BEV BUTULA: Same great content, new look for State Law Library’s site

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Always improving. That seems to be the motto of the Wisconsin State Law Library.

The law library recently updated its website. It has a fresher feel, but maintains all the great information legal researchers have relied on for years.

There are also some notable additions to the website. One of those is a wonderful section outlining how to locate Wisconsin court records. Many of you may be familiar with a similar summary they provide regarding locating Wisconsin briefs.

Carol Hassler, Web services librarian at the State Law Library, outlines a few of the reasons for the update: “We have seen our mobile and tablet use increase steadily the last couple of years. While we had some functionality in our website for mobile visitors, we wanted to convert our site to a more flexible design to accommodate the wide number of screen sizes and browsers we are now seeing from our users. We’re anticipating that this upward trend for mobile devices will continue.”

Hassler also said that the new look includes brighter colors and buttons optimized for touch screens.

As the researcher enters a query within the main search box, matching topics will appear. This is a nice feature, or researchers can select the “browse by topic” button. Choosing this option directs users to the index of more than 400 legal topics. These helpful compilations of links, Websites, law review articles, and library resources is often a launching point for research.

For a nice overview of all the new enhancements, you may want to check out their blog post and short video.