Case description
The KB, the national library of the Netherlands, has been a source of inspiration and development for centuries. Since its foundation in 1798, it has developed into a broad, versatile organisation, that makes the National Library collection visible, usable and sustainable for all Dutch people, for any purpose, both now and in the future. The KB cares for the written word, especially the Dutch publications, and enable everyone to read, learn and do research. This is how it contributes to a smarter, more skilled and more creative Netherlands.The core values that the KB shares are: open, unifying, innovative and reliable.
Showing the reliability of Drupal as content management platform, the previous KB website had been in use for 12 years. In that time it has seen 1 redesign. As the profile and the work of the KB became more digital over time, the website saw an enormous organic growth. As a result, the large website contained a lot of content that editors had a difficult time owning and managing.
A new website should be accessible (WCAG compliant), be AVG compliant and secure, have a modern mobile-first design and UX, and provide an easy to use structure for all the content of the KB.
The overarching goal of the National Library is to perpetuate and professionalize the Drupal platform, so that the implementations are in line with each other. This is reflected, among other things, in the broad usability of modules. Although these can be custom modules, they are managed centrally, so that they can be used across multiple Drupal installations. The keywords here are speed (time-to-market), compliance and quality.
This way the Drupal platform takes care of things like security, cookie management, analytics, updates, accessibility, etc. When these things are done for the platform, they are taken care of for all sites on the platform (currently 12).
Website editors and functional maintainers thus work in an environment that hands them easy to use tools. The platform also gives them peace of mind about things that they do not have to think about.
We build and maintain the platform that supports all this. On top of that, we have built KB.nl.
Case goals and results
Case goals and results:• Make KB.nl part of the Drupal platform:
KB.nl is an exponent of the 'platform thinking', the overarching goal of KB. The website is built on the Drupal platform and shares values and objectives. KB.nl literally shares modules with other Drupal implementations on the platform. Logically also with subsites that are located within the installation of KB.nl itself. So each Drupal implementation has its own specific purpose, but both contributed and custom modules are standardized within the platform.
• Compliancy with WCAG and GDPR
The website has been redeveloped from the ground up, including the design, to meet the important goals of digital accessibility and GDPR.
• Connecting scientific sources:
Making a vast amount of scientific information accessible: The KB sits on a treasure-trove of information in image and text, that the new site unlocks in a beautiful manner. This is achieved through integration of the JSRU-database containing digital sources that can be accessed. It constitutes a treasure of scientific information, available to members.
• Integration with Zendesk to efficiently handle customer and member inquiries:
Questions from customers and members efficiently answered: the site contains a Zendesk integration for a direct interface with customer service. A question submitted by a website visitor is fed directly to the Zendesk app.
• Facilitating the many target groups:
Each persona (or target audience group) their own entrance for easily navigating and finding information. This is facilitated through the new and improved menu and navigation structure giving visitors the possibility to find information quickly and easily.
• Implement the new digital house style and the new graphic design:
The new site constitutes the first implementation of the digital house style created by Total Design, which was optimized for online use in terms of WCAG compliance, responsiveness and recognizabilty. Total Design also provided the new interaction design, in close collaboration with Finalist and The National Library. Designs were usertested and optimized before implementation.
• Making the content clear and accessible:
The site has gone from 6000+ pages to 1300+ pages, making content relevant again and easily maintainable.
• Process
KB was not yet used to an agile or scrum work process, in both tech development and content development. As part of a bigger program concerning working on web development within KB, both Finalist and Total Design worked with the marketing and communications team and tech teams to develop and maintain professional user-centric work structures in development, content and design.
Challenges
Challenges:• Integration with the JSRU database, an online database which provides access to a wealth of scientific information, proved difficult. The module that handled this integration, was really outdated. Because we rebuilt the website from scratch, we were able to create a new, future-proof link to the JSRU database. Result can be found on https://www.kb.nl/zoeken/digitale-bronnen.
• Digital accessibility perhaps was the biggest challenge for the implementation of the front-end. In particular, the search screens, with many filters and mechanisms to find what you're looking for, were complicated to make digiaccessible. Especially since they behave differently on different screen sizes.
• Multilingualism: There are 11 content types and 25 paragraph types and many fields must be set correctly for translations. Only when you actually start translating (done by editors of the KB) you find out what is already set up correctly and especially what has not yet been set up the right way. The community documentation on multilingual configuration is not very extensive and fragmented.
Community contributions
Community contributions:• We are currently expanding the Drupal.org documentation on multilingualism, following the challenges we faced providing a full translated version of the KB.nl website.
• Fixed a tabs problem in the Gin theme, which we use on the Drupal platform and in KB.nl: https://www.drupal.org/project/gin/issues/3282294
• Delivered a patch for the Cookiebot module which is used on KB.nl: https://www.drupal.org/project/cookiebot/issues/3131290
• Implemented experimental version of Layout Paragraphs for editor convenience. This is somewhat similar to the concept of 'experimental modules' introduced with Drupal 8. Provided a blog about this subject, https://blog.finalist.nl/blog/layout-paragraphs-een-pagebuilder-gebaseerd-op-paragraphs.
Categories
Overheid
Date when website went live
1 year 2 months ago
© Splash Awards Nederland 2023 - Terms of use - Privacy policy