Subject: [CODE4LIB] Library Website Redesign Info and Project Plans

From: Rosalyn Metz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:52:55 -0400

Hi All,

I'm about to embark on a library website redesign.  I've started
thinking about creating a project plan, but I honestly don't know
where to start.

I saw this website redesign presentation Lorcan Dempsey tweeted about:
http://www.ucd.ie/library/guides/powerpoint/rpan_ppt2/index.swf  And
started thinking, I wonder if anyone else has similar slides or
project plans or advice.  I of course asked the Google but I didn't
really find any project plans.  (If you're curious what I did find,
take a look here:
http://delicious.com/rosy1280/library+website-redesign)

I do of course realize that every library is different, but I'm hoping
that any information you all might be able to provide could help get
the juices flowing.

Thanks for your help in advance.
Rosalyn

Rosalyn

---

From: Sean Hannan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:18:21 -0400

We're currently in the middle of a library website redesign as well.   
For the most part, we have framed our project using Jesse James  
Garrett's The Elements of User Experience (https://wiki.library.jhu.edu/download/attachments/30737/elements.pdf 
).  It has been immensely helpful in plotting out our work from the  
User Experience touchy-feely end to the Information Architecture to  
the visual design and implementation.

-Sean

---
Sean Hannan
Web Developer
Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University

---

From: Beth Black <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:09:06 -0400

Hello!

I agree with others who have recommended Jesse James Garrett's work. We are
in the roll-out phase of our CMS implementation/redesign and I relied
heavily on Garrett's book in the early phases.  We took an iterative
user-focused approach within a broad phased project plan, making sure we had
user voices in each step in some form. (We relied on work by Jakob Nielsen,
Steve Krug, usability.gov, and others.) Our public face for communicating
progress was a blog: http://library.osu.edu/blogs/lipp. Internally, we kept
our project plans in dotProject, which doesn't have the best method for
outputting the whole plan to share. I plan to write it all up at some point
and will be happy to share with you and the list if there is interest.

I'll be presenting about the CMS Selection and Implementation part of this
project at the LITA National Forum in a few weeks, so that's where I'm
starting on the writing up part. Once the presentation is finished I'll be
able to share that if you are interested. 

I hope this helps!
Beth

Beth Black 
Systems Librarian and Assistant Professor 
Head, Web Implementation Team 
Ohio State University Libraries 
610 Ackerman Rd, Room 5855 
Columbus, Ohio 43202-4500 
(614) 688-5428 
[email-masked] 

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Rosalyn Metz
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 10:53 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Library Website Redesign Info and Project Plans

Hi All,

Rosalyn

-- 
BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS
------------------------------------------------------

Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 934795769) is spam:
Spam:        https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php?i=934795769&m=51c73c14b43c&c=s
Not spam:    https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php?i=934795769&m=51c73c14b43c&c=n
Forget vote: https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php?i=934795769&m=51c73c14b43c&c=f
------------------------------------------------------
END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS

---

From: William Denton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:23:31 -0400

> thinking about creating a project plan, but I honestly don't know

Lots of good stuff in this thread which would have helped me with 
something smaller that I'm just wrapping up now.  We redid our home page 
and applied our university's standard page template to our site.  We're 
doing post-change follow-up usability testing now to iron out final bugs.

 	http://www.library.yorku.ca/

The User Experience Group's plan is here:

 	http://www.library.yorku.ca/ccm/web/committee/ueg/

Most of the documents linked are behind a password, but if you're really 
interested drop me a note.

The thing that proved to be most helpful was that we kept everyone up to 
date on what was going on as we worked.  At the major librarian monthly 
meeting we'd report on the latest survey, on the latest usability testing, 
on what the wireframes looked liked, and so on.

We had one (two?) meetings open to everyone who worked in the library (and 
you know what the librarian/staff division is like) where we showed what 
we had, why we had it, and asked for comments and feedback.  One really 
interesting thing that happened there was that when crazy or bad ideas 
came up, they'd be shot down by people not in the home page working group. 
This worked out very well.  It also means that if people didn't come to 
the meetings but didn't like things later, well, they'd had their chance.

We went slowly but that's what universities are like.  Think what you may 
of the end result, as a project it went very smoothly.

Bill
-- 
William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org

---

From: Beth Black <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:32:08 -0500

Hello!

Back in Sept I promised to share the presentation we did about our (Ohio
State University Libraries) selection of the web CMS SilverStripe. Here's
the link: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/44535.

I hope this helps. I'm happy to attempt to answer any questions.

Beth

Beth Black 

-----Original Message-----
From: Beth Black [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:09 AM
To: 'Code for Libraries'
Subject: RE: [CODE4LIB] Library Website Redesign Info and Project Plans

Hello!

I hope this helps!
Beth

Beth Black 

-----Original Message-----

Hi All,

Rosalyn