Please, permit me to rant about EBSCO’s new UI for a little while. Ours changed over in August, and up until this point, I’ve been quite busy with teaching and the general chaos of the beginning of fall semester. I had time today to sit down and really lay out the issues I have. I am surprised I haven’t seen more talk about this, though it’s completely possible I just haven’t been in the spaces that it’s happening in. I cannot imagine that a single librarian who actually works with patrons was consulted in this update process – this UI is, in a word, terrible.
The lefthand sidebar, which includes options like “My dashboard” and “research tools”, makes little to no sense in its new location. These kinds of features are most often in a top bar menu, and do not nearly take up that amount of space. We can look at any kind of website, really, and find that that is the case. It used to be so in the Classic UI from EBSCO!
When you do a search in EBSCO, that left sidebar stays, which limits what we can view in the database at all. Additionally, the only sticking filters that a researcher can access without an additional click are full text, peer reviewed, a drop-down menu for date with only 4 options, and source type. To add more filters, I have to click on “all filters” which opens on the… RIGHT side??? The website convention has always been to have filters on the lefthand side, which is now taken up by things that a researcher does not need to have constant access to in such a visible way. Every non-EBSCO database that we have, which includes JSTOR, Choice Reviews, Dynamed, ProQuest databases, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science (just naming a few) adheres to the norm of having filters for a search on the left side. Even websites made for shopping design their interfaces in this way. It really gives off the impression that they made changes simply for the sake of making changes as opposed to doing it based on data, research, or convention. When you do add filters that aren’t in the chosen 4 that stick to the top of the results, you again must click into “all filters” to see what you have selected. In Classic, this was always visible to the researcher.
Now let’s talk about the search results themselves. There are now bigger icons for each resource than there used to be. In the previous interface, the icons differed based on the type of source that it was. Now, we get a constant tirade of the same generic blue paper that takes up a great deal of valuable screen space (that we have even less of because, again, the lefthand sidebar is just a constant). It’s not clickable, despite being the same color as the clickable title of each resource. On my normal-sized laptop, there is now only ONE source above the fold (or before a scroll) in my results list. We also no longer have the option of pages of research – only the prompt to “show more results” and continue scrolling on the same page. This is in line with social media platforms where it’s largely impossible to scroll to the end, but this is not at all useful in a research database, especially for those doing a review article.
I will concede that the mobile version is better—in fact, I think some notes could be taken from that interface. The lefthand side is hidden behind a hamburger button, so only if a researcher clicks on it do they get to dashboard and research tools. Filters are behind a click here too, but that makes sense because of the limited screen space as opposed to a computer. Those useless icons aren’t there unless I turn my phone horizontal. I think it’s good overall that we have the “University” banner at the top; it can be confusing for newer students especially to see a database with completely different branding.
Overall, this is indicative of a long-running problem in librarianship; we are at the mercy of the vendors whose products we rely on. We don’t have total control over these databases and discovery layers, despite some of our patrons thinking we do. We’re currently seeing it with AI assistants being forced into every possible product (with worrisome results). How many instruction librarians have stood in front of a class and had to figure something out on the fly either because the vendor made an unexpected update or because the product was just not working in some way? Or how many e-resources librarians have been sent scrambling to fix a vendor-caused problem? These are just a few examples off the top of my head; I’m sure there’s plenty of others that other kinds of librarians can point to.
Thank you for allowing me this rant, and if you feel similarly, please do let me know.
PS: A former version of the title was thus: “Ebsco, more like Ebs-Whoa, Librarians Say Heckin’ Ebs-no: How Search Got Harder and Librarians Went Harder In Response” from my coworker, Katie
At the Charleston Conference next month, there will be a talk titled “Demystifying database product management: What happens when students love it but librarians don’t”. One of the panelists will be the EBSCO Principal UX Researcher, who led the company’s extensive study, which included librarians. The talk summary:
“Sometimes there is a gap between the database functionalities and features information professional love (give us all of the advanced search options!) and those that a large percentage of the end users want (natural language search or AI summaries). How do vendors navigate this divide? This panel session will help demistify the product development process and the considerations vendors make when enhancing their products.
In this discussion moderated by a librarian, vendor representatives from EBSCO, Sage, and Bloomberg.com will reveal how they gather and synthesize often-conflicting user feedback, from student usage data to librarian budget concerns. They’ll also discuss how they analyze market trends and competitive pressures to build their product roadmaps. This moderated conversation aims to foster greater transparency, offering attendees a nuanced understanding of the business decisions behind the resources they evaluate, use, and recommend.”
Will this panel be available to those who aren’t at the conference? Particularly for those of us who work in public services, since we don’t normally go to Charleston?
As a former math educator, now a student once more as I tackle my securities licensing exams, I’ve seen a worrying trend of low expectations for users from wide swaths of the services that are supposed to support our education. I am all for change that is supported by meaningful, relevant data and research. I just don’t believe that “students like it better” is a valid reason to change something that is actively making it harder for them to access the advanced tools they will need as they progress in their academic careers. I promise my students would have liked it better if we took statistics out of their required curriculum, but they wouldn’t have been set up to succeed without it.
Students are here to learn! The best thing we can do for them is hold high expectations for them and provide the support they need to meet those expectations. Librarians are an invaluable resource to provide that support to learn how to use a database in the ways that they will need when they get to their more advanced coursework.
Of course, pushing students to succeed does not always feel good. We have to push them out of their comfort zones into places where they can grow. If we truly want them to succeed, we can’t hide the scary new things from them. We need to help them confront the unknown and conquer it.
When the new UI doesn’t align with educational goals or standards set by the people using it the most, we have to ask if student attitudes are the best metric to measure here.
We’ve been struggling with the new interface since we got it earlier this year. We had EBSCO reps Zoom with us multiple times but the best they could do was tell us to put in feature requests, and watch the EBSCO “roadmap” for planned improvements. Idk who was in their usability studies, but our students are frustrated, too.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask to be able to email an article link or PDF with a generated citation to a researcher from inside a database. It was my librarian go-to hat trick and I based assessment rubrics around demonstrating this. Annoying.
Preach! Emily, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I’ll pile on to add that, sadly, the stacked search boxes only appear on the Advanced Search page. On one hand, I totally understand that stacked search boxes are intimidating to students. However, EBSCO should at least include a [+] button to add another box from the search results page, because we are often doing/demonstrating complex queries. I believe that’s a reasonable compromise.
Have others also noticed that the search results themselves are worse with the new interface? Relevance is often poor, and it seems like older articles are coming up near the top of the results list consistently. I’ve been embarrassed on several occasions this term when demoing on the fly in a class and getting oddly irrelevant and old results. It can already be a tough sell — encouraging students to try the article databases instead of / in addition to web searching. But seeing the interface and search results with the “new” Ebsco, I don’t blame students for not being interested.