Library & Information Resources Network (LIRN)
Advancing equitable access to academic knowledge.
Library & Information Resources Network (LIRN) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding equitable access to high-quality academic resources. By supporting libraries and schools nationwide, LIRN helps students and educators access the tools they need to learn, research, and succeed.
To better serve its growing network, LIRN partnered with Big Sea to redesign its website, modernize its digital resource database, and clarify its messaging—creating a more intuitive, scalable platform that aligns with its mission and makes its value immediately clear to members and partners.
The Challenge
Speaking to several personas
LIRN had three key audiences the site needed to serve — school librarians and administrators, accreditors, and students. Developing these personas and ensuring each of them would have their needs met was a key challenge for creating a user experience, site architecture, and messaging that would work for all audiences while being cohesive.
In addition, LIRN regularly adds new resources to their vendor catalog and clients to their list, so making these easy to view on the frontend and update on the backend was critical.
The Strategy
Site architecture and UX overhaul
We began with a content audit of over 500 indexed pages, identifying which personas might need the information, at what point in their journey they would need it, and the messaging that would inform our new pages.
Based on this audit, we organized the site content in a way that would ensure it spoke to each of their personas immediately above the fold. We also created a user-friendly design that would meet audiences where they are — for students, that meant a mobile-friendly design and portal login, while for librarians and accreditors, that meant a user-friendly desktop experience. For each persona and user journey, we crafted new messaging and copywriting, creating a story that threaded across the site.
The Features
Responsive database & map
We created a responsive database that allows users to easily search for resources and LIRN to easily update the journals and resources in their vendor catalog. The database is a multi-field database search function, allowing users to filter results by subject, program level, format, and vendors.
We also created an interactive map that featured LIRN’s consortium of colleges and universities to provide social proof to librarians and accreditors interested in their services.
The result? LIRN’s new website offers the non-profit a way to attract, inform, and convert new schools. More importantly, it gives the librarians, faculty, and administrators a platform to identify their institution’s needs, research solutions, and easily contact LIRN to get started.
“The amount of work was staggering, but Big Sea guided us through it. They brought a lot of resources to bear so we had what we needed when we needed it. It was a joy working with them — everybody was very professional, very skilled, very talented.”
Andrew AndersonPresident & CEO, LIRN
