Unfortunately, neither the public nor OPL was prepared for this shift.

OPL was in the exploratory stage of its website migration when the pandemic lockdown hit. The website was already out of date and difficult to use.

OPL strives for a website that will meet the informational needs of all the communities that they serve, ensuring that OPL’s values of equity, community, adaptability, and empowerment can be fulfilled in this online environment. Martin & Musgrove will help realize these values by making the site user-friendly, increasing patron engagement with the site, creating a space that aids patrons in meeting their goals, and ensuring that OPL's key collections and services are represented.

Rachel Musgrove acquired her BASW from the University of Washington and is currently an MLIS student at SJSU, specializing in web programming and information architecture. Amy Martin is the Community Relations Librarian at the Oakland Public Library and a post-MLIS student at SJSU and is currently leading the redesign and migration of the library’s website, to be completed in Fall 2021.

Background

A municipal library system serving the cities of Oakland, Emeryville, and Piedmont in Northern California, OPL consists of 17 neighborhood branches, the Main Library (including the Oakland History Center), a Tool Lending Library, and the African-American Museum and Library at Oakland. OPL has 389,016 registered cardholders in a service area population of 457,448.

OPL has offered online access to its catalog and electronic resources since 1999. The current website was launched in 2010 and is built on Drupal 6. Drupal 6 reached its end of life in February 2016, causing OPL to accelerate its decision-making process into upgrading to Drupal 8, the most advanced version at the time. However, various factors including internal politics, staff and leadership transitions, budget considerations, and the COVID-19 pandemic delayed a final decision until late 2020, when a contract was signed and migration was initiated with the library technology vendor BiblioCommons.

Users & Stakeholders

Our client’s assessment of their website’s target market is: “the library is for everyone. So: everyone!”

However, OPL doesn’t actually serve everyone. It serves the people of Oakland, Emeryville, and Piedmont, California. Because the library is taxpayer-funded, everyone who lives in the service region is a paying customer of the library. Therefore, OPL’s website should serve a common interest of those in the service area: access to books, reading, learning, entertainment.

Staff are a crucial stakeholder group. Staff use the website every day in their work, and many patrons will learn to use the site from a staff member. Our understanding is that staff are eager for a site that is easier to use, but nervous about having a new platform to learn on top of busy schedules. User research with staff was instrumental in developing a functional information architecture, since they work with patrons every day, and are highly invested in having a smoothly working site. Hopefully, participating in the research has also gotten them excited about the new website to come!

Elected officials need to be able to see OPL’s offerings and achievements on their website, quickly and easily. They are often faced with short timelines for making significant budget decisions, and may not do much more than glance at OPL’s home page before allocating funding. We want them to see a well-organized home page that highlights an easy navigation system.

Martin & Musgrove are keenly interested in OPL accomplishing their mission in an online environment. It was through this lens that we researched current literature and performed user testing on both current and prototyped designs. The balance of OPL’s mission and research informed the following recommendations:

• Clear and consistent labeling that allows users to find what they need, where they expect it to be.

• Provide all content in multiple languages, at or below a 6^th grade reading level.

• Sharpen blog content

• Permit the use of metadata to inform future decisions.