USTLG – New Website
After what feels like forever I think we’re finally getting there with the new website for the University Science and Technology Librarians Group (USTLG). The redesign of the website was something I volunteered for almost a year ago now but unfortunately I was unable to attend the meeting we launched the site at, and therefore have been unable to gather any real feedback.
Leeds University hosted the old site for a long time but with the move to a new server they’ve been unable to continue the work. Sara Thornes did a fantastic job keeping it up-to-date but with the decision to create a new website came the opportunity to design a new brand. I’d had an idea about the kind of look I wanted – something clean and simple that was respresentative of the diverse range of subjects science and technology librarians cover. As you can see I’m an incredibly talented user of Paint. I use it to sketch out all my ideas!
Feeling it lacked a real professional look I did what any inept designer would do… I contacted my graphic designer friend and let him do the design work for me! Matt came up with a range of fab new logos that we’ve now incorporated not only on the website but also our official Twitter feed. They only cost me £1 too (he needs a little motivation sometimes).
If anyone has any comments to make about the designs please get in touch!
In the run up to my sabbatical (did you notice I’d gone away for a while?) I struggled to find the time to get the website completed and asked Lynne Meehan to take over the launch. Having little access to the Internet whilst on a ship I wasn’t able to give Lynne the admin rights to upload the presentations of the Autumn meeting. In response a mirror site was created to cover my absence period. The great thing about the mirror site was that it fixed all the broken links I had on the original design so it seemed easiest to transfer the domain over to Lynne and host the website from their server instead of mine. So this is what we have now! There are still a few things I’d like to change (the header needs tidying up, I know)… it’s a work in progress I guess. The main thing is we have access to the content.
During the 2012 Spring meeting (on Monday) there were some great ideas about adding related material to the site so what I really wanted to use this post for was a call for more input. If you have any improvement suggestions, no matter how small you think they are we would LOVE to hear them.
I did manage to attend the Spring meeting so look out for my notes on that sometime in the near future (getting back into the habit of updating this thing is difficult, bear with me).
That's me... Lex Rigby
