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!
New UR Libraries Beta Website
June 19, 2009
This week we announced the public preview of our new website. We also posted a link to the current site alerting visitors to visit the new site and give it a test drive. This project has been a collaboration between staff from the library, the UR communications office and web development group. It officially began with our first planning meeting in October 2008, and we’re very happy to be at this point. The key features we’re implementing include a persistent search box which is in the site header allowing users to search our resources (catalog, journal subscriptions, databases, research and course guides, and site) from any page they happen to be on. Beside the search box is a link to launch a pop-up chat window allowing the user to continue using our site while getting live assistance. There’s also a standard navigation bar which is part of the header allowing for consistent navigation from every page on the site. We still have much to do and numerous refinements to add but I believe we’re off to a great start. Another part of the redesign is our transition to UR’s new content management system, Cascade Server from Hannon Hill. It’s a major improvement over our current CMS. It creates very clean code and is much more flexible for future changes and development.
We have also licensed LibGuides from Springshare for our subject/major and course specific guides. LibGuides is a hosted service and lets you build incredibly focused guides for your users. There are some libraries that use LibGuides to host their entire website, which shows you how flexible the product is. LibGuides is also easily customized by using custom cascading style sheets and we’ve been able to apply our new site’s template so that it fully blends with the rest of our new site.
You can preview our beta site at http://xlibrary.richmond.edu and I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions! The site will stay in beta until early August when we’ll retire the current site.
Moo Minicards For Your Library
March 5, 2009
During the fall semester I created a Flickr account for our library to host photos of the library as well as pictures taken at our various events throughout the year. When I received approval to purchase a Flickr Pro account, we were offered 10 free MiniCards from Moo.com, a Flickr partner located in the UK. Moo is an online printing service and will put your photos on about anything you desire. One of their more popular products are their MiniCards. They are smaller than a business card, but large enough to display a photo on one side, and custom text on the other. I decided to create some sample cards to advertise our library contact information, website and catalog. After sharing the samples with various groups, we ordered a set of 100 MiniCards. We placed them on our Main Service Desk along with our staff business cards. We set them out in mid-January and they quickly disappeared over the course of a few weeks. Are they necessary for the library to function? No. Will our students and faculty forget about us? No. Can they remind interested users how to get in touch with us as well as generate lots of “good will?” Absolutely! Below are photos of the front and back of our cards. A set of 100 MiniCards only costs $19.99 plus a small amount for shipping.
New SelfCheck Machine for Boatwright
October 22, 2008
We recently “recycled” our 3M Model 6210 SelfCheck unit (old and busted) in order to prepare for the arrival of the new V Series unit (new hotness). Our Circulation Supervisor worked hard with 3M support and other staff to get the new one up and running as there was a snafu with our ILS vendor, but that has been resolved and we’re up and running. The old one was running Win95. The new one is on Vista. The old one required a keyboard and mouse to be connected anytime you wanted to update settings, etc. The new one has a web interface we access via IP address. The new one is also much less industrial looking. What we need to focus on now is boosting its use as the old one was only able to garner around 8% of our total circulation volume.
TechTips Blog
April 25, 2008
So a few weeks ago, I began distributing tech tips every Friday afternoon to our library staff via our internal mailing list. My goal in doing this is to share some of the more helpful web services and tools that I come across on a regular basis. Recently my director asked me to approach our VP for IS (we’re part of our campus IS group) to see if this would be something of value to the rest of IS. She gave approval and also thinks this is a good idea to try. She also suggested using a blog for archival purposes. Working with our Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, I now have another blog installed on their WordPress MU platform. I will continue to distribute tips via email, but will simultaneously post them to the blog for wider distribution and archiving. Your comments and feedback are welcomed! I may also aggregate them here for further coverage.
Library 100 Book Finding Tutorial
August 8, 2007
Our library recently produced this video to show during our Library 100 freshmen orientation sessions. It’s pretty funny and shows the talents of two previous Access and Delivery student employees! Nick Vogel in our Media Resource Center filmed and edited the video.
Interlibrary Loan, Visualized…
May 19, 2007
A few months ago a subscriber to ILL-L posted a message about using a paper map in his office to help both library colleagues and customers better understand ILL service by marking the institutions where they borrow from and loan to. I thought this was a great idea and asked the staff in the UR ILL office if they could try something similar, which they did. However, when Google rolled out the new My Maps service as part of Google Maps, I instantly thought about transitioning our paper map to an online version, something we could easily share with the entire UR community to help interlibrary loan service to be better understood, both from a borrowing point of view as well as lending, since both are ILL’s core mission.
Yesterday I met with our ILL staff and showed them the initial map I created. We then reviewed what content to include and how to add it. We decided to include all borrowed and loaned items since January of 2007. Most of the data is now entered, but there’s some that’s still outstanding, but I’m very impressed with the results. Here’s a link to the map (we’re also working on an embedded version that we’ll host locally):
UR Interlibrary Loan – Borrowing and Lending
Let us know what you think!
You got SpiderCard in my Printing Credits…
May 19, 2007
Yes, just as popular as those delicious peanut butter cups, printing credits are heavily consumed by most UR students! Thanks to staff in UR’s networking group, they will soon be able to purchase printing credits online using funds from their SpiderCard, which has been a long requested feature. It will be a very easy process as a student will only need to login to their account on BannerWeb, where they will see the option to add printing credits. In case their SpiderCard balance is too low, they have the option to add funds to their Spidercard account from a credit/debit card, or electronic check before making the purchase.
Up until now students have only been able to purchase printing credits at Boatwright Library’s Main Service Desk, which over the past few years has grown to be one of the busiest services (in conjunction with laptop circulation) the library offers. Last fall semester alone, we collected over $13,000, just from printing! For the foreseeable future we’ll continue to allow students to make cash purchases, but will probably cap it at a low amount for those emergency printing situations. This is an exciting new service, both for library staff and our students!
Scholar Rediscovers Interlibrary Loan Service
March 21, 2007
An article appeared on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education last week written by a Fulbright scholar studying at University College Cork in Ireland. While conducting research, she discovered that European libraries and their American counterparts treat interlibrary loan (ILL) service very differently. ILL can sometimes be a costly service, especially to libraries with limited budgets. As the writer points out later in the article, many, if not the majority of academic libraries in the United States often subsidize the cost of ILL service while many international libraries pass the cost along to those requesting items.
ILL is often a scholar’s best friend as it provides access to materials worldwide, and expands a library’s local collection exponentially. ILL service is one of the aspects I appreciate most about my job as the Head of Access and Delivery Services as the users are often very appreciative of being able to access materials at other institutions that would not be available otherwise. The link below goes directly to the article! Enjoy!
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/03/2007031401c/careers.html
They're Back…
August 28, 2006
Yes, the semester has started and the students have descended… A & D’s priority these next two weeks is to continue to assist with completion of the B1 and B2 renovations and train and hire new student employees. Reserves staff will continue to focus on processing the many submissions received at this time of year. The majority of my time these next two weeks will be spent at the Main Service Desk allowing A & D staff the time necessary to complete their start of semester projects as well as train our new part-time employee in all things circulation. If you need me, call the Main Service Desk at x8876!
