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Writing for the Web at Internet Librarian

Writing for the web has long been a passion of mine. I presented on it back at edUi in 2013, Nicole Capdarest-Arest and I created the course for Library Juice Academy and I’m currently writing a book related to the topic.

At Internet Librarian this week, I was thrilled to present on it alongside David Lee King. It was a lot of fun – we talked about why web writing matters, why we’re not so good at it, and how we can do it a bit better. Sadly our third panelist, Elaine Meyer, wasn’t able to attend at the last minute, but I think David did her justice in presenting her content.

Thanks for everyone who came out and participated. It’s cool to see so many people interested in creating better experiences through better content. I had a blast. Here’s my slide deck:


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Writing for the User Experience

I love content strategy, as you may know, and at the heart of content strategy is good content. And at the heart of good content is good writing. Heck, most of the content that libraries provide is in the form of the written word.

Because of this, when I was invited to write another book for the Rowman & Littlefield Practical Guides series, I decided to write it on this topic. The working title is Writing for the User Experience. It’s going to be all about writing with the user in mind. We hear a lot about user-centered design. Now let’s dig into one of the hardest (but most important) pieces: user-centered writing. Most of the writing I’ve seen on library websites – and on education sites in general – is overly complicated, disorganized, and lacking of any personality. It’s getting better (shout out to MIT and Cal Poly especially), but still needs some serious attention.
I’ve been a fan of Ginny Redish’s Letting Go of the Words for years, my first introduction to better writing for the web. A recent masterpiece on the topic is Ann Handley’s book Everybody Writes, which came out last year. Couldn’t put it down. It’s fantastic.

I’ve dabbled in the topic a lot over the past few years. I taught a course on writing for the web for Library Juice Academy with my former colleague Nicole Capdarest-Arest, and spoke at edUi back in 2013 on writing with users in mind. I’ve been working with our content strategist at the library to re-work all of our content, slowly making strides to improve the experience our users have with our written content.

My goal is to write something that’s practical for the librarian. I hope it leads to better content not just on our websites, but in all communication channels. Everywhere content touches the user experience (think: emails, web, brochures, posters, signage, social media). It’s going to be a fun book to write, and if all goes well the manuscript will be in next May and published in the fall. Wish me luck!

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Usability Testing: a Practical Guide for Librarians

And in other news…. I published a book! It came out at the end of September and I’m hoping it will be useful for anyone who is interested in dabbling in usability testing for the first time or leveling up their skills. Whether you’re on a string budget with little staffing, or you have a larger web team that’s committed to improving the user experience, this should be a worthwhile read.

Check it out. I’d love to hear your feedback. Now available on Amazon.

Book cover for Usability Testing: a Practical Guide for Librarians

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Taming Our Franken-site

WordPress reminded me that I’ve been slacking on this blog, sorry about that…
It’s a bit late, but this is a presentation I gave along with our web content strategist, Shoshana Mayden, at edUi earlier in the fall:


EdUI – a great conference as always.

And some news: just last month, we were able to secure a permanent position. That’s right, our library now has a full-time content strategist! And it’s pretty fabulous. (She was previously on a one-year contract. A year of hard work proved how extremely valuable content strategy is to our organization).

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Do-it-Yourself Usability Testing: An Introduction

Yesterday, I presented a webinar sponsored by the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records. They organize professional development for library workers across the state. This was a great opportunity to share an overview of how to conduct usability testing easily and on a budget.

We had a few technical issues at the start, and some of my slides came out funky or incomplete, but other than that I think it went well.
Webinar recording (1 hour)


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Presentations at edUi 2013

I was fortunate to attend edUi for the second time this year. Excellent conference that brings together leaders in user experience from the higher ed community. I presented twice – first with colleague from UNC Chapel Hill, Kim Vassiliaddis on bringing together stakeholders and leading staff during times of big changes:


I then presented with former colleague, Samantha Barry, on techniques for effective web writing:


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Wrapping up the Library Juice Academy UX Certificate

Earlier this year, I helped organize the UX Certificate program for Library Juice Academy. It’s 6 courses, completely online, with each course lasting 4 weeks. I’d previously been teaching the Do-It-Yourself Usability Testing, which was super fun & interesting, so I was happy to add a couple more, and also bring in some colleagues from elsewhere to contribute.

I was lucky to get others on board to help with the curriculum and the teaching:

It’s great to see so many familiar faces in these classes – students taking the entire program. I also see some new faces in each course, which is also fun. We have a mix of students from academic, community college, and public libraries as well as some who are working towards their MLS or who are just seeking some continuing education.

We have in the final month of teaching right now, wrapping it up with Content Strategy for the Web. I am possibly most excited about this course, because content strategy has been on my mind for a long time and I want to share the love. I published an article earlier this year, Developing a Content Strategy for an Academic Library Website, and am currently right in the middle of a search for a one-year Web Content Strategist for our library. I’ve been de facto content strategist, but if we could have someone whose whole job is dedicated to this type of work, that would be awesome. I think we could so some really innovate stuff with our site. And we have some great candidates, which is really exciting. This position has been funded for 12 months, but I am thinking we might be able to justify having a permanent line in this role, depending how the year goes and what we accomplish. We shall see!

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Rebuild of the Center for Creative Photography Website

I presented with my colleagues Ginger Bidwell & Josh Williams yesterday, “Extreme Website Makeover: Center for Creative Photography Edition.” It was at the annual Arizona Library Association (AZLA) conference held in Phoenix.

I started off by discussing who was involved, how we communicated with stakeholders, what user research we conducted (survey, personas, remote card sorting), our competitive analysis, and how we developed a purpose, voice & tone for the new website. Ginger discussed all things Drupal, including how we built structured content and why it’s so important, and Josh discussed the visual design decisions and how & why we went with a responsive design. The audience seemed very interested in the process, and for many of them working in public libraries across the state, this was at the first time they had heard of techniques like personas, card sorting, structured content, and responsive design.


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Too Many Cooks in the Web Kitchen?

I just came back from edUi 2012. What a great conference – engaging speakers, relevant topics, and lots of opportunities for networking. I hadn’t been before, but would love to go again.

I presented a talk, “Too Many Cooks in the Web Kitchen? A Successful Case of Herding Cats to Improve the User Experience.”


It was standing room only, which proved to me this is an issue near and dear to many of us working on websites for educational institutions. We do have a lot of stakeholders to deal with and a lot of responsible parties. I hope that what I’ve learned will be helpful for others, but I also want others to tell me where they have been successful. I am really happy that I was able to make a lot of connections and collect a lot of business cards – content strategy is a murky area so the more people to talk to (and vent to!) the better.

You can see more information on my talk, including the abstract and audience comments, at Speakerrate.