NLM

Federally Funded Research Results Are Becoming More Open and Accessible

Summary: Significant strides in improving public access to scholarly publications and digital data help usher in an era of open science. This week marks the 8th annual Open Access Week, when individuals and organizations around the world celebrate the value of opening up online access to the results of scholarly research. It is an opportune

Jerry Sheehan

Oct 28, 2016

Tips for Hallway Testing from NIH

Over the course of the last year, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has sought to increase its use of usability testing to improve the user experience on our Web resources. To do this, we conducted hallway usability testing at the NIH Clinical Center on NLM’s site search feature. Our goal is to update the

Katie Chan

Joanna Karpinski-Widzer

Jan 14, 2016

The Usability ‘Aha!’ Moment: How to Turn Cynics into Converts

User Experience (UX) is the comprehensive experience a person has when using a product or application, and usability is the ease of use (or lack thereof) when using it. Many of us have discovered the vast advantages of evaluating usability on our own; however, getting others to jump on board is often a different story.

Sarah Ward

Deborah Bennett

Mar 06, 2015

The Future Will Be Printed – in 3D

The use of 3D printing is growing. From kayaks to pancakes to human and canine prosthetics, a diverse array of 3D printed products have been delivered. 3D printing has also been named one of the top technology

Ashley Wichman

Jan 15, 2015

Past, Present, Future: Usability Testing at the National Library of Medicine

Usability testing has provided our organization many important insights to improve our Web presence. Since the early 2000s, the National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s Web teams have actively sought and used usability testing tools; we have run “full service” usability testing almost yearly for various Web properties

Jan 02, 2015

Big in SocialGov in 2014: Services, Access and Participation

Social media for public service is a diverse field that uses platforms and data from both the private and public sectors to improve citizen services, make them easier to access and deliver them more cost effectively. It is not just public affairs or communications, but spreads into customer service, resource development and more. Many of

Justin Herman

Dec 31, 2014

2nd U.S. Public Participation Playbook Draft Responds to Public Contributions

The new second draft of the U.S. Public Participation Playbook incorporates changes that were proposed from nearly 100 suggestions submitted after the first week of public comment, with more improvements to come. We still need your contributions

Justin Herman

Dec 08, 2014

Content is no longer limited to .gov sites. As mentioned in a recent blog post, Sharing is Caring, Adding Social Media Accounts to Search, DigitalGov Search uses Flickr, Instagram, and YouTube to populate image and video search results. On September 30, 2014, I presented with Justin Herman from the Social Media Community of Practice about: What

Rachel Mundstock

Oct 14, 2014

Pillbox Google Hangout for Developers

Tuesday, October 7 at 2pm ET, the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health will host a Google Hangout to talk about developing with the API, data, and open source code from Pillbox. I (Pillbox project manager), Mark Silverberg of Social Health

David Hale

Oct 06, 2014

The API Briefing: A Great Start For an API – NLM’s TOXNET Web Service

Glad to be back after a three-week absence. I was preparing for the South Eastern Conference on Public Administration held in Atlanta this year. Great conversations and I can tell you that the academic community is hungry for more government data and APIs. A great example is this week’s API Briefing: the U.S. National Library

Bill Brantley

Oct 01, 2014

The Federal Register: Improving Visitors’ Search Experience on Agency Websites

The Office of the Federal Register’s mission “informs citizens of their rights and obligations, documents the actions of Federal agencies, and provides a forum for public participation in the democratic process.” As the winner of the Bright Idea Award, FederalRegister.gov is clear and easy to use, but most citizens rarely frequent it. More frequently they