December 17

1. 

        The user group for the Texas A&M Bioinformatics Working Group are the faculty, staff and students of Texas A&M, the public, prospective students, and researchers in the field.  The site is a tool for publicizing the work of the Working Group, its research and publications.  It is also a gateway to other projects and sites.

2. 

        The visual presentation of the TAMU BWG site is pleasant, yet not very sophisticated.  It has simple navigation which works decently for the needs of the site.  In some pages links are found within the text.  In others the links are separate. This type of variety is confusing.  It should be more consistent and clear.  

        A usability test that could be performed on the TAMU BWG site would include having faculty and students navigate the site, both with and without a specific goal.  This type of micro analysis is better suited for a navigation-oriented site.   The tester could ask questions about navigation, text, searching, visual pointers and search satisfaction.  By testing this way, the site managers could discover problems and priorities for the hypertext.  

        The macro analysis side of testing could look at the use of each page and do a statistical analysis. TAMU BWG has  their use statistics posted for the previous day.  This allows analysts to make guesses about how users navigate the system and which links are being used.  This method does not allow the analysts to question the user as they go through the site, however.

3.   

        Creating a catalogue record for Tracy is a bit confusing because one must create a record for the website that allows access to the software and for the software itself.  Sometimes the line between the two is blurry.  For instance, finding the creator took some time because the site that describes Tracy is written by one person but the software was created by a committee.


Dublin Core

Title Tracy: A herbarium management system
Creator Center for the Study of Digital Libraries
Subject Herbarium Collections - Management
Description Tracy is a system for the management of herbarium collections. It is not a huge, all inclusive database tool. Rather it was specifically designed to: 
  • Facilitate rapid entry of specimen data by relatively un-skilled operators. 
  • To provide mechanisms that allow complex queries of the data to be carried out with a minimum of training. 
The underlying data model has been designed to be  understandable by the novice and still remain extensible  to more complex schemes as needed. 
Publisher Texas A&M Bioinformatics Working Group
Contributor Texas A&M Biology Department Herbarium and the S. M. Tracy Herbarium
Date 9/20/1997
Type Software
Identifier http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/input/inputsys.html
Format Application
Source http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/input/inputsys.html
Language English, C++, Paradox
Relation http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/bwgove.htm
Coverage 100,000 specimens at 2 herbariums
Rights Unknown 
MARC Record
100  Center for the Study of Digital Libraries
240 Tracy [computer file]. 
246  Tracy: a herbarium management system 
256 Win32 Software. 
260 College Station, TX : Texas A&M Bioinformatics Working Group, 1997-
300 Software
538 Mode of access: Internet. ¶
520 "Tracy is a system for the management of herbarium collections. It is not a huge, all inclusive database tool. Rather it was specifically designed to: facilitate rapid entry of specimen data by relatively un-skilled operators. To provide mechanisms that allow complex queries of the data to be carried out with a minimum of training. The underlying data model has been designed to be  understandable by the novice and still remain extensible  to more complex schemes as needed."
650  Herbarium Collections - Management
856 http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/input/inputsys.html

Erika McCoy
eamccoy@jhu.edu
December 17, 2002