Recent Arrivals
We’ve launched our Recent Arrivals app, which features any item that’s been added to the catalog in the past 30 days along with any item that is on a designated new book shelf in a branch library.
Users have the option to filter these results by branch location, material type, and language. Results can be sorted by title or date added to the catalog. Any search combination, which can be defined as narrowly as Italian DVDs at the Fine Arts Library, can be saved as an RSS feed.
We intend this to be a new discovery tool which aids in browsing our enormous collection. The Millennium Catalog excels at searching for known authors, titles, or keywords. This is geared toward the student or faculty member who is interested in seeing new acquisitions in a particular branch or language.
Several of the branch libraries have been keeping manual lists of new materials on their sites. The new application can be incorporated into any branch site so that it only shows new materials for a single location. An example of a branch library already taking advantage of this can be found at the recently-redesigned Fine Arts Library. We hope we can incorporate the new app into other branch pages and free up our busy staff for other duties.
Some of the morphing the project took over the its course:
- Initially it was going to be only for new books but we identified the need to represent all materials
- Choosing an application name proved difficult (New Items? New Books & More?) and Recent Arrivals was decided by a bibliographer vote
- We identified early on the importance of showing an item’s availability status in our results, rather than requiring users to click through to the catalog to see if it could be checked out. We were able to accomplish this via MAJAX an AJAX module for the Millennium catalog.
One randomly-selected recent arrival is currently being highlighted in a homepage feature each time the page loads.
Homepage Feature
The Fine Arts Library Redesign is now complete and moved to production. Many new improvements have been made to the information architecture, design and content integration to improve user interaction and reduce maintenance efforts.
Information architecture improvements include a new site layout which chunks content together logically and allows for easier lateral navigation. A horizontal navigation was created to classify main sections. We are now using active states to highlight the main and subsections a user visits, thus providing context and wayfinding clues. The redesigned home page spotlights new applications we’ve recently developed and allows for more continuity with the main Libraries home page.
New Site
Old Site
A new design was created to integrate within the Libraries approved secondary template. This design includes a new secondary header throughout the FAL site so the user easily recognizes what branch they are in. The header includes a new logo providing the full branch name and acronym and includes rotating images of faculty and students using the library. Colors for the new design where drawn from the interior colors used in the branch. To separate the main content from the surrounding site a new treatment was designed to visually raise the main content and to separate the horizontal navigation by providing a distinct look for easy recognition.
Content integration and reduced maintenance has been improved by integrating Recent Arrivals, FAL News, Staff Picks and Hours. All four reduce bloat by including only recent content and reduce maintenance by integrating content from the Catalog, Blog, or a central application. Staff picks can be submitted through the Catalog and programming was provided to cache and display these picks within the branch site. FAL News is managed through a blog, cached and displayed in a news page and on the branch home page. Hours is also displayed in the branch site but maintained in a central application.
TIS would like to thank the Fine Arts Library Staff and the Library Systems for their important collaboration and for ensuring the completion of this project before the set deadline.
Posted by steve on August 14, 2009 at 12:20 pm
In order to improve the current Libraries website, it is necessary to take inventory of the site as it exists today. The Libraries website has over 80 web authors and thousands of pages. Keeping track of such a huge, evolving site can be a daunting task, to say the least.
an example of a map of a website
The deceptively simple way to inventory a website is to click through it and draw a map showing every page. Imagine clicking every link on www.lib.utexas.edu and making a note of where they all go. Fortunately, there are specific tools that exist to do things like this. Those tools are called Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs), and one just happens to sit in the TIS suite.
But before putting me, the TIS GRA, to work mapping the Libraries site, the technology pros in TIS suggested that it might be worthwhile to investigate software that will automate the task of creating a website map. An automated tool would be much faster than a GRA and might be just as effective.
one type of content visualization
I found a couple of automated tools designed to help assess the information architecture of a website. I evaluated them and summarized my conclusions in a report. The automated tool I found that best fits the project requirements crawls the Libraries website and creates a surprisingly accurate map of the content. It also generates nifty visualizations of that content, which can be useful when demonstrating the depth and breadth of such a huge site. These visualizations make it easier to see overlapping content, organizational flaws, and pages that might get overlooked by human eyes. And did I mention the software does all this automatically? No GRA required? Sounds like a good deal to me.
Update 4/24/09: So far I have created 14 separate maps and have received some great feedback.
