Section A. Please help us to analyze your survey responses by providing the following background information.

[1] I am currently:

[2] and the library I use most often is:

• 8	Biomedical	20%
  12	Central	30%
  5	Divinity	12.5%
  4	Education	10%
  3	Law	7.5%
  2	Management	5%
  2	Music	5%
  3	Science & Engineering	7.5%
  1	SpColl	2.5%

Section B. Please answer the following questions about your patterns of use with Acorn.

[3] I have been a user of Acorn for:

[4] I use acorn:

[5] My usual place for accessing Acorn is:

[6] The search screen I usually use is:

[7] When searching Acorn, I usually:

[8] The search type I usually use is:

[9] I usually search by:

During a typical Acorn session:

[10] I print search results:

[11] I download search results:

[12] I e-mail search results:

[13] I click on author hyperlinks to access further
resources:

[14] I click on subject hyperlinks to access further
resources:

[15] I click on hyperlinks for electronic access to
materials:

Section C. Please answer the following questions about Acorn's ease of use

[16] Finding what I want on acorn is:

[17] Navigating within Acorn is:

[18] Viewing records is:

[19] Printing records is:

[20] Downloading records is:

[21] E-mailing records is:

[22] Identifying the complete call number for an
item is:

[23] Recognizing which library holds the item is:

Section D. Please answer the following questions about your satisfaction with Acorn

[24] Acorn is better than other online library catalogs
I have used:

[25] I find it easy to use Acorn from off campus:

[26] Overall I am satisfied with Acorn as a research
tool:

Section E. [27] Please discuss any additional observations you may have about Acorn or any suggestions for how it can be improved.

90% of the time I am looking for a known item. My life would be much easier if "begins with" were the default instead of "keyword" The bigger complaint I have is that Boolean searching is not the useful, powerful tool it should be in a library's catalog. If the search is to complex, Webcat just gives up. I have had no luck with boolean searching. And if there are no hits, I don't want to look at a list of things that aren't hits--I just want a simple message that there is no item matching the criteria. I would prefer a clean "no hits" screen to a complex boolean search.

Acorn is much easier to use since the elimination of frames. The keyword default frequently returns results which make no sense to patrons. Library holdings are confusing, and restricting searches to a single library sometimes results in a title list which then is unavailable for display, becuase it is from a library other than the restricted search. Multiple library holdings are confusing, and the "held by" line is false if one of the libraries has withdrawn its holdings. Michael Martin, Management Library

I'd like to see "Begins with" search as the default since I use that one most. Perhaps the default could be changed for a given session so if you had a lot of known item searches, you could set the default to "Begins with" and then if you had a lot of keyword searches, you could change the default.

Have library supervisors have the option to change preferences of defaults...like to change from "keyword" to "begins with" for periodicals

Acorn is great for a librarian, but as I tried to answer the questions as a "patron", I feel that it is too difficult.

The biggest problem is for patrons to understand when to use "keyword" and when to use "begins with". The next biggest problem is for patrons to understand that that they must choose a search type instead of hitting enter.

The main thing is that I think Acorn needs a much faster server. It's painfully slow even on the campus network, and when I've tried to access it from outside locations while researching (e.g., while at another library, to see what I needed to Xerox and what I could get at Vandy), the per page load time was ridiculous. At the Library of Congress, for example, each page took in excess of 3 minutes to load, and I believe they have a direct Internet pipeline. I can only imagine what it would have been like on a modem!

Not as intuitive as needed for students to find what they need as other systems. They hit enter often and don't understand begins with or how keyword searching works (concepts not long phrases/operators). Front screen needs to be less full and give just one example of a search by keyword option with 2 keywords and wild card and "and" between them.

The Print/Capture sequence remains cumbersome enough that many users either don't use it or don't know how to use it correctly. We still need to work on finding a balance between a flexible search interface that allows users to take advantage of the catalog's most powerful features with an initial screen that is more intuitive. Those of us who use Webcat regularly may think it is easy; but it is plain from observing users that many of them simply enter their terms and hit the Enter key. It may be true that they should pay more attention; but for whatever reason, many users seem confused by the basic search screen, which may try to do too much. On reflection, it may be better to make the 3 tabbed options, say, (1) Known Item/Exact Term/Begins with; (2) Keyword, with advance keyword capability; and (3) Browse or call number browse.If users say they like the amazon.com interface, perhaps that could be the model for a simple author/title search option, with complex keyword as a main alternative?

I think the interface is too cluttered. Somehow it's not intuitive to go through the steps that are necessary for a sucessful search. I don't know if it's the physical arrangement of buttons or what. But on a search engine such as Amazon, it is very easy to make choices in types of searches. I realize our environment is very sophisticated and we want to provide users with lots of options but sometimes I think an out of the box look like the Brentwood Library's would be more satisfactory to most patrons, especially for searching known items where you expect to get it very easily. I also think you should be able to go directly to the record when it's the only result instead of having to click on it. But mostly, I think that the fact that we have to spend so much time figuring out how to make Acorn better and correct things says a lot about it. When I think back over the ISAG meetings last year, how many were spent discussing WebCat and things that needed to be changed. Seems to me this shouldn't be necessary.

Selecting a search type is very confusing to the average walk-up patron. The concept of clicking on the red buttons for a particular type of search is also not clear. Many people just hit enter (as I'm sure you know) and don't realize the red buttons are the preferred way to use Acorn.

It's really difficult to separate out Acorn proper from all the other electronic resources that I access using the Research Databases link, in terms of remembering which was easier to use or what the problems are.

Blind references are still a big problem.

Keyword access is powerful and very fast and Acorn's best feature. I think that the most problematic aspect of Acorn is the default sort by date, which is often confuisng (for example, when doing an author search). A user has to know to go to a complex search screen and then to sort the search (the pulldown options under SORT BY are not all user friendly or intelligilbe--can these by changed?) Also the layout of the quick search screen is confusing (at least to me) and doesn't seem to conform to general usage with respect to not allowing the user to hit enter. The instruction to click help at the bottom of the page needs to be a hotlink. There are three "help" buttons visible on the screen and it's not apparent where you are being directed. I'm used to the system but I really miss NOTIS's index displays and it's superior handling of collocation of information. For example I'd like to do a search on a series and see the "parent" serial record as well as all the individual series titles. In SIRSI, a title search is as close as you can get to bringing up all records, but the "parent" title usually files last becasue of having the earlier date, and individual mongraph records don't show the series entry at all from the index screen. Subject displays often don't make much sense either with all punmctuation stripped. I also look forward *a great deal* to SIRSI's implementation of respect for indictor values in the MARC format, as serial records sometimes look nonsensical when fields don't display correctly or display when they are coded for non-display. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

You should be able to add subject headings to emailed records. You should be able to return to the spot in a long list of records after viewing an individual record. It would be nice if you could limit by item location (reference, youth, reserves, etc.) You should always have forward/back/print buttons visible without haveing to scroll up or down. There is too much scrolling required, in general. you should not have to continual re-enter your PIN to renew books/check status, etc. If you do an exact search that return one title, the record should display immediately rather than having to click once. You should be able to save marked records across searches rather than have to print results from each search. Nine time out of ten, it seems, a cross reference link results in "no additional items found." Very frustrating.