College websites are often thought to be convoluted, poorly designed, and challenging to navigate. Following a recent overhaul of the Samuel C. Williams Library website, the library hopes that this claim will not hold true here at Stevens. The website was redesigned with ease of use in mind, and it now seamlessly integrates the many platforms a student may come across while interacting with library services.
Romel Espinel, a Web Services and Teaching Librarian at the library, was chiefly responsible for improving the user experience and managing the website redesign. He explained that multiple platforms are used to handle various aspects of the library’s services, including creating room reservations, providing research assistance, accessing the archives, and more. These functionalities were kept in mind as the website was updated, and Espinel now believes the website adequately “provides [students] with many options for finding the research information they need.” Additionally, Espinel wanted to call attention to the enhanced search bar that was added to the website, which he believes is the most useful aspect of the new site. The search bar “gives students the option to specify their searches by keyword, author, subject, or title,” and it contains information on “everything the library has in both print and digital [format].” For resources that the Samuel C. Williams Library does not have direct access to, the search system is able to pull from the interlibrary loan system, which retrieves articles and books from other colleges and universities across the nation.
Alongside the new search features, the redesigned website also offers a live librarian chat, a study space reservation system, a journal and research guide finder, and much more. In addition, the library recently obtained access to New York Times subscriptions for all Stevens students, providing them with increased access to national news while on campus. In his final remarks, Espinel acknowledged that the website redesign was a collaborative effort, as both the Stevens IT department and Springshare, an online services platform, provided support throughout the implementation of this initiative.
Thanks to these recent changes, the Samuel C. Williams Library website is expected to “fulfill [student needs]” and make the user experience such that the “community will come back for reliable, authoritative sources” time and time again.
