The DPU Libraries is excited about our planned migration of the website this year to SharePoint. We anticipate not only improved workflows for our librarians in terms of keeping our website relevant, but also in delivering improved services to our users.
To keep the DPU community up to speed with the changes, and our decisions regarding these changes, Library Web Services will be posting monthly blog entries through the Library Full-Text Blog.
So, let’s start off with a look at our migration plan.
As part of this migration, Library Web Services will be reviewing our current Collage-based site and determining issues with the site architecture. Some of these issues are already known, and we are already busy working on them. Among our chief aims for this pre-migration work are:
- refocusing the site around user tasks
- consolidating the architecture to improve usability
- developing services that provide better access to library resources and information.
Earlier this year, I ran a Freshman Usability Study to understand how new users interacted with our site. These sessions informed me on a number of issues, namely that the lack of a visible catalog search window was causing major problems. This issue has been dealt with by keeping the catalog visible on the main page. And with our expected move to a new catalog system (WorldCat Local) over the next year, we expect even better usability improvements. The study also identified a few things that worked, such as the labels on our site.
We have also been accumulating user data through automated means, chiefly through Google Analytics and Crazy Egg. In fact, Crazy Egg, which graphically illustrates where users click on any given page, has been very helpful in determining what content is most important to our users. This data is now being leveraged in conjunction with library staff interviews to redesign many areas of our site around user tasks.
As an example of this work, Web Services has been working with Library Special Collections and Archives staff to consolidate their rather large, multi-tiered site, which is currently organized more around their organization than user tasks. Using the Crazy Egg data along with information on common user interactions and questions, we are now creating a streamlined, task-oriented version of their site. Current users of this part of the library website may notice some pages disappearing over the next month or so (although we will be using redirects to get you where you need to go!). In fact, in one case, we were able to eliminate 8 pages at once by simply relying more on our library database and bringing that content up a level.
Even bigger plans are being laid for Special Collections and Archives and for other sections of the library site before our move to SharePoint. I’ll keep you up to date on those changes on this blog.
After the migration begins this summer, we hope to run both our old site and our new SharePoint site in parallel for a period of time. We know how difficult it is for users to adjust to new information systems and do not want to imperil access to the library’s resources during the transition to our new site. At some point, however, the old site will go away, so we hope that users will take the opportunity to try out our SharePoint site when it is ready and they feel a little daring. We also hope that user feedback comes our way during this period and beyond. We intend to supplement this information with user studies galore! All feedback we get will then be applied to an iterative process of continual usability improvements.
It will take time, but I’m very confident that with our partners in IS, Enrollment Management and Marketing and across the DePaul community, we can develop a truly remarkable Library web service everyone will be happy with…and dare I say, proud of.
Meanwhile, I hope that if anyone has questions or concerns, they will use this blog or my email to reach out to me. I’m always interested in hearing from users about their opinions and want this process to be completely open and transparent.