Category Archives: User Experience

A tour of the m-biblio iPhone app

The current version of the iOS application allows you to:

  • Scan ISBN numbers for book details
  • Scan University Library barcodes for book and thesis details
  • Enter DOI numbers for papers and articles
  • Extract the title of a website
  • Manually add the details of books, papers and thesis
  • Export the references via email to Rich Text Format (RTF) or HTML
  • Support for the Chicago and Harvard reference styles

The application only supports those devices that have a camera that can auto-focus (iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S and the iPad 3). We need a camera that can autofocus for barcode reading. It would be possible to have the application check the capabilities of the device and only have the ‘scan’ option appear if you have an appropriate device.

This rest of this post provides a tour of the user interface and the functionality of the application.

The Main Screen

The main screen of the application shows a scrollable list of captured references:

The main screen of the m-biblo application (Harvard)

By default the references are displayed in the Harvard style, but it is possible to switch to the Chicago style:

The main screen of the m-biblo application (Chicago)

You can edit the details of captured references or delete them completely:

Details of the paperDeleting a reference

If you have captured a large number of references you can search by keywords (author or title):

Search for references

Adding a Reference

The ‘Add’ icon on the top right of the main screen shows a new screen that allows you to add new references:

Add a new reference

For example, we can scan a University Library barcode or an ISBN barcode with the camera on the phone:

Scan a barcode

After a successful scan, the app will query the m-biblio service for bibliographic data:

Search for data

The end user can then modify the data (if they wish) before saving:

Details of a search

You can also type in a barcode number with a custom keyboard:

Enter a barcode numberDetails from entering a barcode number

For Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) you can type in the reference:

Enter a DOI numberDetails from a DOI search

It would be better, in a future version of the app, if the DOI could be scanned in using some Optical character recognition (OCR) technique. The DOI numbers can be long and have a mix of numbers and characters which are prone to error when submitting on the iOS keyboard. For example, the DOI for J.C. Holt’s article on ‘Anglo-Norman Feudalism’ is ‘10.1111/j.1468-0289.1963.tb01721.x’.

You can also extract information about a website:

Enter a URLDetails from a Website

At the moment, you can only extract the title of a website. In the future, it would be nice to extract data from meta tags if they are relevant, such as details of authorship.

Exporting the references

On the main screen the “Share” button allows you to export the references that you have captured. You can only export data via an email attachment (although there is code to support BibServer). You choose a format (Harvard or Chicago) and whether or not you want an RTF file or HTML:

Send via emailChoose a styleChoose a formatChoose a format

Preferences

The preferences for the panel allows you to choose which reference style should be used for displaying references within the application. It also allows you to determine what information you are willing to share with the m-biblio service: (1) a unique identifier for the app; (2) the details of the captured items, i.e. the barcode or DOI number; (3) the type of device you are using (iPhone, iPad etc.) and which version of the operating system.

Preferences

What’s missing

The is missing a number of things:

  • The ability to manage references within collections. For example, you might have a collection for each assignment or task.
  • Support for Endnote – it is vital that you can export your references to existing bibliographical material.
  • More citation styles need to be supported and the ability to tweak the ones that are supported. For example, how many authors should be listed before et alias is used.
  • We support books, but not chapters within books.

M-Biblio Workshop

The M-Biblio project recently ran a workshop with 10 students representing a good cross-section of the student population at Bristol. The object of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, to obtain a better picture of the challenges students typically face when collecting and organising bibliographic references and secondly, to explore potential solutions and scenarios to inform work on the phone app.

Pain points

Overall the students gave the impression that collecting and organising bibliographic references was a less than enjoyable experience. It was described as a “messy” affair complicated by a lack of uniformity with regard to presentational expectations. Different lecturers within the same departments often have different requirements as to how references are presented. This lack of consistency in presentational standards is further exacerbated by the plethora of collection and organisational methods being utilised, ranging from handwritten notes to using dedicated packages such as Endnote. Where software was utilised there was the repeatedly flagged up issue of it not working as the students expected, or desired. And with applications such as Endnote, considerable time is needed in order to learn how to use the application efficiently – time students were reluctant to dedicate to something viewed as being peripheral to their central studies.

Mission Impossible

After assessing the status quo the workshop moved on to phase 2 which encouraged the attendees to design their own ideal reference collection and management solution based around a mobile phone. The only constraint was that they had to utilise real features currently available on smart phones.

