In October of 2005, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM awarded a contract to American Institutes for Research (AIR) to provide website usability evaluation and redesign support for the NN/LM. On June 12, 2006 the NN/LM and RMLs unveiled the resultant new Web site designs: see http://nnlm.gov/ and http://nnlm.gov/sea/The national usability and evaluation review of the NN/LM and RML websites supported the need for a more uniform navigation scheme in the family of NN/LM web pages and more focus on the information and programmatic needs of Network members.

The project plan included several steps:

• an expert review of 10 websites
• development of several prototypes to try out with users
• a series of focus groups with Regional Member Library (RML) staff members
• usability testing of 10 separate websites with users
• convening a meeting of the NN/LM Usability Evaluation and Redesign (UER) team
• development of design templates
• redesign support while NN/LM implemented the templates
• design of a new NN/LM logo

Subsequent to AIR’s usability tests, AIR made recommendations related to:

• Navigational features
• Content and information architecture
• Presentation
• Look and feel
• Help and support features

Identified testers/evaluators were representative of the typical user population: 2 medical librarians, 2 health professionals, 1 public librarian, 1 community-based organization (CBO) staff person, and 1 health consumer per website tested.

AIR found that the websites were rich with useful resources for Network members. They also found that while there were commonalities across the RMLs with respect to the types of resources provided, each of the RML sites had been constructed to represent each RML’s unique objectives. Incorporation of AIR’s recommended solutions has resulted in a set of websites that are more templated, while still reflecting some of the differences among the regions. Please use the site and give us feedback at http://nnlm.gov/sea/feedback/index.html

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