| By Megan Sullivan and Doran Steele, Product Managers, Gale Primary Sources|
New Design
Gale’s Primary Sources team is working on updating and refreshing the interfaces for our line of historical resources. You may have noticed that our new Religions of America resource (releasing in March 2019) features broader screens that take better advantage of screen real estate and includes updated page layouts. This is the first new Gale Primary Sources product to feature the updated interface design as well as new enhancements such as the ability to save documents to popular online cloud services. The rollout of the new design of Religions of America is a part of Gale’s larger effort across the Gale Primary Sources product line to update the interfaces for our online resources, updates which we first introduced in fall 2018 via a link on our Gale Primary Sources cross-search interface to “try the new experience” for the cross search.
We’re Listening to You
We are embarking on these updates to the Gale Primary Sources interfaces based on feedback and input from our users and customers in libraries and educational institutions around the world. We are updating our sites to meet our users’ changing needs and expectations, and have based these changes on feedback about both the existing and new interfaces from students, librarians, and historical researchers via direct feedback, surveys, usage and analytics, user experience interviews, and other means. The new design addresses concerns about our previous interfaces regarding compatibility and is optimized for use with modern browsers, internet technologies, and is responsive to dynamically resize for devices both large and small. We have designed our sites to conform to the latest updates in industry standards, such as COUNTER usage and accessibility.
What’s Next
As mentioned above we have introduced the updated version of the cross search via a “try the new experience” link. Over the coming months we will be releasing additional new interfaces across the Gale Primary Sources product line, which we will make available in each of the products via these links. Please follow the link, try the new experience, and then let us know what you think.
Meet the Authors
Megan Sullivan is a product manager and works on the Gale Primary Sources line of products. She holds a Master of Science in Information with a concentration in Archives and Records Management and has worked and volunteered at several academic libraries. Before moving to her role in product management, Megan was a cataloger in Gale’s Metadata Standards and Services department. In her spare time, she likes to read historical fiction, travel to new places, and spend time with family and friends.
Doran Steele is a product manager at Gale and has over a decade of experience in the library information technology industry. He is passionate about serving the research and teaching needs for the discipline of history. Doran has history degrees from the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin-Madison. When not working on building online historical resources, Doran likes to conquer the world in tabletop board games, go on hikes, and cook with his family.