WVU Libraries Website 2014-2015 Redesign

WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITE
2014 - 2015 Redesign

Introduction
The West Virginia University (WVU) Libraries’s website encompasses
six different libraries, hosts fifty-five different digital and physical
collections, offers instruction (through classes, guides, tutorials,
instructional resources, research assistance, consultation and literacy
initiatives), and provides services with accessibility such as borrowing,
computers, copying and printing, database assistance, interlibrary loans,
and room reservations.
The WVU Libraries website is defined by its homepage and the following
information that is available through the website: the online catalog
MountainLynx which provides access to all of the items in WVU Library’s
collection; online databases such as Academic Search Complete, Lexis
Nexis, and JSTOR, where you can find citations, abstracts and full-text
journal articles; online, full-text electronic journals, including titles from
Sports Illustrated to the New England Journal of Medicine; services like
Electronic Reserves where students can access password protected class
materials; and Ask-a-Librarian, where users can chat with a live librarian,
send brief factual questions by email, and text a librarian.
INTRODUCTION

Introduction
THE 33 DIGITAL COLLECTIONS
• 31st Virginia Infantry Regiment Documents
• African Americans in the Monticola 1957-
1964
• Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station
Bulletins, 1970s-present
• Art History Digital Image Database (AHDID)
• BBC Theater Collection
• Boydell’s Illustrations of the Dramatic Works
of Shakespeare
• Center for Research Libraries
• Child Ballads of West Virginia
• Claude W. Benedum Lectures
• David Copperfield
• Digitized Books from the Internet Archive
• Dr. Edward J. Van Liere Digital Collection
• Drawings of David Hunter Strother
• Electronic Journals
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations
• Francis H. Pierpont Civil War Telegram
Series
• Government Documents
• Grace Edwards Waters: A Devoted Life
• History in Photos
• International Association for Identification
• Isaac Asimov Collection
• Jesse Stuart Digital Collection
• Mark Twain: Rare Book Digital Collection
• MediaSite Audio/Video Streaming
• PBS Documentary Collection
• Pi Lambda Phi Jewish Studies Lectureship
• Printed Ephemera Collection
• School of Art & Design Visiting Artist
Lectures
• Season’s Greetings: Holiday Cards Collection
• Shakespeare Online Collection
• Storer College: A Digital Photographic
Collection
• Theses and Dissertations
• West Virginia History OnView: Historical
Photographs
THE 8 LIBRARY WEBSITES
• Downtown Campus Library
• Evansdale Library
• Health Sciences Library
• Law Library *
• West Virginia and Regional History Center
and Special Collections
• Charleston Health Sciences Library *
• Vining Library (West Virginia University
Institute of Technology) *
• Mary F. Shipper Library (Potomac State
College) *
* Not maintained by WVU Libraries
RESOURCES AND WEB APPLICATIONS
• Databases
• MountainLynx Catalog
• Libraries Hours
• Services
• Staff
• Electronic Reserves
• Room Reservations
• Reference Online
• EZ-Search
INTRODUCTION

Goals and Outcomes
To redesign the WVU Libraries website and digital reserves into
a responsive website design that works across all various desktop
and mobile devices, browsers, and platforms through progressive
enhancement, HTML5, CSS3/CSS preprocessors, and JavaScript
powered by the EngineCMS content management system and the Hydra
technology framework.
To establish a successful design hierarchy and user interface with
the WVU Libraries website going forward for WVU, WVU Libraries, and
individual Libraries utilizing WVU University Relations’ branding, color
pallet, favicons, typographic elements, and patterns.
To better exhibit WVU Libraries student engagement, community
enhancement, and excellence in research, creativity, and innovation
through the WVU Libraries website, digital reserves, and related web
application.
To achieve these three goals the 6-part strategy will be to make a
responsive website, research using qualitative, quantitative, and visual
research, define the WVU Libraries’ target audience, create user scenarios,
design heir achy, and employ content strategy .
GOALS AND
EXPECTED
OUTCOMES

Strategy
BUILD RESPONSIVE WITH PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT
In designing the WVU Libraries website we will be starting with a
progressively enhanced, mobile-first design and build upwards,
enhancing it with the right elements of the existing digital presence where
appropriate. This will allow for accessibility and enable the website to
render the same across all of the current popular browsers – Chrome,
IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and webkit - and degrade gracefully on older
browsers through HTML5 splints and JQuery libraries such as Selectivisr
and Respond.
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
Figure 1 StatCounter Global Stats. Jan. - Aug. 2014. http://gs.statcounter.com/
1

