ISTA results

The article by Bohyun Kim that we uncovered on "Responsive Web Design" provided a great introduction to how libraries need to adapt their websites for smartphone and tablet users. This was not what I expected "responsive web design" to mean, but I was glad that I learned what the term referred to so that I would recognize it in the future. Some of the major interesting points and arguments that Kim made were:
-Responsive web design is preferable to developing a separate mobile site because, while the use of the former is more work at first, it is easier to keep the message the same for all users because with responsive design everyone is seeing the same site and only one thing needs to be updated every time something is changed.
-Library websites tend to try to cram too much content onto their regular webpages, which confuses and disorients users. Transitioning to a more spare site that works on mobile devices forces designers to identify which components of the site are really important and strip away extraneous material.
-Separate mobile sites are difficult for libraries to promote effectively and many users may not know they exist.

The main thing I learned about searching from using ISTA was the advantage of a familiar search interface. I had previously thought that the fact that so many databases are accessible only through EBSCO's interface was generally negative, because it seems like the ideal search interface for a database would be tailored to that database's structure and to the kind of data that it contained in order to make the contents as discoverable as possible. However, it was very convenient to use a search interface that was well-known to me and I think it enabled me to find useful information in ISTA much more quickly than I would have if there had been a learning curve with a new interface. Although specialists and expert searchers like librarians, who are good at searching and who might be looking for a very buried resource, might be best-served by an interface tailored to each database, it seems like being able to access many databases through a single, familiar interface is great for students and other casual searchers who may be unwilling or unable to master a new interface every time they want a piece of information.