Greetings Michigan Library Community, Did you notice? MeL went live with a soft launch of a redesigned homepage (codename: Pigeon) at the tail end of 2017. The changes were a direct result of usability testing performed over the winter of 2016 and summer of 2017. Here are the highlights of the redesign: * The only search on the MeL.org homepage<http://mel.org/> is the "new" MeLCat search. Have no fear, Classic MeLCat is still alive and well but now the new MeLCat search is on the MeL homepage. * Searching the available databases for Articles and E-resources can now be accomplished from the Databases page<http://mel.org/databases>. Were you ever curious about the most popular topics among the databases? We've also added links to the top searches on the right hand side of the page, both for easy access and to pique your interest about the great content found in the databases. * We have commissioned a series of videos promoting MeL and we'll roll them out one per month on the homepage. Check back for a new one at the beginning of each month and feel free to share them on your sites or social media venues. They'll be added to our YouTube channel<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1dqA8_ZOCfZcHP9OaBGew> as they are available. * The top portals - Kids and Teens - have been moved into the global, black navigation bar that runs across the top of the page under the banner. * The other portals - Business, Jobs, Government, Health, Legal and Books and Literacy - which have always been linked to from the footer, are now found only in the footer and not in the center of the homepage. * The left navigation options have been grouped: For Michigan Residents is on the top, under which we have Practice Tests and Magazines & Newspapers and beneath that we have: For Librarians with the ever-popular MeL Minute and Promotion & Training resources. Enjoy! Brought to you by Deb Renee Biggs and Sonya Schryer Norris, Library Consultants at the Library of Michigan MeL databases are available to Michigan residents or Michigan library access only. MeL Minutes are brought to you by the Library of Michigan. Want more information on MeL? Stay tuned for the next MeL Minute available on many Michigan library listservs, email us at contact@mel.org<mailto:contact@mel.org>, visit http://mel.org<http://mel.org/>, or sign up for the MeL Minute and other Library of Michigan e-mail lists via GovDelivery. We encourage you to share MeL Minutes with your colleagues and networks. Sonya Schryer Norris Library of Michigan 702 W. Kalamazoo St. Lansing, MI 48909 517-373-4457 http://michigan.gov/libraryofmichigan http://mel.org<http://mel.org/> http://michlibrary.org<http://michlibrary.org/> Our collective efforts can help make Michigan a Top 10 education state in 10 years! Here are the goals and strategies: http://mi.gov/top10in10/ [cid:image002.png@01D20444.B08921B0]
