The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library consists of ten branches, including a bookmobile, and serves a combined population of 185,000 in the City of Charlottesville, the Town of Scottsville, and the Counties of Albemarle, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson. This is the largest geographic area covered by any Virginia library.
JMRL - after
JMRL - before
The Library selected drw Design after a rigorous RFP process. This was a makeover project. The main problem with the current site (aside from its circa 1998 look) was its navigational structure and architecture. It made extensive use of the dreaded “hub and spoke” navigation scheme, forcing the user to continually go back to the site’s home page in order to go to the other pages on the site. The original site had a LOT of pages. Pages designed by a lot of different people who wanted to do their own thing. We went through the site a zillion times and kept bumping into content that wasn’t linked in from anywhere, images that no longer displayed, and HTML code that made us cringe.
We created a new look that is clean, professional, inviting and friendly. We completely overhauled the navigation and architecture along with a massive code clean-up. We created a set of style sheets and scripts that keep the design utterly consistent at different screen resolutions and in different web browsers.
Some Highlights:
Teen Programs
The old site had a completely separate design for the section for teens and young adults. They expressed that on the new site they wanted to continue this idea, so that section would be “special.” Our idea was to use the power of style sheets and changeable images to make a bunch of different looks from which the user could choose to design their own page.
Click the “after” photo on the right to see the “before.”
Kids Programs
The Library offers a myriad of programs for children, along with lots of web resources for parents. The old page was simply a listing. The new page shows book covers, has more complete information, and offers a dynamic list of book suggestions, complete with book covers, supplementary information and links to the online catalog.
Click the “after” photo on the right to see the “before.”
Here is what our client said about this project:
The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library wanted to have a website make-over but was not certain about what the new website should look like. We wanted something easy to use but sophisticated, something clear but had access to all information, something inviting that would look professional but not intimidating to the novice Internet user. It needed to load quickly, invite people in, and have a modern appeal.
It sounded impossible to bring our vision to reality but drw Design did it all! The end result was more than we could possibly have imagined. As soon as the website went up, we have received only positive comments. The staff and public love the new website. There were no problems at all with the transition from one site to another; everyone is finding what they need.
Debra was a joy to work with. She had lots of good ideas but was flexible about changing her ideas to meet my concerns. I highly recommend drw Design to make a website an exciting representation of any organization.
Jacqueline Lichtman
Reference Librarian
Jefferson-Madison Regional Library