Testing NINES
D. Wheeles · Literary and Linguistic Computing · 2010
As scholarly publishing transitions from a static medium (paper) to a digital one, a necessary tension has emerged between a static, or archival, approach to content, and the dynamic, ever-evolving requirements of online resources. Two years after the release of the NINES website (the Networked Infrastructure for nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship), the first online peer-reviewing organization and hub for the aggregation of scholarly resources in nineteenth-century studies, the development team decided to evaluate the site’s efficacy and update it accordingly. But because of NINES’s unique position as a federation of scholar-driven (mostly primary-source oriented) sites as well as a forward-thinking software developer, it was essential that any changes to the site remain true to the institution’s dual roles. This article explores the NINES redesign as an experiment in implementing usability studies and user-centered design to enhance its appeal within our community. This narrative is meant as a case study, one to be considered within the larger context of the questions and challenges faced by those creating, managing, and using digital projects.