Challenges

• Identify primary audiences (Student Cadets, Faculty, Library Administrators and Visitors) and their workflows
• Simplify navigation and information structure, with an eye towards end-user needs
• Enable and support Student and Faculty "self-service"
• Define administration and maintenance tools for the Library Staff
• Supply the project team with process tools, documentation and guidance in a "virtual" working environment

Solutions

In terms of style, we kept it simple, straightforward and functional - Just a few information areas with modest pictures.

We brought the most-used features to the forefront and integrated tools that would allow Library Administrators to easily customize outreach to target audience groups.

Probably the biggest solution was to provide USMA with a topic-centric view of available resources. In the legacy site, information was often "silo-ed" by storage medium or organizational boundaries, which meant that you had to search repeatedly and redundantly to find the information you want.

We made the online Reference Desk the site's focal point for access to library resources.

We allowed Faculty to connect their course syllabus directly to Library holdings and search tools so that Student Cadets could self-service quickly and easily.