NERS, the New Enhancements Request System, has been up and running for over a year now and has supported software enhancement processes for Digitool, Primo, and Aleph, and multiple rounds of CKB enhancements voting for SFX and MetaLib. The NERS team has been collecting feedback for the system over the past year. While the system is usable, we are aware of some ways in which we can make the experience better. The team met in Siena, Italy in late March to talk about system enhancements and a road map for improving existing functionality and adding new functionality. We are actively working on enhancing the system and expect to see many changes over the next 6 to 12 months.
The NERS team is also expanding. Since implementing the system we have found the need for more people to help support the system – both in communicating with users and with system developments. We are grateful to have some new volunteers including Scott Gillies from Georgia Gwinnett College, Josef Branse and Boaz Dotan from the University of Haifa, Omar Reygaert from the University of Ghent, Wonsang Lee from Yonsei University, and Laura Morse from Harvard University. We can still use more help as many hands make light work and the commitment won’t be too heavy for those interested. If you would like to participate in the NERS project, please send an email to ners@igelu.org.
Finally, at ELUNA this year, we led a couple of focus group sessions to get impressions about NERS. These were very helpful and we plan to replicate a session at IGeLU in Haifa. We will also sponsor a couple of usability sessions to test how well the system meets user expectations. Please feel free to stop by if you would like to participate.
Mark Dehmlow, IGeLU SFX Product Working Group Coordinator, and NERS Co-Developer