Thursday, August 04, 2011

New Look for Library Websites

Just a bit of advance warning: we're making a switch to a new front page for the library's website and a new look for all the secondary pages that will match the college's current web design. We hope to launch it before school starts. The new front page will be streamlined, drawing on the findings of a study that involved focus groups and user testing with students. You can take a sneak peek at the new front page, but be forewarned that not everything is hooked up and functional yet.

You might also notice several databases sporting a new look. All of the Proquest databases - Biological Sciences, the New York Times Historical archive, and Proquest Newsstand - have switched over to a new platform. You might also notice some differences in the ISI databases -  Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science Citation Indexes, plus the whole-ball-of-wax version, Web of Science - but you won't find the changes there too jarring. It seems as if nearly every one of our databases has gone through a major overhaul in the past year. Maybe things will settle down for a while.

One last thing: if you use the LibX toolbar with Firefox or Internet Explorer, you'll want to download the new version. It's a plugin that makes it a snap to see what's available in our library from Amazon, Google Scholar, and from any ISBNs, DOIs and PubMed IDs.  You can even highlight a phrase and drag it to a Google Scholar icon to search that phrase - slick!

For the latest news about electronic resources, check our E-Resources Informer.


photo courtesy of Rodney Shupe