National Library Day, Featuring Granicus Library Subsites

Often, cities and counties find that certain departments require a level of specialized functionality and branding to best serve their unique audiences. This is where subsites come in.

A subsite is a part of the main city or county website but is intended to serve the needs of other, often larger, departments that have either maintained their own separate websites in the past, or want to develop one to better serve their constituents. Although still a part of the main website, a subsite provides the ability to set up separate top-level navigation and a unique homepage.

Libraries often need to maintain their own separate websites to make it easier for residents to find information on reading material. The benefits of creating a library subsite include:

• Consistent page layout and menus, making a seamless transition from the main site to the library site
• Distinct look and feel, so your website stands out
• Ability to measure traffic via Google Analytics, ensuring you’re able to track metrics only on the subsite
• Custom homepage widgets – for example, a separate search engine to create tailored ways for users to search for content
• Same administrative back-end, meaning there’s just one instance of the content management system (CMS) where all content is stored and there’s no need to train staff to use a different platform

To celebrate National Library Day, here are a handful of Granicus client examples that feature public library subsites to truly admire:

Amarillo Public Library, TX

The City of Amarillo Public Library wanted a site that would be easy to navigate, is user-friendly and service-oriented, and provides easy access to events. Based on the user-experience study conducted at the start of the project, we learned that citizens constantly use the catalog search tool. To make this functionality easier to find, the library decided to integrate a dual-search function capability to allow users to easily search through the library’s catalogue, similar to how they can search through the main city website.

Bozeman Public Library, MT

The City of Bozeman Public Library had a mission to provide the community with free and open access to information, resources to promote personal growth and lifelong learning, and physical and digital materials to meet cultural and recreational needs. As a result, the library modernized its website design to highlight and promote upcoming events and opted for large images for a visually-focused design.

Clearwater Public Library, FL

The City of Clearwater Public Library wanted users to have a seamless experience when navigating from the main city website to the library subsite. So, the library opted for similar branding and color designs for its homepage. With the exception of content, the overall look-and-feel of the library subsite is very similar to the city site.

Sausalito Public Library, CA

The City of Sausalito Public Library wanted to create a more unified user-experience when transitioning from the city website homepage to the library subsite. Sausalito Public Library opted for its own branding and colors to incorporate more library-centric imagery, while still carrying over some of the visual stylization of the main website to create a consistent look and feel to the overall brand.

Torrance Public Library, CA

Leveraging Granicus’ search solution, the Torrance Public Library was able to say goodbye to microfiche readers. The library indexed more than 100,000 image files of old newspapers and directories and made them searchable through Granicus’ innovative search technology.

Interested in creating a subsite for your department? Request a free consultation today!