Strategy
FORMULATE A RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A research methodology will inform the overall design of the WVU
Libraries website through qualitative research, quantitative research, and
visual research as well as defining our target audience, geographic scope,
and allowing us to create user scenarios.
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
Qualitative Research
The primary resource of Qualitative Research
is the 2010 Website Survey Results and the
2014 Qualitative Research Survey, totaling
over 1,450 responses from students, faculty,
staff, alumni, and community members. These
survey mechanisms focus on capturing and
updating our target audience, mobility, and user
scenarios.
Quantitative Research
Using server website statistics combined with
heat map and scroll map reports from Crazy
Egg, we can determine the following about the
WVU Libraries website:
• In order of popularity, the top five most
utilized resources on the homepage are:
• Databases
• Catalog
• Library Information
• Interlibrary Loans
• At the beginning of the Spring 2014
semester:
• there were a total of 93,002 website visits
• 50% or more of website visits were from
off-campus
• In order of popularity the top five referrals are
coming from:
• direct website traffic to libraries.wvu.edu
• the Google search engine
• West Virginia University’s main website
• the Bing search engine
• mix.wvu.edu
2

Strategy
FORMULATE A RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
By starting with the 125 library websites in the Association of Research
Libraries (ARL), and cross-referencing that list against the library members
of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), the Greater Western Library
Alliance (GWLA), the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc.
(PALCI), LYRASIS, West Virginia University’s Big 12 peers, West Virginia
University’s HEPC peers, and West Virginia University’s destination peers,
we can determine the following:
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
Content & Visual Research
Both of these content and design trajectories
set a baseline for where we at least need to
be, and what our goals should be to surpass,
for redesigning the WVU Libraries website
in regards to content strategy, design, and
usability.
Peer Trajectory for Design
• Harold B. Lee Library | Brigham Young
University
• University of Tennessee (Knoxville) Libraries
• Walter Royal Davis Library | University of
North Carolina (Chapel Hill)
• Howard-Tilton Memorial Library | Tulane
University Library
• River Campus Libraries | University of
Rochester
• University of British Columbia Library
• Jean and Alexander Heard Library |
Vanderbilt University
• Cornell University Library
• University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries
• York University Libraries
• Pennsylvania State University Libraries
Peer Trajectory for Content
• University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Library
• Iowa State University Library
• University of Kansas Libraries
• University of Missouri–Columbia Libraries
• University of New Mexico Libraries
• University of Oklahoma Libraries
• Oklahoma State University Library
• Rutgers University Libraries
• University of Texas Libraries
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• Texas Tech University Libraries
• University of Utah Library
2

Strategy
DEFINE A TARGET AUDIENCE & GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE
According to the 2013 College Portraits, about.wvu.edu, the WVU Office of
Graduate Education & Life, and the 2010 and 2014 website survey results
and Crazy Egg reports of 1,137 responses, undergraduate students in the
United States of America with a high-speed cable/broadband connection,
and a Windows operating system, used the Firefox Internet browser to
visit the Libraries web site weekly during the Fall 2010 Semester.
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
Primary Target Audience
(73% / 107,062 students per month)
WVU undergraduate students who are 48%
female or 52% male, are primarily Caucasian,
African American, Hispanic, or Asian in ethnicity,
are United States citizens or are international
students, are 21 years in their average age,
and are 49% from the state of West Virginia
or 51% from other United States, territories, or
countries.
Secondary Target Audience
WVU graduate students who 41% male or
59% female, are 83% US citizens, 14% non-
immigrants mostly from India or the People’s
Republic of China, and are 31 years in their
average age.
Tertiary Target Audience
WVU administration, faculty, staff, and
Morgantown, West Virginia community
members.
Numbers are populated by looking at both survey polls and server statistics from October 2013.
3

Strategy
CREATE USER SCENARIOS
The primary target audience accesses the WVU Libraries website from on
or off campus and has no trouble connecting to databases or electronic
journals from off-campus. They come to the web page to use (in
descending order):
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
• Databases
• MountainLynx Catalog
• Libraries Hours
• Services
• Staff
• Electronic Reserves
• Reference Online
• EZ-Search
The primary target audience finds what they
are looking for on the website most of the time,
but if/when they are frustrated, it is because
they feel there are too many layers to navigate
through to locate needed information.
According to the 2010 Website Survey Results
Report of 1,137 responses, 69.9% of visitors
found what they were looking for most off the
time, and only 17% of students do find what
they are looking for every time; conversely,
desktop and mobile users don’t expect to read
an instruction manual, and so brief prompts are
fine as are service-specific explanations, but
relying on FAQs is a failure of user experience.
Also, the 2010 Website Survey Results Report
of 1,137 responses exhibits that 45.3% of users
feel that there are too many layers of navigation
required to locate needed information, and
18.3% of users find the organization of the
webpages confusing.
TechSmith Morae is a long-term solution that
is an entire usability testing lab in a box, and
enables the WVU Libraries to make the usability
tests, capture on-screen and user videos, find
the participants, and administer the testing all
in-house for various websites, web applications,
and digital collections.
?
4

