We recently revamped our Explore section, the home to Booklist, Research and Learning guides, and Reviews & Recommendations for books, movies, and music in our catalog.

So, let's go Exploring!

The Explore menu can be found towards the top of our homepage in the header section with the green background.

 

Once you click on the main Explore link or any of the topic links, you will be taken to the new Explore section landing page.

From this landing page, you'll see:

• The main carousel which displays currently highlighted Explore topics.
   
• Underneath the carousel are featured booklists from New York Times bestsellers and Staff Picks to Children and Teen selections and everything in between.
   
• Following underneath of our featured booklists is our Reviews & Recommendations section written by our own well-read librarians and library staff.
   
• Explore Topic links reside in the large right-hand sidebar, acting as a running archive of previously featured guides and topics.

Now let's take a look at an Explore Topic:


One of our more popular Explore Topics has been Genealogy, which is a great example using the Research Guide format. There are links and sections for Catalog Items containing booklists, Electronic Resources from our many database subscriptions services, Websites with links to Genealogy information around the Web, and the research guides themselves within the Genealogy 101 and Advanced Guides links.

Now let's scroll down and click on one of the booklist links:

The web development team strived to make the new layout more visually appealing and easy to navigate, with large book cover images, rollover functions that give you a brief synopsis of the title, along with more in-depth reviews and information on each title.



Clicking on one of the large cover images will take you to the a separate page for that title that includes a overview of the book and a link to check the item from our catalog. We've also added social media buttons so you can share booklists to individual titles on your favorite social media platform of choice.



Finally, scrolling down to the Reviews and Recommendations section, we've created a custom search function in the left sidebar that allows you to refine your search by format, by the ratings the titles were given (1 to 5 stars), or search for titles by tags.



Just like in a booklist, clicking on one of the large cover images will take you to the a separate page for that title. You can then read a review written up by one of our knowledgeable librarians or library staff and check the item out if you like.

 

Feel free to look around and, well, explore, our new Explore section! Let us know what you think of the new features in the comments section. What are some other website features you might like to see in the future?