My first card sort

I carried out my first Card Sorting Exercise ever!  The full report describes the process and lists what we learned and more issues we should consider in light of that. All the related documentation is available on the JCU Library Intranet.

The main points are:

• We should seriously consider landing pages for specific groups of users e.g Academic staff, post grad researchers, undergrads etc
• Grouping pages on organisational lines is fraught with error
• The language used in link labeling can discourage parts of the audience from clicking
• Assignment and Study seem to be the best words to substitute for what librarians would call 'Information Literacy'
• Terminology is still an issue e.g. isn't a 'Reference Work' something you use to help you format your references?

The card sort took a little longer than I thought, next time I might schedule an hour and a half to allow for introduction and form filling, so I can still get people out 15 minutes early.
I was struck too by the quantity of services we are providing and that many had no real relevance to the 'sortees', so I found myself explaining what ERA was. Will have to broaden my volunteer-catching net.
I'd like to do another round of card sorting to see if the patterns I see emerging are real or mere coincidence.