A Paper Form People Liked to Fill in

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The aim of this form was to increase the usage of the form for requesting library items, rather than odd scraps of paper, and to improve the quality of the details that users provided.

Research was undertaken using two experimental designs. The overall layouts were the same, based for compatibility on the British Library interlibrary loan reqyest form. These have the bibliographic reference in the top left, the user's name and address in the lower left, a panel for library use in the upper right, plus source of reference and the library's address in the lower right. The significant differences in the experimental designs related to the bibliographic reference panel.

In the first experimental design, there were separate boxes for every bibliographic field - Author, title, publisher, year, ISBN, journal title, volume number, part number, pages, report number, etc. This approach was common to most library forms, including the British Library form. The forms from about 500 completed transactions were kept and analysed for data content and completion errors. In general, the forms were completed correctly, but legibility was a problem because with so many boxes, the size of any one box was sometimes too small, especially for article titles, conference titles, etc. Users clearly had trouble with some of the more esoteric types of document - e.g. conference papers - and not being sure where to put the details, used whichever boxes they felt were most appropriate, and/or missed off awkward pieces of information. In a few cases, they completely ignored the structured layout and wrote over the whole reference panel regardless of boxes. Alternatively, they chose not us use the form, instead submitting clippings or references on scraps of paper, which then had to be transcribed onto forms by library staff.

We noted that even with the grossly mis-completed forms, the librarians were still able to identify the fields they need to satisfy the request. This begged the question, why have all the boxes for different fields? In the second experimental design therefore, the structured boxes were abandoned totally, and a single big panel provided for "Publication Details". As before, about 500 completed forms were collected and analysed. There was a slight improvement in the amount and quality of information that users provided, although this could have been put down to user education. While particular fields might be anywhere in the reference panel, librarians rarely had trouble interpreting what was required. There were far fewer cases where requests were submitted using non-compliant methods.

The final design had a two=part reference panel - one for "Author & Title" (which every publication has), and the other for "Rest of Publication Details". This made the location of information on the form more predictable and discouraged users for putting more than one item on the form, which had occurred a couple of times. A hand-drawn cartoon-style design was used, inspired by the computer programming books of Donald Alcock, which were in vogue at the time. This had the effect of humanising the forms. Users felt that with the speech and thought bubbles, the form was telling them what it wanted. In addition, examples of how the form should be completed for different types of publication were printed on the reverse of the form.

The overall end result was an effective form that surprisingly several users said they actually enjoyed filling in.