When undertaking a new project such as creating a new website it can be very overwhelming because of the amount of things that must be done to be successful. With so many things that need to occur you need to start somewhere and go from there. The starting point is always the hard part because of all of the different variables that are involved. The process started before my arrival to SUNY Potsdam when the libraries contacted INFLUX to help them trying to identify the people who use the College Libraries website.

It is always a good idea to contact and work with people outside your organization for parts of the process. Often times when working on a project we can get really involved and loose site of the larger scope because we get very focused. Later on in the process we will be looking to people outside the libraries to help with usability testing. After working on designing something new it is usually hard to step back and look at something with a fresh pair of eyes.

For me the beginning started by spending time learning about several different things from the culture of the library to the computer infrastructure that is in place. As many people can a test too, I was constantly asking people questions and observing the processes and behaviors that take place in the College Libraries. For example, I spent an hour or two at the circulation desk at the Crumb Library for a few days talking and observing what takes place on a daily basis. This was helpful because it is a great opportunity to learn about the questions that people where asking and how the current libraries website was unable to answer them. One way to thing about observing is conducting your own psychology experiment where you are trying to understand both the tasks and questions that people have.

Another area that was very important to learn about was the computer infrastructure that was currently in place and how web related services where organized. The simply answer is that the organization of items is a complete mess and is currently in the process of being reorganized. As far as the computer infrastructure is concerned everything is pretty good. Every library organization is different when it comes to web related services and SUNY Potsdam is no different. In my experience the size of the institution and number of people working within the library has a direct impact on the infrastructure that is in place.

Here at SUNY Potsdam the libraries do not have their own web server or people on staff that are able to run and maintain this type of equipment. The libraries website resides on a web server that is managed by the CTS (I am not sure what CTS actually stands for because, I have never come across the full name). Having an outside department manage a small academic libraries web site is pretty typically. During the fall semester my time was also spent talking to CTS about all the different web related services are managed and where everything resides. The web servers in place at the university are Apache running just about any programming language on them that you would want to use. Talking with the CTS department was very useful because it allowed me to understand exactly what we could do and not do.

For the most part from a back end perspective we can do just about anything we would like to do. We would only be limited by are current knowledge. Working with CTS has been a very positive experience and I expect that to continue as we move forward. The libraries have a very good relationship with CTS and this is because the two organizations communicate with each on a regular basis.