In the November 2012 newsletter, we announced that Blacklight was the software solution selected for the presentation of YUL's digitized materials. Work is underway to create a user-centered implementation of Blacklight.

Kathleen Bauer, Usability Librarian, Kalee Sprague, Systems Librarian, and Beth Beaudin, Director of Digital Initiatives, have held preliminary discussions with several YUL librarians and stakeholders to discover their patrons' needs. The next step will involve forming a user-advisory group drawn from undergraduates, graduate students and faculty from across the Yale University community. This group will be asked, monthly, to review implementation options/functionality, and to then meet and discuss their experiences and opinions.

Implementing a system like Blacklight gives the library the opportunity to develop a discovery system that works best for scholars. We often speak about Google and how important it is to all types of students, faculty and researchers. Google does search really well, and the fact is that whatever the library develops will not replace it. Indeed, the library will look for ways to make digitized material easy to find in Google. But the library does have an opportunity with Blacklight to look for areas where the library can more precisely fit the search interface to scholarly needs than Google wants to do. To achieve that goal the library needs to gain feedback on a regular basis from our Yale users about the Blacklight implementation.

The user-advisory group will look at other sites that already use Blacklight. From their experiences using the sample sites, and from their own experiences using other scholarly resources, and thinking about how they do their research, the group will then meet to discuss a range of interface options available in Blacklight. This group will be asked to help develop a list of the minimum and desirable functionality elements in the Blacklight interface.

Of course the development of Blacklight will need to have opportunities for a wider group of individuals comment. The library will create a site where members of the Yale community can leave their suggestions. Additionally, tests will be done throughout the implementation with a variety of students, faculty and staff.