EDS Usability Testing Final Report

Usability studies in academic libraries are essential tools to assess functionality and accessibility of library resources, platforms and services. The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries recently conducted usability studies on EBSCO’s Discovery search platform, which is to be the default search platform on the UMass Amherst Libraries’ website beginning on July 2017. During the spring of 2017, Information Resources Management utilized surveys, focus groups, and hands-on testing of students and faculty to assess how library patrons interacted with the new discovery service (EDS) and other related library services. The following report documents this usability study, findings discovered, and recommendations hitherto. The following recommendations are broken into three categories: dataload (i.e. bibliographic records), design, and library services