The Appalachian Regional Library is a system that serves three county libraries in Northwestern North Carolina: Wilkes, Ashe, and Watagua. The existing website design in the year 2000 was in need of a new design that was mobile friendly and better served all devices patrons were using to access the site.
Appalachian Regional Library enlisted the services of Cube Creative Design to revamp the existing site, making it friendly for mobile and tablet devices, as well as more accessible to users with visual impairments. Among the website’s new features is a regional calendar that gives users an easy way to see what is programmed at all library branches, which are within a 35-minute drive of each other.
Each county library maintained individual domains with separate websites, all edited individually from each branch. While all three library locations were linked to a centralized online card catalog, there wan’t an easy way to share event and other information for patrons of multiple branches.
The library system’s sly fox mascot, Arly had a separate website that was managed through a completely separate system.
Cube Creative worked with the Appalachian Regional Library director of libraries and technology director to create one standard domain for all three counties that used the same look throughout the whole system, with a single color change to differentiate each county. Each county library domain points to the new site on the central domain. The event calendar system utilizes Google calendars where each branch can add to individual calendars and all events will show on a large system-wide calendar, color coded so events at specific locations are easy to find.
Each branch is given edit access only to pages that relate to their branch, making editing easy for each location.
With each branch using the same site layout, patrons visiting multiple branches will find it easy to navigate, while knowing which branch they are viewing. Each library has a call to action area to post important events and announcements, all managed from within the content management system, anywhere in the world.
High Country Press, Nov. 2, 2016: Appalachian Regional Library' s New Website Launched Nov.1 - Check it Out!