Some of the ideas that emerged during this stage of the workshop were the ability to:

  • add references from Google Scholar/Web of Science et al
  • easily extract references from PDFs! (i.e. allowing copy & paste, rather than being restricted by locked files)
  • Manually add references
  • photograph book cover, with app automatically recognizing book and pulling in reference
  • scan barcodes
  • scan text information inside front cover (eg ISBN)
  • OCR text (for references or notes)
  • order collected references (alphabetical, by first author is most wanted, but maybe numerically sometimes)
  • filter and winnow references (will collect more than needed to start with, some will be rejected for the actual essay)
  • link or check references are cited within the essay or report
  • format references according to common formats, such as Harvard. Freedom to define custom formats is very important too (to meet whims of lecturers!)
  • export reference list to text/pdf/word formats
  • share list via email/text/store in cloud
  • produce sensible layout for URIs for web resources (incl correct layout and date viewed)
  • be smart (e.g. identify Smith 2007 as a citation in the essay text and suggest possible references)
  • automatically translate text in documents (like Google Goggles?)
  • manage reference lists

Creating Bibliographies – a survey of students

Stuart Church (@stuchurch) of Pure Usability is helping with the student engagement and the user experience aspects of the m-biblio project. Using Bristol Online Surveys, Stuart recently ran a survey of University of Bristol students with some questions on creating bibliographies. There were 67 respondents that covered a range of disciplines and degree schemes, including undergraduates, taught postgraduates and research postgraduates.

Ten of the students then joined a two hour workshop to further investigate the journey they make in creating bibliographies and to identify the pain points. It also examined how mobile devices might be used in the process of capturing and managing citations.

Work from the workshop with students

We will provide a detailed report on the workshop in a future blog post, but I thought it would be useful to provide the responses to the original survey.

1. Approximately how many references do you usually put in your essays?

None: 0.0% 0
1-5 4.5% 3
5-10 17.9% 12
10-20 41.8% 28
More than 20: 35.8% 24

2. What tends to be the approximate ratio of books to journal articles in your reference lists?

Pretty much all books 4.5% 3
25% books / 75% journal articles 34.3% 23
50% books / 50% journal articles 19.4% 13
75% books / 25% journal articles 17.9% 12
Pretty much all journal articles 17.9% 12
Varies too much to say 6.0% 4

3. How do you usually find your references?

Online citation databases (e.g. Web of Knowledge) 36
Google Scholar 49
University library system 38
Via reading lists provided by lecturers 44
Other (please specify): 7

For other, respondents included “a mix of the above”, “academia.edu”, JSTOR, “reference list from other journal articles” and “using bibliographies from relevant books”.

4. Where do you store your references?

In word processor format (e.g. Word) 50
Using bibliographic software (e.g. EndNote, Papers) 14
In a hand-written notebook 15
I don’t store my references 6
Other (please specify): 1

For the “other”, there was a single comment: “When online, I bookmark them”.

5. What’s your biggest frustration about managing references?

This was a free text response but there were a number of common themes:

  • Citing the reference in the correct format
  • Copying the reference format easily from a paper
  • Different lecturers have different preferences for style of referencing, so its difficult to know what style to choose.
  • Endnote not supporting the style I want in word…
  • having to put them all in the exact harvard style of referencing
  • Inputting the data into Endnote
  • Missing information in the sources
  • Needing to know exact page numbers and having to look them up if i forgot to write them down
  • Remembering page numbers for quotations
  • Time-consuming
  • Too many references, often keeping track can be difficult

6. If you could design a simple piece of software to help you manage your references better, what would it do?

Once again, this was a free text response with a number of responses, including:

  • Allow me to: Record according to chosen system (Harvard, etc) Copy directly into essay/thesis Go back to original source (eg. to re-download or checkout of library)
  • Automatically put in references as I put in the sentences
  • Compile them, format them to the desired style and alphabetise
  • format my references
  • insert into word easily without adding random other numbers and things in/li>
  • it could help me to make a right order and help me to check what part I am missing for the references
  • it would automatically put them in alphabetically order and split them into the types of references they are eg books, journals etc
  • It would house your entire bibliography and help in shortening and referencing in the correct style for your department. it would also allow you to keep track of how many times you had referenced a certain source
  • Quick and easy to learn, will format in necessary style
  • Shape the references into the same referencing system.
  • take the journals and books you’ve read and write them in the correct format
  • You would type in title, author, chapter and page refs and the software would automatically create the bibliography reference in the correct standardised format