Strategy
DESIGN HIERARCHY
Design isn’t about making something pretty, although that’s part of it.
Design is largely about function. It’s about making an interface work so
well that the user never stumbles. Much of a good user interface depends
on a notion called visual hierarchy.
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
Successful design hierarchy is present in a lot
of websites that are part of a larger umbrella of
organization, as well as having many subsites
for different affiliate, departments, entities,
organizations, and units.
A successful example of design hierarchy at
West Virginia University is the Eberly College
of Arts and Sciences, which has over thirty
different departments, and the Robert C. Byrd
Health Sciences Center which encompass five
different schools, and many affiliates, centers,
departments, and offices.
Visual hierarchy is one of the most important
principles behind effective web design. Certain
parts of any website are more important than
others (forms, calls to action, values, etc.).
Where do you want the user to click?
5

Strategy
EMPLOY CONTENT STRATEGY
The future is flexible, and we’re bending with it. From responsive web
design to future-friendly thinking, we’re moving quickly toward a web that’s
more fluid, less fixed, and more easily accessed on a multitude of devices.
As we embrace this shift, we need to relinquish control of our content as
well, setting it free from the boundaries of a traditional webpage to flow as
needed through varied displays and contexts.
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
What doesn’t work:
• Jargon and rules aren’t everything and mean
nothing to SMEs
• Further dividing clients/SMEs from web
developers … everyone is content, and
content is everywhere.
• Territorial-ism, and making web work exist
separate from content as if it is too special.
• Deliverables; they won’t fix content problems
What does work:
• Content as a team effort.
• Embracing workshop opportunities, not just
for a kickoff.
The Content Strategy Parallel Process:
Creating a boilerplate for content providers
to populate is a step in the right direction, but
content development and strategy should be a
parallel process between SME (subject matter
experts) and web developers.
Content development and strategy should be a
parallel process; seeing content as ‘input’ is only
half of the battle… content is also the output of
an organization’s web presence.
The Content Strategy Goal:
• Establish Messaging – what do we want to
say/what is important?
• Establish Editorial Style – does your current
content sound like what you want to
Message
• Content Auditing – go through it together
• Content Modeling – how is it structured,
interconnected; do journey-mapping
• Future-Ready Content
6

Proposed Changes
Branding
The new WVU Libraries website and sub-sites
should utilize the official WVU favicon, header,
and footer.
Domains
The WVU Libraries’ content and design peers
use the following naming conventions:
• lib.school.edu
• library.school.edu
• libraries.school.edu
The largest percentage of our web applications
and services live at the lib.wvu.edu domain, and
the website is the only exception, so moving
the website domain to resolve at lib.wvu.edu is
preferable. Also, m.library.wvu.edu will resolve
there too since the desktop and mobile website
will be the one in the same.
Events
Using WVU’s Calendar for all event postings,
and allowing every LWVU Library employee to
submit events.
Homepage
A dynamic search box that better meets the
needs of our audience, and Google search
capability of the website in the same box.
Role-based content being delivered to the
following audiences on the website homepage:
• Undergraduate Students
• Graduate Students
• Librarians
• Faculty & Staff
• Visitors
Social Media
• Acknowledging Instagram
• Embracing Google+
• Multiple Tweeters
• One Facebook Page
• Update Wikipedia
• YouTube
Third-Party Software
The new WVU Libraries website should utilize
Google Analytics to contribute to WVU Analytics,
to allow us to perform Demographic/Pathway
Mapping, and take advantage of Universal
Analytics.
The website should also take advantage of
SiteImprove, a free WVU spell-checking, broken
link, and accessibility tool for continual website
maintenance.
PROPOSED
CHANGES

