lindseywharton, Author at FSULIB

How We Redesigned the Library Website

After months of development and user testing, we recently launched the updated Florida State University Libraries website. Intuitively organized, easier to navigate, and more user-friendly, our refreshed site offers an improved experience for accessing our library resources and services. Interested in how our team planned and implemented these changes? Learn more about how we designed and measured our improvements based on user feedback. We encourage you to complete this brief survey on the new site and look forward to your feedback.

Planning & Establishing Goals

Due to an upgrade requirement (Drupal 7 was nearing end-of-life, requiring an upgrade to Drupal 9), the website needed to be migrated to a new infrastructure. This upgrade provided an opportunity to “refresh” the website to improve user experience and advance our interface to best meet the needs of the FSU community. A small Website Refresh Working Group proposed the redesign as a Libraries’ strategic initiative with four phases: feedback gathering & user testing, content review, design & testing, and infrastructure upgrade and implementation.

FSU Libraries Purpose Statement: The FSU Libraries website seeks to provide low-barrier access to library collections and services in order to support the teaching, learning, and research activities of Florida State University as well as effective and meaningful engagement with library staff, services, and tools.

Based on the purpose statement above, our group developed (and iteratively revised) the following goals for the redesign:

Improve frontend experience / more efficient tools and workflows for internal content creation & editing
Improve pages for language / less jargon ( with user-focused content), accuracy, and clarity
Reduce barriers for tasks our users most want to accomplish
Simplify/streamline navigation & search systems (with mobile, touch-screen in mind)
Seamless integration of services, resources
Explore design principles to improve website consistency and aesthetic

Usability Testing

Our users’ input was an essential part of our website refresh. Our Refresh User Experience (UX) group, made up of librarians and staff from all over the library, sat down to discuss what was important to them and their departments when updating our website. Gathering ideas and tasks for users to try, we then interviewed our patrons about the many facets of the new (and old) website. Providing Amazon gift cards for incentives, the UX group tested over 25 users (a mix of undergrad, staff, and faculty), exposing many underlying problems with navigation, content, and accessibility. Users were asked to show us how they found materials, booked study rooms, located tutoring, and what they thought about the new look of the website (as just as a few examples). This information was very important for making decisions about the flow and feel of the new website.

Some interesting takeaways from the testing include:

The old room booking system was clunky and difficult to use: Switching to a simpler (and accessible) system streamlined the entire process.
Walls of text made information on the old website harder to find: Using a standardized system of nested headings helped users find information at a glance, and made the website more accessible, as well.
Users may prefer FAQs to search or chat help: Patrons went to our FAQs for information on everything from noise complaints to late fines. Keeping these up-to-date and embedded in the new website were key.

User testing is all about making small, inclusive, and reasonable changes and testing again and again, so we’ll be repeating this process every semester into the foreseeable future. You can find more information about our user testing process and results here.

Gathering Feedback

We began our efforts in gathering feedback internally with a library employee survey in December 2021, assessing employee experiences and frustrations with the past website. Using this initial data, we planned internal department open forums, completed in February 2022. Not only did this assist us in identifying website issues, but the open dialogue allowed our website team to establish strong channels of communication and working relationships. The data coding (seen in this spreadsheet in the Open Forums tab) presented the following takeaways for our team to consider:

Limitations of the content editor workflow and process
Inconsistency in design
Inaccurate information
Issues with library jargon
Lack of service presentation

We supplemented the internal feedback with two other forms of data: analysis from our Ask Us chat and email virtual reference service transcripts, as well as entries from our website suggestion form. Based on these sources, we identified the following issues and barriers:

This data analysis, along with conducting an informal library website comparison, as well as a review of the past three years of our Web Advisory Group work, was critical in efficiently and effectively planning our website redesign to best meet the changing needs of our users.

Content Review

As we continued with the backend work to upgrade the infrastructure, including a feature review in Github, a Content Review Group embarked on the content review stage of the redesign process, in order to review our website content with the goal of assessing and improving our overall content for clarity, accuracy, voice & jargon, and design, as well as determining “ownership” of pages. We reviewed content with the website purpose and user goals in mind, developed the workflow to score each page to determine what should be moved, improved and retired. The review process involved:

Developing scope of content and architecture review (based on main goals and purpose of the website)
Reviewing content groups
Using Google Analytics to create a list of highly trafficked, medium traffic, low traffic, or no traffic pages
Auditing content (move, improve, retire) based on criteria; identify duplicate content
Developing a list of pages to be retired, improved, or moved, as well as recommendations

In order to keep the scope of our review manageable, we did not asses our LibGuides, tutorials, digital collections, blog posts, social media, or associated applications. After hours of sprints, our group scored the top 500 pages of our website, which we documented on this spreadsheet. This work also directly lent itself to planning the new structure of our internal, cross-divisional website and online application work where we are reimagining our Web Advisory Group as a more engaging and proactive Website Coordinating Committee.

