[Web4lib] Website Redesign

[Caryn Anderson]

Hi Aubri,

I'm sorry that I cannot give you financial/staff estimates, but you  
might consider contacting folks at the University of Washington School  
of Information (http://www.ischool.washington.edu/) as I think you are  
in Bellingham, WA, right?

I work at the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information  
Science (GSLIS) in Boston (http://www.simmons.edu/gslis). This  
semester we have a team of 11 students working with faculty and staff  
conducting a whole bunch of usability research (stakeholder  
interviews, user personas, card sorting, paper prototyping and more)  
to propose a new information architecture for the GSLIS website(s). It  
has been *amazing*! We've been able to collect much more data than the  
web services office would ever have been able to do on their own  
(nearly 400 participations from key stakeholder groups in six  
different activities so far). In addition, six of the students have  
been doing additional academic work to get credit for the project as  
an "independent study" (supervised by a participating faculty member).  
Project wiki: http://gslis.simmons.edu/wikis/iaproject/

My point is that whatever budget/plan you come up with, I would  
encourage you to take advantage of the graduate students at the School  
of Information. If their students are anywhere near as motivated and  
intelligent as ours at Simmons, you'll get an extraordinary amount of  
useful data, feedback and guidance and know that you are giving your  
future colleagues some invaluable learning experience.

Our project is currently restricted to the information architecture of  
our sites, but you may find more technologically focused students to  
help you with the more technical aspects of your endeavor as well.

If there are others in similar situations, I encourage you to talk to  
the library and information science faculty and students near you.  
There's a great list of programs that Tom Wilson has been keeping  
(financial contributions are welcome I believe - and he deserves it):  
http://informationr.net/wl/

And if you are a school, I'm happy to talk to you about how we managed  
our highly successful project.

Cheers!
Caryn

-- 
Caryn Anderson
Doctoral Studies Program Manager
GSLIS, Simmons College
300 The Fenway, P-310H
Boston, MA  02115
caryn.anderson at simmons.edu
617.521.2829
http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/

****************

Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 16:59:48 -0800
From: "Jami Haskell" <jamihaskell at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Website Redesign
To: "Aubri Keleman" <crlibrarian at gmail.com>
Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
Message-ID:
         <11e9ee320711091659w7e156ccek3010437026fdf203 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I'd be interested in these responses as well.
Thanks!
Jami


On Nov 9, 2007 3:01 PM, Aubri Keleman <crlibrarian at gmail.com> wrote:

[Hide Quoted Text]
We are looking to redesign our website and are trying to determine how
much money to put into this project.  We know that the cost will be
based on what we want from the site, and how extensive our design will
be, but still wanted to get an idea of what other libraries have spent
redoing their sites.

We want to use a CMS, and we want to have a site that is standards
compliant.  If you would be willing to email information about your
own redesign, and ball park range for cost and staff time, that would
be fantastic.  We would also love to know whether or not your redesign
increased traffic to your website, and by how much.  To put funds
towards this, we need to show that our site has the potential to be
more than just a window to our catalog.  (Which it is now!)
Please send your comments to akeleman at wcls.org.

Thank you very much.

Aubri Keleman
Whatcom County Library System