2021-11-02 Bulk Edit Working Group Meeting Notes

• Please update your SIG(s) affiliation on the Bulk Edit home page 
• Please add your name to the attendees list

Development updates:

• • Development status
  • Development team scrum board

(screenshot taken post-meeting)

• The team is currently deeply involved in addressing issues from bugfest, which need to be resolved by next week, followed by retesting. So, this delays Bulk Edit implementation. But officially, Lotus development has not started yet, so they have a little time.

Bulk Edit UX Research

• Magda: Regarding the bulk editing UX research that I posted on several channels, as you may recall, I was presenting two proposed bulk edit approaches. One option, the users will download a list of the records that match search criteria, make changes locally, and then upload the modified document. I referred to this approach as a CSV approach. The other approach is the app approach, where the user is guided through the whole process of editing records. Both approaches have pluses and minuses. For the pilot project, we decided to build using the CSV approach.
• Magda: But the in-app approach is not off the table by any means. In presenting the application to different SIGs, some were excited about downloading the records and making global changes because it gives the user a lot of flexibility. The other SIGs were not happy because they felt it was too much effort to put on the end-user, and it expects the user to be more technical. So I reached out to Ebsco's UX and user experience research group to help me to find out the best approach. The group scheduled several controlled interviews with librarians from Cornell, Duke, the University of Chicago, Five Colleges, Chalmers, and Stanford. Many of you who are in this group expressed interest in participating in the interviews. I will also sit in on some of those Interviews to get your feedback. But the data is collected and analyzed by a team that I do not belong to. So, I am looking forward to the findings. Once I have the findings, I will discuss them with the group.
• Leeda: I found it helpful to go back and look at your PowerPoint presentation on what the expectations were for the Bulk Edit Pilot, and I wondered if we could post them up on the Bulk Edit page somewhere.
• Magda: I will post them to our page.
• Sara: I was just wondering if the surveys/interviews will be done again when we move to other apps because I do feel like bulk editing is somewhat functionally dependent, and once we get to some of the other apps, there can be other things that could be surfaced.
• Leeda: I was a little worried that it looked like out of the five of us in the volunteering. Most of us are technical services and wouldn't really be handling the user data.
• Sara reiterated through using her personal experience that there may be quite different user needs depending on what area of the library the user is operating and the kind of records they are trying to edit with the application.
• Magda:  I did review the use cases provided when I started the conversation, and there are common technical approaches to this. It was also covered in the presentation that I did for several SIGs that there are common elements among the record types and functional areas.
• Erin: In the case of users, it did go to the user management group for specific scenarios and discussions. We may not have seen that in this particular group, but there have been significant discussions about searching and locating records. Your point is correct and valid, but I think we have done some of that work outside the specific context of these meetings with Ebsoc's UX researchers.
• Sara: Going back to my first question, it was more about needing this kind of deep-dive when moving to the other apps.
• Magda:  I agree queries types will vary by functional area but the overall process is the same. And yes, we will circ circle back to the groups when we start attacking the next functional areas. But once you select the records to do the edits this is the place where we have two possible approaches, the CSV approach, and the app approach, and the discussion is which one is better and what are pros and cons for each approach are. And this is the reason we have the UX research or controlled interviews.
• Reviewing changes, confirming changes, committing to changes, logging committed changes, and panel exceptions, are important to preserve data integrity
• Bob: Which SIG liked the CSV approach?
• Magda: My understanding was that the Metadata Management SIG really like this approach. But other comments came in and I decided to reach out to other groups.
•  Leeda: I think what they liked about this is the flexibility to isolate records that need changes and understand dependencies and then push those record numbers back up. Then the changes happen in-app. Changes are not pushed up that happen in the app. People were more worried about the possibility of pushing changed data back up. This can open up more opportunities for error.

Surveys overview:

• Bulk Edit - currently used tools
• Bulk Edit Pilot - expectations

Future discussion topic (time permitting):

• Bulk Edit Permissions
• Bulk Edit of the linked records
• Max number of records to be edited via User Interface
• Scheduling edits