Redesigned IRC website goes live

For the past several months, with help from ThM wonder student Daniel Ervin and MDiv alum Jessica Rathbun-Cook, the IRC staff has been involved in rethinking and redesigning the website that gives student, faculty, patrons and congregatonal leaders outside our walls a way to connect with resources and programs in the Instructional Resource Center.  Our website was originally created and managed by Reference Librarian extraordinnaire Paula Skreslet, who wanted to make sure we were represented in Morton Library's offerings.  We are so grateful to her for her work on our behalf, and we acknowledge that we saw a small smile on her face that she was no longer going to have to keep up with our web statistics or make sure I got updates in on time!  But it was time for us to strike out on our own and create a website that we could manage and update quickly, from any location, and that gave us the opportunity to provide more dynamic and less static content without overburdening Paula.  So today, the new IRC website is live!

Designing a website is hard work.  What do users want?  What do we want to make sure and communicate to users?  Who are our users? What should a resource center look like and how can it best convey its purpose through how it portrays itself through your web browser or mobile device? How can this website connect with the vision of Union Presbyterian Seminary?

For us, it was important the resources be digital as well as physical.  While we hope you'll see print curriculum reviews on our site, you'll also find links to digital resources.  (We're still in the process of adding links daily.....if we had waited to go live until every last link was up....well, we wouldn't ever go live!)  We wanted to be able to have an site where the activities of our new Digital Learning Lab were clearly visible and where you could make reservations for equipment and classes from wherever you had access to the internet.  We wanted to design a site that lets you know we're here, that we're thinking of those involved in preparation for ministry and those who are serving already as layleaders, ministers or eductors, and that we want to serve you. And we wanted you to be able to find what we have to offer.  (And I hope you'll let us know if you can't!)

So we moved to WordPress and I turned to Jessica Rathbun-Cook this summer.  Jessica was the person responsible for the fabulous redesign of the Storypath site a year or so ago and I knew that she could take a vision and turn into something usable.  Once she helped get us started, Daniel came to work in September and was a WordPress mastermind in figuring out how to make plugins do the special things we wanted done.  I don't think there was every a problem I sent him that he didn't figure out.  (I'm still trying to figure out a way to make sure he can't graduate.)  I'm so grateful to both of them for helping us get to the launch.  (And a special shout-out to recent grad TJ Remaley whose last act as a student worker was helping to design the new UPSem Libraries logo used here for the first time!)

You'll find our five major areas of content  identified by the five pictures at the top of the home page. You'll also find a chronological list of posts showing on the home page as well. We will post on the site at least once a week, generally highlighting a particular resource or service or class.  You can also receive an email anytime we post any blog post from any category on the site.  (Just provide your email in the space provided on the home page.)

We'll have more information coming out later about the launch of the Digital Learning Lab (with special prizes to be given away), but for now, we hope you'll take a moment to browse our new site and that you'll come back and visit us often!

Ann