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Academic library websites contain a vast amount of complex content and, all too often, there is a lack of established process for creating, updating, and deleting that content. There is no clear vision or purpose to the content, and numerous staff members are expected to maintain content with little guidance. Because of this, many library websites end up with content that is poorly written, duplicative, or outdated. This article describes how a website content strategy was developed for the University of Arizona Libraries, ensuring that in the future, all content is useful, usable, and findable.

Magnifying design value and scaling impact are challenging for small user experience and assessment teams at academic libraries. The University of Arizona's User Experience and Assessment unit is leading three Design Operations initiatives aiming to address these challenges: a participant pool that reduces barriers for recruiting research participants; The UX Cookbook that builds expertise and efficiency; and a research repository that shares findings broadly with the organization. Together these initiatives create better workflows for improving the scale and impact of design and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries were once the trailblazers for developing Web sites in the early 1990s, but today many library Web sites are bloated with outdated, irrelevant, and unfriendly content. Some institutions have recently turned to content strategy—the practice of planning “for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content” (Halvorson 2011, 23)—to address these problems. In this article, the authors argue that large libraries can benefit from creating a dedicated staff role for content strategy. They explore how the University of Arizona Libraries moved from its first forays in content strategy to adding a full-time, permanent content strategist to the staff. The authors describe the key elements that were important in making the case for this position and detail considerations for recruitment and hiring. They also discuss the role a content strategist can play for improving the overall user experience beyond just the library Web site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]