University Library Services Online Updates Web Ed Group Summer Update
We've all been working on the website and experimenting with new technologies to communicate with and support our customers. We hope this overview gives you further inspiration for how you could develop communications with your own target audiences.
Developing the library site
At a glance - what we’ve been up to:
This summer the web editorial team have been busy enhancing and developing the library site content and structure.
• Developing the library site • Developing and supporting staff • Introducing new online communication tools
More T4 Training Sessions The T4 training sessions that we provided to library staff were warmly received and offered staff the opportunity to review their areas of content - in terms of relevance, tone and purpose. We also worked together to find out how we can use T4 to create new ways of structuring and placing content within our site.
Fix IT Zone: The Murray Library 10.00 - 14.00 Mon, Wed, Fri Pasteur Building 9.00 - 16.00 Tue & Thur David Goldman 9.00 - 17.00 Mon to Fri
You’ll shortly see the main web page banners also changing to promote these new quality promise visuals. Improvements at a glance • General updating of content • Enhanced ease of navigation • Content reflects customer need, purpose • Improved pdf access • New icons and banners • New content areas
twitter.com/UniOfSunLib twitter.com/UoSliboffcampus facebook.com/UniOfSunLib
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live chat: via library webpages email: library@sunderland.ac.uk telephone 24/7: 0191 515 2992 free phone 24/7: 0800 694 4888 Library Services at My Sunderland my.sunderland.ac.uk
We now have new icons to communicate our 9 customer quality promises - these are colour coded to reflect the wider promotional campaign that we’ll be delivering over the forthcoming academic year.
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The changes and developments we have made have been strengthened by consultation with staff drawn from all areas of SLS. Our Customer Journey planning sessions were invaluable in highlighting areas we needed to reshape and rewrite. With their help we have been able to update and refocus content, reshape existing sections and create new sections where needed.
We’ve given the library site an updated look and feel: pdf docs can now open directly from the right hand menu advert icons size and placing have been standardised
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• Implementing the new online feedback databse
Need help? Ask us
• Supporting Your Subject • Our Feedback Loop • SURE (within the Services For section) • Skills for Learning (within the Help section)
• Creating new screencast instructional guides
• Providing design software and laptop computers
We’ve also enhanced the ease of navigation of the site by reducing the number of ‘clicks’ needed to find information; we’ve reshaped menu structures and added new sections:
University Library Services Online Updates
Developing and supporting staff
Over the last few months we have provided and took part in a range of development and consultation sessions with staff from the library and all areas of SLS. The Customer Journey Planning sessions we delivered were attended by representatives of all areas of SLS and gave us a much greater insight into how our library site content and structure is used and received. Other development and support activities include: • • • • • •
Customer Journey Sessions Using New Communication Tools Terminal 4 Refresher Training Camtasia and Captivate workshop Web Week Web Drop In sessions
New online communication tools Library Facebook If you haven’t seen the library facebook page, take at look at facebook.com/UniOfSunLib We took a look around the facebook pages of other universities and organisations to find out how they communicate with their customers and promote their services to them - we have shared the best bits of their practice and added in a few ideas of our own: Journal Search, Twitter and the Library Blogs are embedded within our Facebook so you don’t need to navigate away to another website to use them. We also have a live link to our library catalogue.
Twitter The Library / Off Campus Twitter accounts have been up and running for over a year now and has been going from strength to strength - we currently have over 400 followers worldwide. Hootsuite A really great online tool that lets us send messages out via all the usual social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter in one go. Tumblr We’ve found a new blog hosting and social media site called Tumblr that many of the academic community appear to be using. We thought we’d give it a try too and are using it to host some of our library blogs.
Netvibes Netvibes is another free online tool that describes itself as your ‘dashboard everything’. It very easily lets you create an online space to pull in information and social communication resources. Our subject liaison librarians have been experimenting with this and have set up subject information areas to support academic staff and their students. They have made contact with staff from Newcastle University to find out how they are using Netvibes and learn from their experiences. QR code hub via Kim tags Most of us have seen the QR ‘cube’ images posted in various places and documents. Take a picture of a QR code with your iPhone, smartphone and your device will open up a corresponding web page. We’ve recently found a bit of an enhancement to this by using ‘Kim Tags’. Kim tags point a QR code to a hub page which you can control. The QR code on our new library guides point to a ‘hub’ web page with tailored links and services. We think this offers a really cost effective and flexible solution for making sure information is always current - we can update our hub contents as and when we need to.
Creating new instructional guides Another really important development our customers will notice this year is the new online screencast guides and tutorials. These have been developed through Leanne’s HEFE Skills for Learning project and we’ve had a go too. These instructional ‘bite size’ guides provide invaluable support to customers wherever they are based. They are easy to access via our website or directly via You Tube. We’ll also embed them into our library facebook wall. Here’s a list of some of our new Captivate and Camtasia tutorials and guides. More to follow soon: Getting Started Guide for Local Partner College Students Interpret your Reading List SearchTips Types of Resources Finding eBooks Evaluating Information Referencing Guide to Using Special Collections SURE: Using the Institutional Repository Using Interlibrary Loans Using the Library Catalogue Using Filestore
University Library Services Online Updates
The Camtasia and Captivate software is new to most of us - we’ve been experimenting and are happy to help you do so too. We have all wanted to be able to make more interactive support materials so it’s great to have this software so we can give it a go and see what we can come up with.
Implementing the new online feedback databse The SLS Feedback Database is now live. Links to the database have been placed in all the different SLS websites. The database will give our customers a quick and easy way to pass on their thoughts, ideas and suggestions and we’ll be able to manage our responses from one central point. It’s a great opportunity to manage feedback from a strategic viewpoint. We’ll be able to: identify themes for service developments and enhancements, tailor and plan our promotional activities, give our customers the opportunity to see what other people think and find solutions to shared issues, take a leading role in the University’s Student Voice initiative.
Providing design software and laptop computers To enable us all to create new materials, we have bought and arranged access to various new suites of software e.g. Adobe Creative Suite, Camtasia and Captivate software. As these are expensive we thought the best way of making sure everyone can use them was to install these on your site team laptops. This software is new to us all and so the more people who experiment and share what they learn, the more materials we can create. Of course we are happy to share what we’ve picked up with you. A big thanks from us for this software and the laptops - it’s already enabled us to achieve so much and we’ve still got lots more planned to do.
We hope you’ve found this news update interesting and it’s given you some ideas to try for yourself. If we can help in any way just ask. Thanks The Web Editorial Team Kay, Leanne, Becky, Barry, Wendy, Kim, Tom H., Michelle