GCC's Michelle Eichelberger Teams up with Fellow Librarian to Author Innovative Guide

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BATAVIA, NY (07/27/2017) With more than 40 years of combined library experience, fellow librarians and systems innovators Michelle Eichelberger and Bonnie Imler recently put their extensive knowledge to paper. Together, they released a book tapping into their wealth of knowledge about discovery and user experience sharing proven methods for setting up, promoting and teaching discovery systems within diverse library settings. Optimizing Discovery Systems to Improve User Experience: The Innovative Librarian's Guide, is the collaborative effort of Eichelberger and Imler, and provides a comprehensive guide to help librarians make the library discovery system more efficient for their specific community.

"Together, Bonnie and I have been doing this for quite some time," said Eichelberger, co-author and systems and electronic services librarian and associate professor at GCC. "Along the way you learn many tips and tricks, and we decided to share our knowledge with other librarians to improve performance in their libraries."

Eichelberger has served on the State University of New York (SUNY) Office of Library and Information Services Task Force that reviewed options and presented recommendations for implementation of a SUNY-wide Discovery System in 2013. She has collaborated on user research and publications with Imler for more than a decade and their articles have appeared in library journals such as College & Research Libraries and Library Hi Tech. She began her tenure at GCC in 2009, and resides in Rochester.

Imler is library director at Penn State Altoona in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and the web usability and assessment coordinator for Penn State University Libraries. She has been conducting studies on actual use of library resources by patrons long before the term "usability" and the acronym "UX" came into vogue. She has directed studies on student use of full-text articles, databases, link resolvers and eBooks. She has published articles on her usability study results and the use of screen capture video as a means to capture and analyze human-computer interaction.

With 136 pages, the book examines how system design and careful fine-tuning can greatly improve system efficiency. It is available in paperback as well as eBook. It can be purchased online at Amazon.com, and is available at: https://www.amazon.com/Optimizing-Discovery-Systems-Improve-Experience-ebook/dp/B071HTM7VB/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500388424&sr=8-1&keywords=eichelberger+michelle.

For more information, contact Marketing Communications Associate Director Donna Rae Sutherland at (585) 343-0055 ext. 6616, or via email: dsutherland@genesee.edu.

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Editor's Note:

For a photo of GCC's Michelle Eichelberger, co-author and GCC's systems and electronic services librarian and associate professor go to

http://marketing.genesee.edu/images/Michelle_Eichelberger2017.jpg