Reconsidering the Information Architecture & Navigation

Redesigning the website allowed the team to reconsider the information architecture of the library website. In short, information architecture (or IA) is the creation and organization of the structure and hierarchy of the website and its components in an intuitive and scalable way. Much like cleaning and organizing a house, this meant going through all of our content on the old site and putting it away into drawers (categories or patterns) in a way that makes it easy to get to later. This process is one of the key foundations of good UX, since a good IA helps users form their own mental model of the site without too much effort. As humans, we love to organize information, so when we go to a website our brain starts keeping track of where we are in relation to the home page and the other pages we’ve visited and how they’re all related. Our new architecture seems to be a success: we’ve heard from both students and librarians that the new site is “more intuitive” and “easy to navigate”. You can see our information architecture drafts and brainstorming here.

Based on the results of the content review stage, our team began to move content over, utilizing our improved information architecture and implementing a more intuitive navigation. We built the site from a true user-perspective, as opposed to organizing our content around our internal structure and workflows. This method guided users based on what users’ needed or sought from the website. While high-scoring content required a straight-forward move, some of our moderate- or low-scoring content required a full rethinking or redesign, providing the Website Refresh Working Group an opportunity to collaborate with stakeholders around the Libraries to improve pages and navigation. We developed the navigation and the menus based on our information architecture as we worked through the content move, creating a seamless user experience that represented the relationship and hierarchy of content and better connected our resources and services.

Designing the New Site

The last stages of the redesign process were the new website design and content move. The new site needed to align with the FSU Web Style Guidelines and Resources. We installed the Strata Three design into our Drupal 9 framework. Our next step was establishing goals for the design and feel of the redesign to ensure visual consistency. We established style parameters that allowed for content editor flexibility. Some of the past issues identified with our website design included inconsistent use of icons, line weight, and colors, non-stock images, and generally varying visual elements that were not cohesive throughout the site. A uniform color scheme was established and template page layouts were developed for different page types. Furthermore, we implemented a mobile first design strategy. All of our design improvements were optimized for mobile experience with responsive design features. All of these standards will be reflected in our Web Style Guide for internal content editors.

Redesign in Action

As we prepped to launch the redesigned site, we held internal open forums with library staff, announced the changes via campus-wide announcements, and encouraged feedback through a brief survey, making iterative changes as needed. New features and changes from our current website are based on user feedback, content assessment, and usage data. They include:

A streamlined homepage with quick access to OneSearch and popular links
An updated information architecture for improved navigation
Seamless integration of resources and services with redesigned pages for popular services
A ‘Getting Started’ page to guide you through our many services and information resources
Improved accessibility for a better website experience for all
Responsive design across the entire library website
Updated and simplified content throughout the site
An upgraded architecture and improved experience for content editors

We hope you are enjoying our refreshed site as the enhanced online experience to discover all of Florida State University Libraries’ collections and resources. As we move forward, we plan to continue our assessment and measure success through fewer reported website issues and improving success rate or task-completion in iterative user testing. We encourage you to complete this brief survey on the new site and look forward to your feedback!

FSU Open Education Month 2022

Celebrate Open Education Week all month with FSU! Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment (SPARC). Join us for this opportunity for sharing and learning in open education on campus and beyond. To learn more about FSU Libraries’ open education initiatives, visit our OER & Textbook Affordability Initiatives, eTextbook Information, and OER Guide.

Week 1

March 3: Open Office Hours – Faculty Informal Lunch Space (FILS) is Open Education focused throughout the month. Open space to connect, collaborate, ask questions, or bring your lunch. Dirac Library Conference Room, 11 am – 1 pm.

Week 2

March 8 – 10: OpenEd tabling on Landis and in Strozier Library : Learn more about OER and textbook affordability efforts happening on campus and how you can join the movement. Tuesday, March 8, 4 – 6 pm; Wednesday, March 9, 2 – 4 pm; & Thursday, March 10, 3 – 5 pm

March 10: Open Office Hours: Faculty Informal Lunch Space (FILS) is Open Education focused throughout the month. Open space to connect, collaborate, ask questions, or bring your lunch. Dirac Library Conference Room, 11 am – 1 pm.

