When the crisis hit, the changes came quickly, communicated through emails with subject lines like “[FORMAL NOTICE] UNC-Chapel Hill reduces operations, moves to remote instruction and limits people on campus”.  While dormitories were being cleared out, UNC library administration sent … Continued

Update, 3/26/20: Google is now automatically marking businesses as “Temporarily Closed”. They’re vague on the data source, but it does seem to be pretty accurate – they accurately flagged all of UNC Libraries’ buildings with this update. I’m a firm … Continued

Introduction Imagine this scenario: You’re so frustrated with a product or service that you write an angry review immediately after the experience. However, you decide not to send it. Although corporations may not be pleased with this review, they can … Continued

Background on Project Devon Waugh, an Information Science graduate student, approached me about being her master’s paper/project advisor in summer 2018. Devon has a background in special education and an interest in digital accessibility that she wanted to apply to … Continued

Background As a department, one of our primary responsibilities is ensuring that the University Libraries website contributes to providing a seamless library experience for all patrons. Though the User Experience & Assessment department oversees the large WordPress and LibGuides environments … Continued

I always tell people I never want to do another huge website redesign – I’d much rather iterate instead. Making small improvements one page at a time is easier to do, adds up over time, and is extremely satisfying work. … Continued

Introduction Headings are a common sight on web pages. They organize the content and break it up for easy reading. But why do we need headings? How do we use them for best effect? In this post, we’ll cover: What … Continued

A long time ago in a library far, far away… The chat buttons and boxes peppered across the library website have become an integral part of the library’s reference services. Our chat service was created by a former UNC librarian, … Continued

Google Scholar is an amazing search tool. Until it breaks. Google harvested an incredible amount of article metadata & abstracts to power Scholar, and it does an impressive job of linking to freely available copies of articles whenever possible. Unfortunately, … Continued

Google Scholar provides options to associate your account with a library’s access to full text articles. After you set the option, every search result will include a proxied link to the full text when available: Configuring this option has to … Continued