We are looking at moving our entire library website onto our discovery layer. This is going to be a big job and will be a lot more work than what our current website takes, so why?
Because:
- Our users don’t recognise and/or care that we have two distinct sites – the website and the catalogue (yes, we have social media presences as well, but they are outreach….)
- Our website visits are not growing, but our catalogue visits are – very quickly!
Those users who are using the catalogue only – which is what the library is mainly about anyway, miss out on a lot of content that is available through the website. This includes background information, events, online resources, local history and much more.
In order to make this content available to all, we could:
- Duplicate the website content on the catalogue
- Alternatively, we could link to it from the catalogue
- Make the catalogue the website
As it is going to take some work either way, we are seriously looking at how we can make the catalogue work as our central point of call, thereby saving staff a lot of time and effort.
Has anyone else done this or thought of doing this? If you have decided against it, I would love to hear why. If you decided to do it, I would love to hear of the challenges you faced.