March 11: OER Happy Hour: Celebrate our efforts and connect with OER colleagues. Ology at Power Mill, 5 – 7 pm

Week 3

March 17: Open Office Hours: Faculty Informal Lunch Space (FILS) is Open Education focused throughout the month. Open space to connect, collaborate, ask questions, or bring your lunch. Dirac Library Conference Room, 11 am – 1 pm.

Week 4

March 24: Open Office Hours: Faculty Informal Lunch Space (FILS) is Open Education focused throughout the month. Open space to connect, collaborate, ask questions, or bring your lunch. Dirac Library Conference Room, 11 am – 1 pm.

March 25: Equity, Inclusion, and Textbook Affordability at FSU, presented as part of Fellows Forum, Lindsey Wharton and Shawna Durtschi present on how open educational resources can provide opportunity and support diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts. (Zoom link coming soon), 11 am – 12 pm.

March 28: Open Education at FSU: Join us for a discussion on where we are with open education efforts today, from a national perspective (Sonya Bennett-Brandt, Assistant Director of Institutional Efforts at OpenStax), an OER champion on campus, and our student advocates and leaders (Graceanne Hoback, Textbook Affordability Campaign Coordinator, FSU PIRG). (Zoom link: fla.st/Q1H7OGNM ; 12 – 1 pm)

Learn more and join the open community with Open Education events happening nationwide at https://www.oeglobal.org/activities/open-education-week/.

Supporting Students Through Open and Affordable Course Materials

As we move forward to the semester ahead of fully online classes and the educational community responds to COVID-19, you may be receiving emails from vendors offering limited-time free access to their tools and platforms. We encourage instructors to explore open textbook or library-licensed e-book textbook alternatives during this transition to online teaching, which are always free or affordable.

Please remember that students may be experiencing greater financial stress than usual if they’re not able to work due to the coronavirus. You might want to consider investing your time in trying resources and tools that will continue to be free to you and your students after the crisis is over. These options will increase first-day access to required course materials and save students time and money during this stressful time. According to our 2017 survey, 72% of FSU students do not purchase textbooks due to cost and 93% prefer a free online textbook over a traditional print option.

Subject librarians are available to work with instructors to locate open or already licensed content in order to save students money and ease the pedagogical burdens of the current situation. If you are interested in adopting a library e-book for your course, please consult your subject librarian so we can check on the resource license as not all of our e-books are available for multi user simultaneous usage.

Open Educational Resources & Open Textbooks

Open educational resources (OER) are freely-accessible, openly licensed textbooks, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching and learning. OER can be reused, customized, and widely shared by others. Many courses at FSU already utilize open textbooks including CHM1045. Our top suggestions for open textbooks include:

Openstax: Peer-reviewed, open textbooks on introductory topics. Students can buy print copies. See their blog post on Teaching online with OpenStax to support emerging social distancing requirements. OpenStax has quiz banks, slides, and other ancillaries freely available for instructors who sign up with them. OpenStax Allies offer competitively-priced homework platforms that work with OpenStax books, and many of them are waiving costs right now.
Open Textbook Library : Read peer reviews and access open textbooks being used across the world.
OER Commons: Public library of open educational resources wit platform for content authoring & remixing.
BC Campus OpenEd: Search for quality open textbooks offered in a variety of digital formats.
Lumen Learning: Offers a wide array of open content that you can access for free. Their Waymaker and OHM modules are low-cost homework platforms that can be integrated with Canvas.

Don’t use a standalone textbook? Many instructors chose to use a mix of open resources to support their curriculum instead of just one open textbook. Sources include TED Talks, online news articles from publications such as The Guardian, government information such as cdc.gov, and other high-quality information available online. Some instructors also use Open Scholarly Monographs as educational resources in their course, which carry the same open licenses.

Mason MetaFinder: Search engine that includes a variety of open materials for those looking to mix content and recently added 1.4 million + books from the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library.
OASIS: Search tool for open content from 97 different sources and contains 385,629 records of textbooks, modules, videos, podcasts, primary resources and more.

Library-licensed E-books, Articles, and Online Resources for the Classroom

Library-licensed material expands the amount of materials available for higher-level coursework and complements other OER materials. Many faculty at FSU have opted to adopt e-books, journal articles, videos, images, and other digital resources from our collection. If you are interested in browsing our immense online collection for course materials, here are a couple of our search tools:

OneSearch: Search through many resources at once using our OneSearch tool. Whether you are looking for an e-book or searching broadly by subject or keyword, OneSearch is a great place to start your searching. OneSearch is also a good place to find items by citation – just paste the citation right into the search box.

