By Jenny Emmanuel, HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group

The HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group recently released a set of “personas” depicting typical users of HathiTrust Digital Library.  Personas are aggregate statements that display information about typical users and their needs.  They are a commonly used usability method that collects data from multiple sources, including website analytics, search logs, first person stories, researcher observations, and other methods which are then aggregated into a narrative to depict stories depicting who HathiTrust users are and how they used the information within HathiTrust. 

Personas are typically used throughout the development process so that staff working on the HathiTrust interfaces, communicating with users, and librarians can have a shared idea who it is that uses the Hathi.  With personas, they can easily keep the end user in mind while they are improving HathiTrust, developing support materials, developing user education programs, or many other uses.

The HathiTrust User Experience Advisory Group worked on the personas for several months, with the additional help of the University of Michigan’s User Experience Department.  The group gathered information from analytics, anecdotes from HathiTrust partners, various online publications about HathiTrust (blogs, articles, comments, etc.), reports from similar projects, and user feedback to identify major groups who use HathiTrust for research.  These data sources led to the creation of seven distinct groups of both academic and non-academic researchers, each of which became the basis of one of the personas. The collected data was then collated between each of these groups and then written as a narrative with a generic use case, a given identity, and a stock image to give each persona a personal touch.  Even though the personas appear to be of actual people and actual use, it should be noted that each persona is fictional, but supported by collected evidence.

The HathiTrust personas are used to guide further development of HathiTrust. They are also being utilized by the HathiTrust Communications Working group in their publicity and educational materials related to HathiTrust.

To view the personas, see: http://www.hathitrust.org/personas.

On October 8-9, 2011 delegates from across the U.S. and around the world gathered in Washington, DC for a landmark event, the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention. Our goals were to review the work and accomplishments of the now 3-year-old HathiTrust, and chart its future governance and priorities. Before the group were seven different ballot proposals that had been submitted by HathiTrust partners ahead of the meeting. On a beautiful autumn weekend, the delegates headed indoors, gathered around tables, and deeply engaged in the proceedings and discussion.

As a result of these proceedings, HathiTrust:

• Will establish a governance structure consisting of a Board, a Board Executive Committee, and Board-appointed committees, and will articulate bylaws
• Will formalize a transparent process for inviting, evaluating, ranking, launching and assessing development initiatives
• Will establish a shared print monograph archiving program among the member libraries
• Will expand and enhance access to U.S. federal publications including those issued by GPO and other federal agencies
• Will develop and vet a fee-for-service model to allow contribution of content from non-partner entities

The Convention was also an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of HathiTrust in less than three short years: over 60 partners, infrastructure that preserves and makes discoverable close to 10 million volumes, and the HathiTrust Research Center that will enable new forms of research.

For a full account of the proceedings, please consult the official minutes of the Constitutional Convention.