One Website to Rule Them All: Lessons Learned from a Series of Reorganizations, Integrations, and Creation of One University Libraries’ Website From Three

Abstract

Mergers of health sciences libraries into the larger university library system often result in a cascade of changes, including the integration of the health sciences into a unified, system-wide website. This paper will discuss two health sciences libraries’ experiences with reorganizing content and rethinking services, explaining health sciences users’ needs to colleagues in the university library system, and advocating for changes that made sense for a diverse range of users. Alongside considerable challenges, there were positive outcomes from the merger, including increased website usability and strengthened partnerships across the library system, particularly with library IT.

Keywords:

• Change management
• interprofessional collaboration
• library mergers
• library reorganization
• website redesign
• website development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Amy Chatfield, Information Services Librarian at the Norris Medical Library as well as the other faculty and staff of both the Norris Medical Library and the Wilson Dental Library. Without collective advocacy, the project would not have been successful. We would also like to thank Dan Carlson and Richard Zwies for their work as part of the Web Operations team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).