We’re incredibly excited to reach a major milestone in a significant project to review, revise, and redesign the Dartmouth Libraries website. The launch of our new-look website and redesigned site architecture follows two years of community engagement, research, immense team work, user testing, and iterating to get us to this pivotal moment.
For those just discovering what this project is all about, our first milestone was in January 2024. Then, in September, we updated key pages demonstrating how our new content guidelines work to institute best practices in accessibility, design, and the user experience. Guided by a human-centered design approach, staff across the libraries helped to restructure the site navigation and write and edit content to whittle over 1000 pages of content to under 200.
Empowering Students and Advancing Research
A critical aspect of this website transformation is the site’s architecture. The new navigation prioritizes the activities most needed by students, faculty, researchers, and the Dartmouth community. You’ll discover action-oriented navigation that elevates services and resources so you can find them more easily.
Collaborating to Amplify and Accelerate Scholarship
We added new sections that showcase the collaborative possibilities with our library professionals: whether to record a podcast, co-teach a class, or develop a data management plan. We designed the site with community feedback to better demonstrate how we’re partners in achieving your research, teaching, and learning goals.
Enhancing the User Journey
The new website features streamlined visual cues for navigation, updated visual content displays, and provides easier access to operating hours and finding library spaces.
The People Who Made It Possible
To reach this stage of the project would not have been possible without the hard work and tenacity of excellent collaborators. They include:
the website project team
our generous library colleagues
key stakeholders, including Jon Chiappa, Dartmouth's Executive Director of Web Services
and the project’s Governance Group members.
This transformation is a manifestation of the Libraries’ strategic framework, and, as ever, we’re excited about what’s next in this journey.