New Chicago Public Library Web Site is Officially Unveiled

Last week, Duo’s hard work on the Chicago Public Library (CPL) Web site made the news! Both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times covered Mayor Daley’s official unveiling of the new CPL Web site. Both articles talk about how the $11 million project has resulted in a 275% increase in hits, from 28 million in May 2007 to 105 million in May this year.

Laura Zupko showing new CPL site to Mayor Daley

According to lead developer Jough Dempsey, “One problem with the CPL’s old Web site was that while the library was already beginning to offer new forms of content, there was no way to bring it all together into a cohesive whole. Most content was being updated manually rather than utilizing databases and generating pages dynamically. There was no site search, and searching the catalog provided only limited results.”

The team at Duo integrated multiple data sources to form a service-oriented architecture. Part of their work included implementing a new content management system – Serena Collage – that enabled library staff to easily add new content to the Web site. Duo also added a bunch of new features to the CPL Web site, such as catalog search, event search, blogs, podcasts, and RSS feeds. More details on the CPL project can be found in this case study.

The CPL project wasn’t without its fair share of challenges, especially because “the project was large and involved many vendors within a tight timeframe,” said Project Manager Jeanne Toohey. “One of the challenges was to gather and work toward the client’s requirements but also work with their many different vendors to integrate 13 applications into the new website in a seamless fashion. In addition… some applications were being built at the same time we were integrating code, which caused a constantly moving target.” In spite of all this, the team at Duo wrapped the project up in just 14 months, transforming this:

to this: