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Currently I work at the Greater Victoria Public Library as the Web and Database Administrator. I started in the fall of 2006 and have completed the important task of redesigning their catalogue. In addition I've been working away on a new social intranet for the company (very facebook-ish). Lastly we've started the early planning on a major redesign of the entire public website. However, everything has been put on hold due to a strike by my union and finally a lockout from management. I now work on our CUPE Local 410's websites.
This is the front page of our library's website. It is managed through a hosted CMS and was
designed before I started. Over the past few years we've made numerous improvements and additions to its
information architecture without significantly changing its design. It has out grown its original design,
and desperately needs to be redone.
This was the old catalogue's design before I arrived at GVPL. As an upgrade was required for the Integrated Library
System (ILS) module which runs the catalogue, we planned to sneak in a 'minor' redesign at the same time.
This is the catalogue after we integrated its design into the main website. Previously management and many
of the librarians felt that the catalogue was some kind of separate entity than the website. It was only
through much evangelising, explaining, and sneaky planning that we managed to get this far with integrating our
catalogue's design into the main website. I also put a bit of ajax into the front page of the catalogue to out trick some
of the generated code from the Integrated Library System (ILS) which the website is built on.
Compare the other sections of our website to the newly redesigned catalogue section. Much better!
This is our newly designed item record page. We finally got to make things more amazon like because of improved options
from the upgrade. We love our grouped section for "find similar items' and the fact that we could finally rearrange
the display order of the items on this page. (GVPL uses the Innovative ILS which is not very fun to work with as it
generates horribly non-standard (and often broken) html code).
This is the website I am currently redesigning (probably as you read this). My first concerns are information
architecture and functionality. If I'm still on strike in another few weeks I'll be redesigning the graphics
and style too probably. This website is aimed at our membership, however we are aware that the general public and
media often look at it too.
This is our publicly aimed website where we are trying to solicit concerned taxpayers to petition their local politicians
in an effort to end our strike. Although this is the website as I've inherited it so far, I am hoping to do a redesign
starting next week to spruce it up for our supportive public audience. I'll be adding a fun "letter generator" to create
random (but appropriate) text for people to mail or email their politicians.