Participants needed for ScholarSphere usability tests

Researchers are needed to participate in a series of usability tests for a new release of ScholarSphere, a secure repository service that enables the Penn State community to share research and scholarly work with a worldwide audience. The usability tests will be conducted from July 8 to 31, in Davey Laboratory, Instruction Room 211 (in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library) and anyone in the Penn State community can sign up to participate. Sign up for a session here: http://portal.outreach.psu.edu/search/publicCourseSearchDetails.do?method=load&courseId=190361. Up to 10 participants will be accepted for each session. Participants will need to bring a flash drive with files to deposit into ScholarSphere. (More than one file is needed in order to test the “sets/collections” feature.)

The sessions will focus primarily on these features of the service:

  • Organizing files into collections for easier management and discovery
  • Uploading files via your Dropbox account
  • Depositing files on behalf of another user

Members of the ScholarSphere development team will be on hand for the sessions and will be able to answer questions about possible new features and functionalities of the service.

Campus users can participate in remote testing during the same period. For information on remote testing, go to: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/pubcur/projectsigma/scholarsphere.html#remote%20testing

The usability testing sessions are sponsored by the University Libraries and Information Technology Services. For more information, contact Patricia Hswe, 814-867-3702 or phswe@psu.edu. For more information on ScholarSphere, see http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/pubcur/scholarsphere.html.