If you have recently visited our Digital Collections, chances are that you noticed our newly designed homepage. With a growing collection of over 56,000 items to explore, we anticipate the redesign to enhance navigation of the site for researchers.
The redesign was implemented through collaboration with our Digitization Committee and Kevin Gilbertson, ZSR’s web services librarian. Kevin worked behind the scenes to build the new page based on our specifications and ongoing feedback. The outcome is a fresh homepage with a new interface and features.
Layout
The new layout features four main sections.
1. Featured Collections
Featured Collections provides access to the newest and most utilized collections.
2. All Collections
All Collections is for visitors who wish to browse through our complete list of collections.
3. Search Our Collections
Search can be used to perform a federated search of materials within our digital collections that are internally hosted.
4. Popular Items, Recent Editions, and From Our Blog
The three components in this section reveal items within our digital collections that are most viewed and the newest items uploaded, as well as the most recent blog posts pertaining to our Digital Collections.
Further Refinements
- The top of the page includes jump links (“Search”, “Browse”, and “Explore”) to key sections of the homepage.
- Over the title of each collection is a resized, higher resolution thumbnail image to visually heighten the browsing experience.
- Some of our individual collections are hosted on external sites, such as Howler Yearbooks. In the previous homepage design, these types of collections were placed in a separate section titled “Additional Collections”. Now, both internal and externally hosted collections are grouped together within the “All Collections” section.
Please visit our homepage often for new collections. This month we added the Wake Forest Birthplace Photograph Collection, featuring images pertaining to people, places and events related to the original Wake Forest campus in Wake Forest, NC.
4 Comments on ‘Redesign of Digital Collections Homepage’
This new page looks wonderful – visually appealing, well organized and user-friendly. Thanks to everyone for their work to make such a big enhancement!
So much cool stuff here! Love the new look and the awesome content!
Woohoo! Thank you, Mel and Kevin, for creating this beautiful page for WFU’s digital collections!
Excellent work, Mel, to bring this to completion! Kudos to you, and to Kevin, for all your hard work on this overhaul.