to be OA.  Incorporate into a license the ability for unlimited articles to be designated OA without requiring authors or institutions to pay additional fees. 

Therefore, not only is OA foundational to advancing DEI, DEI is also foundational to advancing OA. 

With the help of Cambridge University Press (CUP), the University of Texas was able to make these principles a reality.  The UT license to the CUP journals includes all the above points.  UT authored articles can be immediately made OA on the CUP online platform.  The CUP platform does not prevent screen readers from helping readers that use these tools.  Unlimited UT articles can become OA without additional fees paid to CUP by UT authors.  One license at a time, the UT Libraries is building structural equity to advance DEI and OA. 

Want more information about UT and OA?  Consult UTL’s OA Guide, contact your Subject Librarian, read the report by the Task Force on the Future of UT Libraries, follow the Sustainable Open Scholarship Working Group, watch the introduction to the Faculty Guide to Use of Open Educational Resources (OER), and last but not least, peruse previous TexLibris posts about Open Access