6. Help to Users: Documentation and Help Facilities

EDINA's policy on provision of documentation and help facilities is outlined in our Service Level Definition available from JISC's Monitoring Unit (MU).

6.1 Documentation and Web Presence

The EDINA website continued to act as the main access point for users of our projects and services. Small changes were made to the site following the major re-launch in February 2008.

Publicity material in the form of the well-established EDINA A5 flyers and A3 posters was produced and distributed. As with our existing services, new services were documented by means of Quick Reference Guides, and with support material on the EDINA website. In addition, individual posters were produced for exhibitions and to supplement the standard range of materials.

EDINA continued to provide service demonstrations for new services and interface updates. The service demonstrations were produced using the screen capture software Camtasia in a wide range of formats. In addition the initial steps were taken to produce animations for services and projects.

EDINA's quarterly newsletter Newsline continued to play an important role in helping academic support staff and others with an interest in our services to keep abreast of developments at EDINA.

6.2 Help Facilities

The EDINA Helpdesk acted as the primary point of contact for all enquiries concerning EDINA services and successfully resolved enquiries from end-users and support staff. It also had a role, on a cost-recovery basis, in support of the Digital Curation Centre. Helpdesk staff categorised queries and entered them in a call-logging system, noting those to be included as an intrinsic part of our user feedback system for the purpose of future developments. This system was thoroughly updated with the start of two new Helpdesk staff. Queries were mostly resolved directly by the Helpdesk staff or referred to experts inside and outside of EDINA as appropriate.

6.3 Training

The training courses designed and delivered by EDINA's User Support team in 2008/2009 are detailed in the table below:

Table 2: Training courses

Services/Areas covered	No. of courses run	No. of Attendees
		Total	HE	FE
Film & Sound Online	3	50	15	35
Education Image Gallery	3	50	15	35
NewsFilm Online	3	50	15	35
Digimap Collections	5	49	39	10
MasterMap	2	17	16	1

User Feedback on Training

The content and delivery of courses was reviewed at the start of the year, in response to the content of a survey of site representatives' training needs at the end of academic year 2007/2008.

Feedback from training course evaluation was positive; the majority of participants stated that courses were very effective in meeting their learning objectives. Trainers' knowledge and presentation, and course materials were typically rated as very good.

New exercises were added to the training throughout the year, particularly to the Digimap Collections course. The content and delivery of face-to-face training courses was regularly reviewed and updated to reflect the learning objectives of participants.

Online training

A trial programme of short online training sessions, using a web conferencing subscription service, was run in 2008/2009. The web conferencing service allows User Support more frequent interaction with site representatives across the UK than is possible with face-to-face training alone. A fuller programme of sessions, focussing on elements of EDINA services e.g. Digimap's MasterMap download facility, is planned for 2009/2010.

Other workshops

In addition to the courses detailed above, User Support staff also contributed significantly to three workshops run by the ESRC Census Programme at UK venues. EDINA staff delivered presentations and skills practice sessions on the UKBORDERS services at these workshops.

6.4 Usability

The User Support team developed their knowledge of usability testing methods at a session delivered by Guy Redwood from SimpleUsability. In addition, four members of User Support participated in University of Edinburgh training sessions, 'Testing the Usability of your website'.

The knowledge and skills gained from this training was put into practise by user testing of two EDINA services:

• NewsFilm Online. This new service went through several iterations of user testing between May and August 2008.
• Digimap's Ordnance Survey Collection – a new mapping facility developed as a replacement for Digimap Classic.

Paper prototyping was used to test the initial designs for both services. 'Accompanied surfing' was used to observe how users performed tasks on the new interface designs. These sessions were recorded for analysis using Camtasia.

These usability testing methods were also used to inform ongoing improvements to EDINA services, e.g. the development of a new full record page design for NewsFilm Online.

6.5 Web and Graphic Design

During 2008/2009 there have been continual design updates for many EDINA services and projects as well as promotional materials. The following are highlights of new interface design and promotional work:

• Digimap Roam (the 'new' Classic interface) presented several interesting design challenges. This was an opportunity to address dynamic interface design, whilst developing a solution which would be intuitive in use by a wide range of users, from those with no prior geographic knowledge, to those with advanced understanding. In addition, Digimap Roam is based on the software 'MapFish', which uses a complex series of stylesheets which had to be modified and built upon to create the new interface. The Geo user support team undertook substantial user testing to ensure we fulfilled our user's needs and expectations.
• The Land Life Leisure interface was refreshed to reflect a new logo commissioned by Aberystwyth University.
• A new project website and promotional materials have been produced for the UK LOCKSS Alliance. The design gave a nod to the overarching LOCKSS Alliance website design, but at the same time retained its own visual identity.
• The development of the interface for Tobar an Dualchais (a Lottery Funded project) required a balanced approach between creating an intuitive and accessible interface, whilst maintaining the existing visual identity which had already been widely promoted in print and other media. Testing by a large sample of users, chosen by the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, began during the reporting period.

Several corporate identity projects were completed, many in collaboration with other Edinburgh University Departments:

• A logo design for the Edinburgh Publications Repository
• A logo for the ERA (the Edinburgh Research Archive)
• A logo and new website design for AQMeN (Applied Quantitative Methods Network in Scotland), a new ESRC-funded network on quantitative methods.

6.6 Social Media and Web 2.0

Social Media has become an increasingly important part of EDINA communications with a Social Media Officer appointed in May 2009. This role contributed to the social media element of service and project development and outreach. The post also incorporated a watching and advisory role on social media tools and trends.

In 2008/2009 blogs for Digimap, SUNCAT, DISC-UK DataShare, ShareGeo, Land Life Leisure and Jorum continued to communicate service developments and news to EDINA service users whilst a new Jorum Twitter stream (@Jorumteam) was also established in March 2009.

Presentations and Publications

In addition to attending numerous social media events, from BarCamps and a Facebook Symposium to the NeSC (National eScience Centre) Web 2.0 week, the following presentations were delivered:

• "Cataloguing Your Friends and Neighbours: Personal Metadata and the Opportunities and Challenges of Working with Social Networking Sites"given at the CIGS (Cataloguing and Indexing Group Scotland) "Metadata and Web 2.0" day in February 2009, also a WIDWISAWN (7:1) article of the same title.
• "A Day in an eLife: e-ventures in Studying, Working and Living!" presentation and breakout session at the ELISA (Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services Agency) Open Forum in June 2009.
• "Serving the Ephemeral: cultural and practical challenges for enhancing multimedia services with user generated content" given as part of the AHRC funded Ephemeral Media Conference at Nottingham University in June 2009.

Event Amplification

EDINA was involved in various event amplification activities such as the live tweeting of the CIGS "Metadata and Web 2.0" day in February 2009 and Skype participation in an "Improve Your Online Presence" Strategic Content Alliance/Netskills workshop in July 2009.

The Beyond the Repository Fringe event in July 2009 allowed EDINA to combine live blogging, twitter (and conference hashtags), streaming video, photo sharing and a collaborative wiki to build a sense of community and encourage discussion during and after the event.