New Website Launch!
August 5, 2009
This past Monday (Aug. 3, 2009) we brought a 9 month project to conclusion (or maybe it’s just the start) and updated our library’s website (http://library.richmond.edu). It’s been a very rewarding and enlightening effort and has helped us to better understand our users’ expectations and beliefs about what our site should offer. We’ve been tracking our site several years now via Google Analytics and were able to base a lot of design decisions based on actual site usage. The pages most frequently visited include our library catalog, databases A – Z page, subject/major and course specific guides, our journal locator search tool, course reserves, and citing sources guide.
After reviewing other library sites, and using the Google Analytics data the design team created a template which includes the following features:
- A search tool built into the site header so that our main search tools are available on every page within the site. This includes links to our library catalog, databases page, journal locator, search box for our subject/major guides, and a site search box utilizing the university’s Google Mini Appliance.
- Always present “Ask a Librarian” and Live Chat buttons allowing users to get in touch and ask questions via their preferred method.
- A horizontal navigation bar persistent throughout the site to ease navigation between the different sections.
- A standard footer which will also provide access to important information regardless of which page the user is on within the site
As part of our redesign we licensed LibGuides from Springshare and are migrating all of our subject/major and course guides to this new platform. LibGuids is a database driven system and makes creating and editing guides incredibility simple and straightforward. It’s also a very flexible system; by applying the same stylesheets we have been able to replicate our main site’s template on the LibGuides server. This creates a transparent transition back and forth that most users will be unaware of.
In addition to LibGuides, we also licensed LibAnswers from Springshare. LibAnswers is a database driven question and answer/knowledgebase allowing users to submit questions which after being answered can be added to the publicly visible set of questions to aid others with similar questions or needs. We’re rolling this portion of the new site out a little more slowly in order to see how we can best utilize it.
As mentioned above, this has been a long process. Key members of the design team include Jim Hall (who really helped to develop the look, feel, and functionality of the site), Becka Boyd (graphic artist extraordinaire), Althea McMillan and Alem Areki (providing expert system recommendations as well as coding key features of the site). The other key aspect of our redesign has been the transition to the unversity’s new CMS, Cascade Server from Hannon Hill. It’s a very flexible system and better prepares us to quickly adapt to our user’s changing needs over time.
Kevin Creamer our Director of Teaching, Learning, and Technology has also posted about our new site and its features. Read his post for another perspective!
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