New Library Website

Now that the flurry of the first couple of weeks of school is over, its time for more blogging! Like several other schools, we rolled out a newly designed library website at the start of Fall Semester. I think we did a decent job for a website by committee. We consolodated some of the common content like circulation information into a more usable main library page. Prior to the redesign, the main page pretty much just had links to databases and the campus libraries. So we tried to put as much useful info on that page as possible as it's linked from the college homepage. And it definitely looks better than the previous site which used our suggested college web template.

I would have liked to have been able to include more social features, like integrated blogs and feeds, but I think we made a step in the right direction designwise at least. And it should be easier to revisit the social aspects now that the site is online and folks are feeling a little less overwhelmed by the project. I did make a new podcast page for my library to try to integrate our audio content into the site. I'm still going to maintain the Listen Up! blog but link the two most current episodes from the podcast page. And break out the interviews and speakers so they'll be more visible. And hopefully work on some instructional podcasts about resources and services as the semester goes on.

And on the subject of web design, and somewhat interesting in light of the recent discussions on gender issues in library tech, my friend Tessa is now our Systems Librarian here at GPC. She is very knowledgeable about computer and web issues and is very customer service oriented, which I think will be greatly appreciated by her new clients. She ran the web redesign show for the second half of the project or so and did a great job.