WVRHC WEBSITE
Research
WVRHC RESEARCH Content Research
The following websites were used for navigation
and structural content inspiration:
• The Bentley Historical Library at University of
Michigan
• The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley
• USC’s South Caroliniana Library
• University of Wyoming’s American Heritage
Center
• The University of Texas Harry Ransom
Center
• The University of Texas Briscoe Center for
American History
Visual Research
The following websites were used for design
inspiration:
• The Virginia Historical Society
• The Smithsonian Institution Archives
• University of Missouri Libraries Special
Collections & Rare Books
• The Art Institute of Chicago
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Qualitative Research
Using Qualtrics to conduct a website survey we
determined the following:
• 31% Alumni, 24% Student, 24% Faculty, 17%
not WVU affiliated, and 3% Staff are your
audience
• 83% of the website visitors use Social Media
(Facebook 92%, YouTube 63%, Twitter 46%,
Pinterest 42%, Google+ 38%, Instagram 38%)
• 45% of the website visitors have not heard of
and haven’t attended the West Virginia Day
events.
• The top 6 things people are looking for
are Archives & Manuscripts, Newspapers,
OnView, Ancestry.com, Oral History, and
Research Guides
• The website’s lowest ratings are for a clear
path to information, general ease of use,
clarity and relevance of navigation items, and
the amount of content being too small
Quantitative Research
Using server analytics from wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/
we determined the following:
• The most popularly visited internal resources
are Census Records, Folk Music Recording,
Genealogical Research, Military Records, and
Public Records
• Traffic totals for 2014 on average equal
39,332 visits to view 577,272 pages a month
• 2014 Highest Months:
• February: 90,271 visits of 407,643 pages
were for West Virginia History OnView
• October: 8,364 visits of 48,989 pages
were for the Archives & Manuscripts
Collection
• The most popular pages in general are
public records, history, folk music, copy,
collections, explore, census, and guides
• In the month of September, 2014 alone there
were 107,970 page views on mobile devices

WVRHC WEBSITE
Proposed Changes
WVRHC PROPOSED
CHANGES
Content Audit
The Web Team suggest that a website-wide
content audit is performed that:
• Eliminates extraneous content
• Develops a meta description of 155
characters
• Identifies missing content and information…
• Mission statement
• Goals
• Clearer purpose
• Helps search engine optimization
• Develops a content style guide that…
• uses an active voice
• avoids duplication
• is gender-neutral
Events & Social Media
The WVRHC should consider:
• Adding events to the WVU Calendar
• Starting to use social media for your visitors
to…
• use Facebook, the largest social media
that your visitors are already using, as
soon as possible
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/
West-Virginia-and-Regional-History-
Center/132560236781576
• interact with images, such as the
University of Oklahoma History of
Science Collections
• Connecting with local history organizations
to cross-promote events and news such as…
• The Marion County Historical Society
• The Morgantown history Museum
• Updating the Wikipedia page at…
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_
Virginia_and_Regional_History_Center
Homepage & Navigation
The following are suggestions for the WVRHC
website restructure:
• Add the official WVU Header and Footer
• Add the a WVU Libraries Header
• Transition the 4-part navigation into a 3-part
‘call-to-action’ quick link section
• Implement a navigation similar to identified
content peers
• Utilize a search bar that makes sense to
visitors as opposed to WVRHC staff
• Highlight WVRHC collections through large
image features and text on homepage
• Add ‘do-it-yourself’ icon links for patrons to
internal resources on homepage
• Reduce the amount of focus on the
homepage for immediate redirects to other
websites
• Add a ‘Stay Connected’ section that engages
visitors with ways to connect to the WVRHC
• Highlight WVRHC-specific news and social
media on the homepage

WVU & WVRHC WEBSITE
Wireframes
WIREFRAMES WVU Libraries
Based on qualitative and quantitative research,
digital wireframes were constructed to:
• align the website with WVU’s branding
• better exhibit WVU Libraries student
engagement, community enhancement, and
excellence
• provide robust search options on the WVU
Libraries’ website homepage
• serve the information in an order prioritized
by our target audience’s needs
• take advantage of scrolling
• utilize verbiage that makes since to our
target audience
http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/images/library.
pdf
Specific Libraries
• feature exhibitions, collections, or events of
the specific library
• focus attention on the specific library,
allowing content development to occur by
local librarians
• prioritize content as needed by specific
library website users
• serve information to specific library website
visitor needs
http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/images/
evansdale.pdf
WVRHC
• draw attention to internal WVRHC features
that are highly sought after
• employ calls-to-action to engage website
traffic
• prioritize resources that are internal to the
WVRHC website
• restructure navigation to make more
practical sense to patrons
http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/images/wvrhc.
pdf

WVU & WVRHC WEBSITE
Designs
DESIGNS
http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/index.html
http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/backpage.html
http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/wvrhc.html

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