Let’s Talk About the Web

LetsTalkAboutTheWebPicVLACSL2014
VLA College & Special Libraries Section
Half-Day Conference
October 23, 2014
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Tour to follow
Vermont Historical Society
60 Washington Street, Barre, VT
Program of the Day (PDF, 630 K)

Content Strategies for Academic Library Websites

Amber Billey, Cataloging/Metadata Librarian, University of Vermont
A content strategy is a useful tool for managing and evaluating the content on a website. This presentation will explain what is a content strategy, why it is important, as well as how to create and implement one for a library website.
Slides for Content Strategies (PDF, 841 MB)

Using Web Analytics to Improve the User Experience

John Payne, Director of Library and Information Services, Saint Michael’s College
Site analytics can be a useful tool to help determine what students actually need, want, and do on your website. They can also guide the web design process to create a site that best meets their information needs. This session will give an introduction to Google Analytics and to how this kind of data can inform design.
No slides for presentation

Keep Them on Your Website! Integrating Third-party Tools to Provide a Consistent User Experience

Michael Braun Hamilton, Reference and Web Design Librarian, Hartness Library, Community College of Vermont
The modern academic library uses a range of third-party online tools – from LibGuides to link resolvers – and too often each of these tools will put the user in a separate environment with its own interface. Michael Braun Hamilton from the Community College of Vermont will discuss strategies to integrate these tools into your library website and tweak interfaces in order to provide a more uniform user experience across your library’s web presence.
Slides for Keep Them on Your Website (PDF, 1.80 MB)

A New Tool for the Instruction Toolbox: Guide on the Side

Dan DeSanto, Information and Instruction Services Librarian, University of Vermont
Guide on the Side is a side-panel overlay for webpages that can lead users through the online learning experience you design. Instructional librarians at the University of Vermont have recently begun using Guide on The Side to create dynamic user experiences in which students read instruction, perform tasks, and take small quizzes to test comprehension all in one interface.
Slides for Guide on the Side (PDF, 410 K)
Handout for Guide on the Side (PDF, 380 KB)

Planning New Web Guides: From the Outside In

Carrie Macfarlane, Director of Research & Instruction, and Stacy Reardon, Research and Instruction Librarian, Middlebury College
Librarians at Middlebury recently migrated all of our research guides to LibGuides, and our students and faculty are happy with the results. We’d like to share some of the steps of the planning process, from looking outside Middlebury for examples, to developing training and guidelines within our collaborative workgroup. We researched and tested different designs, and established our own CSS customizations, template, style guide, and list of best practices. Sometimes, the most daunting aspect of a project such as this is figuring out how to begin; we’d like to offer a head-start to anyone who is contemplating a research guide redesign, whether in LibGuides or another platform.
Slides for Planning New Web Guides (PDF, 2.37 MB)

Not Afraid of Beta: Going Live on LibGuides v2

Heidi Steiner Burkhardt, Head of Digital Services, and Melissa Cornwell, Distance Learning Librarian, Norwich University
Presenters will discuss their transition to LibGuides v2 and why Norwich decided to jump right on migrating. The presentation will provide an overview of the new v2 and what is different from the original LibGuides, including responsive design, centralized asset management, custom templates, new navigation options and in-guide editing. To illustrate the advantages of LibGuides over Drupal, presenters will discuss how the move enhanced Norwich’s ability to provide targeted resources and instructional content.
Slides for LibGuides v2 – First Half (PDF, 2.55 MB)
Slides for LibGuides v2 – Last Half (PDF, 4.57 MB)