How we designed and built our “nearby on shelf” feature for Library Catalog records ..read more

Image Caption A search for the traditional-character Chinese phrase "戶籍", which shows the same results as the equivalent search for the simplified characters "户籍". The U-M Library recently added the capability to search across Chinese-language materials in our catalog, regardless of which Chinese character set was used in the query or the record. This improvement expands to our large collection of materials and improves the user experience ..read more

Image Caption Removing problematic buttons from our content creation tools not only helped ensure that our websites are more accessible and secure, it also made the editor a lot cleaner and simpler to use. If you really love something you might have to let it go ..read more

Image Caption U-M Library staff working with Mechanical Engineering students on a linear book scanner prototype. Here at the U-M Library, we’re committed to identifying opportunities for engagement between Library staff and students. But identifying these opportunities can be difficult for our Library’s IT unit since we’re not involved with students as part of our day-to-day work. How do we as tech professionals engage with the student community ..read more

Image Caption Workflow for Proposing and Producing Digital Projects: Overview It’s possible we should have written this blog post years ago, when we first created our workflow for how we shepherd digitization projects through our Digital Library. Well, we were busy creating it, that’s our excuse. Three years later, we’re on our third iteration ..read more

Image Caption The current MLibrary search. Search is the cornerstone of the library website, and the primary goal of our online presence: to help users find resources and information so that they can do their work ..read more

Image Caption An example of screen magnification software. Released U.S. Navy photo by Machinist's Mate 3rd Class Juan Pinalez. The University of Michigan Library is working hard to improve the accessibility of all our websites. This brings up a simple question: what does it mean to make a website accessible ..read more

Image Caption A screenshot of the Readability Test Tool. The Readability Test Tool can help web content creators make pages easier to read ..read more

The library recently completed a successful, six-month pilot program for a new model of web content oversight. Each division appointed a web content coordinator to represent them, and together the coordinators work in library-wide issues ..read more

Image Caption Photo by Mary Beth Jarrosak via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Unmodified. Datamart was designed to be an option for Library staff to get reports of Aleph catalog data in an easy, self-serve way. But how much are we really using it ..read more