Library Website and Associated Services

As you may know the Library has been trialling a new look website.  

The trial ends this coming Friday the 19th June and the new website will become live this coming Monday 22nd June 2009.  As part of this we will be making some changes to the web site and some of the associated services.  These changes are listed below:

• The old website will now be decommissioned. To date users have been able to navigate to the old or the new version from an intermediary web page – this will be deleted on Monday 22nd June with the links of the University website titled ‘Library’ both leading to the new website.

• The Library Portal (which contains the library catalogue service) will be edited to limit the functions associated with searching the library catalogue. The additional information in the Portal (the tabs entitled Databases +, Reference and Support) will be removed because this information can now be found on the Library website.

• Subject guides for Business and Law to be added to the website. Preliminary versions of these subject guides will be added to the website from Monday.  We will be working at developing these over the Winter term and aim to have complete versions available to staff and students prior to the commencement of Semester 2/2009.

• The Library FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) will now be visible from the central pane of the home page of the Library website. This service helps to resolve your questions and demystify some of the services on offer from the Library.  Directly above the FAQs is a feed from the Library Blog.  Both of these feeds are updated when the source service is updated.

• Library Catalogue, e-Journal search, SuperSearch and Library FAQs to be ‘embedded’ within the Library website. To date these services have been provided in parallel with the website and have had their own interfaces.  These services will now be ‘embedded’ within the website and have the interfaces modified slightly to standardise the look and feel of the service.  This is part of a long term strategy to integrate and simplify Library discovery services.  Embedding of the services also helps the Library to track usage of these services and to respond to usage patterns when we develop the services.

• Library Blog interface to be redesigned. In the near future we plan provide the blog with a new look which makes it more consistent with the look and feel of other Library online services.  We will then embed this service within the website (see previous item)