LTI Webinar Wrap-up: Improving Your Library’s Web Presence with Content Strategy

Videos, resources, and tips!

Posted on April 10, 2024 in Webinars

Everyone likes a well-ordered website where the information is helpful and easy to find. But given the scale and diversity of materials they host, library websites can quickly become overwhelming, outdated, and crowded. Last week, North Carolina State University librarians Robin C. Davis and Beatrice Downey gave a webinar entitled, “From Chaos to Clarity: Improve Your Library’s Web Presence with Content Strategy.” They offered concepts, action plans, and tips for centering users and their needs on your library’s website. Their webinar is a perfect entry point and tour into the world of content strategy.

It was an amazing webinar and discussion, which you can view below. A big thank-you to both Beatrice and Robin for sharing their time, work, and knowledge! Choice and LibTech Insights plan to host more webinars on this and related library tech topics in the coming year, so be sure to subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss them!

🎥 How can librarians create a user-centered content strategy?

Access the presentation slides.

🙋‍♀️ Q&A with Robin Davis and Beatrice Downey

• How do you ensure that staff actually follows a style guide? [43:15]
• How do you undertake content strategy without a full UX team? [45:34]
• How do you involve stakeholders in the process? [48:37]
• How do you balance library staff needs and user needs? [53:01]
• How do you deal with design limitations due to university standards? [55:08]
• How do you square aspirational users with actual users? [57:25]

📋 Resource list

Websites:

• NC State University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) Website
• NC State University Libraries: Designing the Special Collections Research Center’s
  homepage
• NC State University Libraries: User Research Projects
• NC State University Libraries: Web Style Guide
• NC State University Libraries: Maintaining Web Content (by Andreas “Dre” Orphanides)
• NC State University Libraries: Tiny Café

Book:

• Priestner, Andy. A Handbook of User Experience Research & Design in Libraries

👋 Responses from the chat

What else helps a content-focused team project to be successful?

• Andy: I like to have a check-in or ice breaker to start
• Elizabeth: Asking team members to volunteer for topics/pages they are personally
  interested in
• Rebecca: I love using running notes documents for a project or regular check-in
• Zaida: Confirming ‘action items’ at the end of a meeting and having all see the notes.
• Amy: having due dates for specific tasks
• Heather: Using visuals or interactive elements to keep people engaged
• Elizabeth: The follow up notes are really important so you can refer to them next time
  and make sure everyone is on the same page or understood what was said in the same
  way
• Cecelia: Checking in about collaborators’ bandwidth at the start of a meeting
• Gabrielle: Having timelines for specific topics of discussion and having a 10 min reminder
  for when meeting is coming to a close.
• Daniel: Outline of topics before meeting
• Frances: I find it helpful to bring the focus back to patrons using the site whenever we
  get derailed. Staff often center their own use and forget who the site is for
• Jules: Meeting agendas: Make sure you articulate not only the outcome (make a
  decision, share information, gather feedback), but the process (vote, presentation,
  brainstorm in a shared Google Doc)

How do you convince stakeholders to rethink their online content strategy?

• Murray: Make it as easy as possible: establish template pages they can reuse as a starting point
• Lindsay: Hire and use LIS co-op students!
• Julia: Yeah, multiple perspectives is so valuable.  I (as a Tech Services person) did this pretty much alone last year and got pretty far with a certain strategy, but as soon as I started talking with front desk staff this year, I got so many new ideas and realized there was a much better strategy I should have used
• Allison: We did one recently and had our student workers + a paralibrarian run the tests. Stickers and snacks go a LONG way for a 10-minute survey!
• Bonnie: We had a table in the lobby and gave out a candy bar for each task completed for our usability study.

*

Thank you again to Bea and Robin for the excellent webinar!

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🎥 Curious about our past webinars? Check out Leo Lo’s presentation on AI prompt engineering for librarians and Kari Weaver and Antonio Muñoz Gómez’s presentation on AI citations and ethics.

✍️ Interested in contributing to LTI? Send an email to Deb V. at Choice with your topic idea.

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