Website Decision Log
- Leslie, Danica R.
This document serves as a running log of major website decisions that have been finalized. Most of these decisions will be made by the Website Advisory Working Group.
Decision | Rationale | Date | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
Removing libraries.ou.edu webpages for Research Guides and redirecting directly to the appropriate LibGuide | Having webpages and LibGuides requires a duplication of effort for content owners. Removing the webpages and directing straight to LibGuides removes clicks for our users. | 4/15/2024 To be implemented after the spring semester ends | WAWG |
Removal of hours pdfs from the website | Previously, we have both updated the posted hours on the site and created an hours PDF for each location. The Web team proposed stopping the practice of creating/posting the pdf doc. Rationale for stopping the creation and posting of hours pdfs:
Decision approved/adopted by the Website Advisory Working Group (WAWG). | 1/8/2024 | Web team WAWG |
Displaying email addresses on public profile and subject pages | In the past, http://libraries.ou.edu profile pages have used contact forms instead of email addresses to protect UL personnel from spam and phishing attempts. Problem Statement: We have heard from members of the Website Advisory Working Group that since the website contact forms (on profile pages) are not integrated with Outlook, people trying to contact them cannot see when their out-of-office responses are turned on. This has led to frustration for the users and/or to UL personnel responding to emails when on PTO to try to prevent that frustration. Request from stakeholders: Replace profile page website contact forms with the staff members’ email address The Web team’s decision-making criteria will be as follows:
We reached out to OU IT and MarComm, and neither office has a policy or best practice for posting email addresses on university websites. Decision: To solve the problem, the Web team will:
| 8/23/2023 | Web team WAWG |
Contact renamed to Ask Us | The beta site main menu option was labeled as Contact. Ask Us more closely aligns to the current site. | June 2023 | Magen Bednar/MaryAnn Martin |
Changed website fonts | New fonts are being used according to OU’s new branding guidelines. | June 2023 | MaryAnn Martin & Web team |
Naming of Featured Collections feature | WAWG voted in a poll between Curated Collections and Featured Collections. Featured Collections won by a vote of 8 to 3. | 5/8/2023 | WAWG |
Use of Journal Search | WAWG conversation about some discrepancies on the site between Journals Search and Journal Search. We will use Journal, singular, going forward. | 5/3/2023 | WAWG |
Services Page | The Web team received mockups from a 3rd party in 2019 that completely redesigned these pages and heavily used various icons. WAWG decided not to implement those changes and the Web team designed the pages to be a closer match to what was on the current site | May 2023 | WAWG |
Locations Page | |||
News | The Libraries Stories content type is going away. These will just be “News” pages going forward. | April 2023 | Web team/Marketing/Drupal |
My Library feature renamed to My Favorites | My Library can confuse users who think of it as My Account. Renaming it to My Favorites more accurately describes the feature: allowing users to save their favorite libraries resources. | 2019 | Website Redesign Committee |