Designing a Website for a 21st Century Health Library

In fiscal year 2016-17, University of Louisville Libraries began the transition from Plone Content Management System (CMS) to Springshare’s LibGuides CMS for websites hosting and management. This transition provided Kornhauser Health Sciences Library the opportunity to fully redesign our website to be more user-friendly, efficient, and visually appealing. To evaluate the efficacy of the new website in meeting these goals, we designed a usability study examining both versions of the site for efficiency and accuracy of information retrieval. This usability study was primarily administered in survey format; as participants from multiple health science disciplines completed specified tasks, their accuracy, time to completion, and reaction to the sites were measured. This presentation will explore the transition, the design and implementation of a comparative usability study, and the resulting changes. In addition, the presenters will provide a tips and tricks portion where attendees can learn simple CSS to enhance their own websites and LibGuides.