Databases A-Z List: If you know which database you are looking for, use this list to find the specific database by title.

Databases by Subject List: Our subject librarians have selected the top databases for each subject in this list, helping identify the top resources for each subject.

Journal Search: This tool allows you to find journals by title or subject.

Streaming Media: Showing films in online courses requires some additional planning. We are happy to share that FSU Libraries provide access to multiple video platforms. If you are interested in using our streaming media resources in your online courses, please check out our Streaming Media in Your Course guide for tips on finding streaming resources and streaming models that best suit your course material needs.

FSU Libraries is committed to developing open and affordable solutions that will ease the burden of textbook costs. Affordable course materials are going to be more important to students than ever. Find out more about FSU Libraries Open and Affordable Textbook Initiative.

If interested in exploring open and affordable options for your course, please contact Camille Thomas at cthomas5@fsu.edu or Lindsey Wharton at lwharton@fsu.edu.

A Visit to Panama

By Lindsey Wharton, Extended Campus & Distance Services Librarian, & Michael Pritchard, Distance Services Library Associate

In February 2020, members of the FSU Libraries were hosted by the Florida State University – Panama campus in an effort to strengthen our partnership with the Panama students, faculty and staff. Our visit provided us the opportunity to promote library resources and services as well as learn about the teaching and learning experiences, both academic and culturally, of our students, staff, and faculty abroad. While Lindsey Wharton, the Extended Campus & Distance Services Librarian, had visited the Panama campus previously in 2014 and 2016, this was the first visit for both Michael Pritchard, Distance Library Services Specialist, and Dr. Gale Etschmaier, Dean of University Libraries. This campus visit marked an important occurrence for University Libraries and FSU Panama, as all were excited to reconnect with colleagues, work with the students, and introduce Dr. Etschmaier to the campus.

Taking the Libraries #FSUGlobal: A Visit to London & Valencia

In August 2019, FSU Libraries once again had the opportunity to visit our international study centers as we travelled to London and Valencia to promote our library services and resources and learn more about the teaching, learning, and research experiences of our students and faculty abroad. While Mike Meth, Associate Dean for Research & Learning Services at FSU Libraries, and I had visited London and Florence in the summer of 2018, this was going to my first trip back to Valencia since 2015, and Mike’s first trip since he came to FSU in 2015. This trip was not going to be like any of our previous visits because we were going to experience the full excitement and vivacity of arrivals week. If you are unfamiliar with the workings of International Programs, Arrivals Week is when all the brand new freshman who are part of the First Year Abroad/First Semester Abroad first arrive on their respective campuses. During this week they are assigned flats, see the study center and the city for the first time, and get their first taste of FSU.

My interest in experiencing Arrivals Week in-person went beyond just wanting to see this annual on-boarding live. I wanted to integrate an introduction to University Libraries and our online services and resources into the carefully planned orientation sessions. It was an opportunity to get students thinking critically about information and about academic research right from the onset of their college career.

We started our visit at the FSU London study center, a polished and statuesque set of townhouses in Bloomsbury, just a block away from the British Museum, it is an area bustling with tourists and locals alike. Our meetings here included updates and discussions with the entire London staff, brainstorming support strategies with the London Director and Associate Director, presentation and meeting with the London faculty, as well as time spent with the IT/Library Manager and staff. A good amount of our conversations focused on how the Libraries could support the textbook and course material needs of the faculty and students, giving us a chance to promote our Alternative Textbook Grants for International Programs program.. We were also able to speak to the students twice: a quick introduction to all the new students about FSU Libraries and then an orientation session where we were able to provide an hour long overview of University Libraries, our services at the study center in London, and why using the Libraries is invaluable to students in their studies. It was a whirlwind of planning, exploring, collaborating, and teaching all in truly one of the most magical cities in the world.

Mike & Lindsey at FSU Valencia, 2019 Image by Mike Meth

We arrived in Valencia on a Thursday evening, and as soon as you step out of the airport, the warm, salty sea air transforms you. The study center is located next to one of the old city gates, and the remnants of the ancient city are everywhere, including the dorms, classrooms, and the offices of FSU Valencia. We were able to once again participate in the initial presentation meeting with the new students, and follow-up with a longer workshop for all the new freshman later in the week. Since we hadn’t visited in four years, the campus also organized a training session for the Valencia faculty in order to provide in-depth consultation on our resources and support services for teaching and learning. Mike and I also visited the libraries at the University of Valencia and the Polytechnic University of Valencia and toured the collections and facilities with the library staff. As all libraries become further interconnected and interdependent, exploring these connections and relationships abroad is an exciting new endeavor and we look forward to possible partnerships. FSU Valencia is unique to us because currently it is the only study center without a formal library space or designated library staff member. This requires thoughtful communication and outreach strategies so students and faculty are aware of the library services offered to them from FSU’s Tallahassee campus.

