LITA Forum 2015 Session 9

1. Who Designs the Library Website?
Making the Most of Stakeholder Input
Library and Information Technology Association Forum
Minneapolis, MN
November 15, 2015
Brian Rennick

2. Brian Rennick
Web Development Manager
Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
brian_rennick@byu.edu
@rennickb
Andy Spackman
Web Working Group Chair
andy_spackman@byu.edu
Grant Zabriskie
Web Designer
grant@zabriskiedesign.com

3. Faculty:
"What did you do with my favorite link?"

4. Library Employee:
"Please add ______ to the home page."

5. Ten Years of lib.byu.edu

6. 2005

7. 2006

8. 2007

9. 2008

10. 2009

11. 2010

12. 2011

13. 2012

14. 2013

15. 2013

16. 2014

17. Stakeholders for an Academic Library Site
• Students
• Faculty
• Alumni
• Donors
• Community
• Library Employees

18. Priorities
1. Undergraduate students
2. Graduate students
3. Faculty

19. Web Working Group
• Chair (Subject Librarian)
• Former Chair
• Assistant University Librarian for Information Technology
• Lead Web Designer
• Web Development Manager
• Discovery Systems Manager
• Reference Services Committee Chair
• Electronic Resources Specialist
• Subject Librarian
• Virtual Services Librarian

21. Too Many Cooks?

22. Role of Web Working Group
• Provide direction
• Gather feedback
• Approve changes
• Resolve disputes
• Protect the web designers and programmers from politics
• Communicate with the campus and the library

23. Role of the Web Development Team
• Design
• Prototype
• Code
• User experience testing

24. Guiding Principles
• Mobile first
• Responsive
• Focus on undergraduate students
• Let the web designers do their job

25. Core
versus
Satellite

26. Web Working Group
Web Development Team
Suggestions

27. Developing the New Site

28. http://xkcd.com/773/

29. Examples of Survey Questions:
Describe what you think the
"Subject Guides" link will lead to.
What would you call a link to
digital and paper sheet music?
Library Jargon Study (2012)

30. Website Focus Group (2013)
• 70 links
• What have you used?
• What would like to see in the learning management system?
• Student teams created mockups of home page and secondary pages
• One team only placed 7 links on the home page
• Each team left off about 25 links on average
• Teams did not add any new links

31. Too much stuff

32. • Busy
• Homogenous
• Boring
• Hard to find stuff
• Hard to find Help
• Not responsive

34. Wireframe Prototypes

44. Inspiration

48. HTML Prototypes

54. Refine

58. Transition
From 2012: Web Working Group
In 2014:
February: Library-wide meeting
Alpha for library employees
March: Faculty Senate
Public beta
Feedback link
April: Launch
Link to old site for 6 months

59. Questions
and
Comments