April 22, 2013
HathiTrust has released an updated, stylish new design and new features for its website (visit our new home page). The new design incorporates feedback submitted by HathiTrust users and input from HathiTrust's User Experience and Communications working groups. Some of the highlights include:
- Look and feel - HathiTrust has been given a fresh, user-friendly design that unifies all parts of the website.
- Accessibility - HathiTrust continues its tradition of style with function, paying particular attention to accessibility in major and minor functional components of the interface.
- An engaging homepage - A consolidated search area and prominent links to user collections, hand-picked books, and our mobile interface, invite users to explore the HathiTrust collection. Links to social media, the HathiTrust Research Center, and HathiTrust projects provide updates on activities and invite engagement.
- Login benefits - Users can now log in from anywhere on the site, and the login area of the homepage highlights the benefits of logging in to users from partner institutions.
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Improvements to the reading, searching, and collections interfaces:
- Our new online reading interface increases the amount of space available for reading books, while still keeping reading controls and bibliographic information readily accessible.
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All item results (in Catalog, Full-text search, and Collections Application) show book covers.
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The Collections application list of all collections now defaults to the “recently updated” tab; all lists are paginated to improve performance and navigation.
- Persistent tabbed search box - Options for searching the bibliographic catalog and full-text of works have been combined into a single tabbed search, with help information to guide users in deciding which search to use. A persistent search header allows searches to be performed from any page on the website.
Special thanks to the University of Michigan programmers, designers, project managers, and systems staff who made the new design happen!