Old city gate in Valencia, 2019 Image by Mike Meth

Our goal was to introduce students to all that theFSU Libraries have to offer, our hundreds of databases, millions of eBooks, our 24/5 chat service, and guidance for students as they embark on this scholarly journey. There are so many resources at our fingertips to further enrich the global experience. Study abroad transforms just as Florida State University transforms. FSU Libraries provides the foundation for our students’ growth into scholars so that they can use all they have learned to transform the future.

These visits inspire me and my work as a librarian in so many ways. I am captivated by the work of the staff of the study centers – their passion, their long hours and careful planning, their care for the students, their ability to create a home away from home, while providing a taste of what Florida State University has to offer. All this in a beautiful city. I am awed by the teaching and the faculty – how they use every aspect of the city to provide a completely unique and encompassing learning experience. And I am energized by the students – leaping out of their bubble and all the comforts of the known to embrace and open up to the unknown, growing as scholars, as learners, as people throughout their months abroad. As with any trip surrounded by these type of people, there were so many magical and unexpected moments: fiery flamenco in a small, packed bar, museums so big it makes art feel endless and unfathomable, experiencing the happenings of Brexit in real time, sailing on the perfect blue Mediterranean. But, that’s the point, isn’t it? To experience the things that transform us.

FSU Libraries Abroad: A Visit to Florence & London

In April 2018, Lindsey Wharton (Extended Campus and Distance Services Librarian) and Mike Meth (Associate Dean of Research and Learning Services) travelled to FSU’s international campuses in Florence and London. The goal of our visit was to familiarize ourselves with the the libraries and study centers there, meet the students and faculty, and strategize about library services and support for students and faculty studying abroad. The timing of our trip was fortuitous as it coincided with the conclusion of the spring semester and much of our experience was shaped by seeing students who had spent either their last semester or their whole first year abroad.

The FSU Florence study center is located on a quiet street within the city center, only about a ten minute walk from the duomo (photo below) or the ponte vecchio (photo above). Located within a renaissance palazzo, the building is everything you would expect from Florentine architecture, including vaulted ceilings decorated with historic frescos. The library and computer lab is hidden within a quiet courtyard, two doors over from the study center, and up a flight of stairs. Although not in the same building, the library is well used and also includes a faculty lounge. As we toured the library space with Amy (our iSchool intern in Florence), students were busy studying for finals with the same intensity we all expect in our main campuses libraries. Books line library walls from floor to ceiling, with individual and group study spaces dispersed throughout the four rooms. The Florence library intern works with the help of student workers to curate the book collection, assist students with textbooks on reserve and research questions. She also works with faculty to teach information literacy lessons and orient students to library services. During our visit, we heard numerous compliments about the work she was doing and how valued her contributions are.

FSU London is located on a beautiful street in Covent Garden, just a block away from the monumental British Museum. The study center is situated in a set of seven historic row houses, a remarkable fresco embellishing the ceiling of the main building. In the basement of the main building, sits the library which houses about 9,000 volumes. Students in the London study center have easy access to the library, as the student accommodations and classrooms are all accessible through maze-like hallways in the basement that connect the seven row houses. The London library is comparable in size and feel to a school library. The library has a front room where the staff and student workers sit in an open area, and where textbooks for short-term loan can be borrowed. The collection is in the larger room with shelves full of historic and modern titles and a large cabinet of DVDs. The London library is managed by the study center IT team, Lloyd and Dan, who focus on ordering materials, checking out the textbooks on reserve, and assisting patrons with a multitude of technology issues.

During our visit in both study centers, we spent time with the leadership of the centers, faculty and students. Throughout our conversations, we explored a wide range of topics, ranging from Aleph implementation to staffing and training. Since neither library has a full time librarian, we will continue working with the study centers to provide services from Tallahassee and to train the staff in both locations. While FSU students studying at our campuses abroad do not have access to our main campus libraries, we still want them to have a fulfilling library experience and provide them with the support and resources they need to succeed. From our 24/5 Ask A Librarian chat service to our citation management software, many of our services and resources are equally useful as whether you are studying in Strozier or in your Florence apartment.

For more information about the Florence Study Center, visit http://www.florence.fsu.edu/.
For more information about the London Study Center, visit https://international.fsu.edu/london/.

Here are some photos from our summer adventure.