K-12 Usability Study

This is unique and rare. SirsiDynix and Kent State University are releasing our K-12 usability study from 2006.
The “Report on the Usability and Effectiveness of SirsiDynix SchoolRooms for K-12 Students” was undertaken by Kent State University School of Library and Information Science and the Information Architecture/Knowledge Management Program (IAKM). Greg Byerley at Kent State was the investigator and we partners with Terry Fredericka and the amazing InfOhio team.
I have been quoting this study often in presentations. Now we have a distributable document to support those presentations. It is important to note that SirsiDynix has not edited the content of this report. We simply made it easier to read with this new design.
We will be publishing this in book format, and it will be available in limited quantities later in January. We will have some of the books at ALA Midwinter in our booth.
I encourage you to share these links with folks wo care about making library and learning stuff work for those folks in K-12. This is unique research since it used real students in real situations (with parental consent). I find the eye tracking results fascinating. I doubt there is such extensive, current research available anywhere for you to read. (If anyone knows of any other public K-12 studies, let us know).
The PDF of the report (in color) is at: http://www.schoolrooms.net/Pdfs/UsabilityStudy_KentState.pdf and it also linked to off the SchoolRooms Web site (http://www.schoolrooms.net). The new 24-page SchoolRooms Magazine can also be found linked off the homepage or directly at: http://www.schoolrooms.net/Pdfs/SchoolRooms_LR.pdf
We hope to release a few more of our internal studies on usability this year. I hope this results in a better understanding of user behaviors and, ultimately, better library websites and products.
Stephen