You are encouraged to use the new interface and to promote it to your users. Please report any problems that you find to Alistair Morrison. We are not ready to evaluate the design and layout just yet. Our plan is to solicit feedback and conduct user evaluations in October, and we’ll address design issues then. The full release is planned for late December.
Thera are a few warnings about using the Beta release:
- The Beta application uses an https ("s" on the end) address, which may cause problems we have not anticipated. We do not know of any problems with user authentication, and we have tested many scenarios. This is mentioned simply because it is a significant change. Please report any authentication problems to Alistair Morrison. It is especially important that we know about these as early as possible to fix them in time for the full release in December.
- Durable URLs will continue to go to the old interface, which may be disconcerting for user of the Beta interface. Links to particular search forms, sources, and documents that appear in your source guides, catalog, electronic resources systems, the LexisNexis wiki, and our Delicious tags will all still go to the old interface.
- The same durable URLs are also used in article linker and federated search services provided by 3rd-party vendors. If you are accessing LexisNexis Academic through one of these services, the links to full text will also go to the old interface. However, this may not be very important in the typical user scenario because the durable URL opens a full-text document and the user is likely to exit LexisNexis Academic quickly after viewing the requested document rather than working with the search forms.
Because of these issues, you may wish to list the Beta interface separately among your resources and identify it as a Beta.
The URL for the Beta is:
https://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/