Kansas State University Libraries Case Study (Part 1)

by Danielle Cooley

From Hoarder to "Heave-It" in Three Not-So-Easy Steps

Part 1 of a three-part guest post from Tara Coleman, Joelle Pitts, and Harish Maringanti.

Cutting content is tough. And not every strategy works for every organization. But you can go from hoarder to “heave-it” after working through the emotional attachment some folks have with the content they helped create. 

The Kansas State University Libraries Web site before its redesign.

In the spring of 2011, K-State Libraries started a major website redesign. Our website had not truly been reviewed or redesigned in ten years. The look was dated and the content and organization no longer reflected the organizational structure of the Libraries.

At the time the redesign, our site hosted a staggering 3,500 published web pages. It quickly became apparent that a large portion of the pages were created and uploaded during the previous ten years by staff with changing responsibilities and web privileges, thus making many pages obsolete and in some cases, forgotten altogether. Additionally, pages with current authors and content were not promoted or linked from appropriate locations.

The biggest challenge in our redesign was the migration process. Rather than moving everything over, we wanted to take the opportunity to evaluate what we had and decide if it was still needed.

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Intrigued? Stay tuned for Part 2 (the problem and approach) and Part 3 (the outcome).

Have questions? Post below or contact the authors directly: