The journey of this website began in June 2006 when Auckland City Libraries undertook research into the effectiveness of its then current website.
This research found that there were significant areas that could be greatly improved:
- Customers were not seeing the the website as a separate feature to the online catalogue or databases.
- People visited the website with the focus of finding resources - books, databases, etc.
- There was little knowledge of the breadth and depth of content on the website.
- There was a lack of clarity around existing taxonomy / information architecture.
- People felt there was too much homepage space given to branding, and were not recognising the branded banner as a navigation tool.
- First time users found key tasks difficult to perform.
Research also considered environmental factors, primarily the development of the web into a more interactive and dynamic space and the emergence of Web 2.0. Website users no longer want to read published content, they want to participate in online communities and be involved as content generators.
Auckland City Libraries made the decision to develop a new website to meet the needs of website users and to establish a clear strategy to achieve Auckland City Libraries' web vision for a social digital space.