About Our New Website

With our new website we aim to better connect students, faculty and researchers of all levels to everything Harvard Library has to offer. Here’s how we’re doing it.

Our Guiding Principles

Our goal was to build a website that's intuitive to use and endlessly helpful. We developed these four guiding principles to help keep us on the right path.

  1. Put the user at the center of everything we do
  2. Make information accessible, not just available
  3. The website will never be “done”
  4. Use open source solutions and practices, and pay it forward

Focusing on a ‘Culture of Use’

Harvard Library is so much more than just volumes of books. We offer tools and resources to students and researchers at all levels who count on us to provide the information they need to succeed. Our new website improves access to those resources, and helps our users take full advantage of everything we have to offer.

Here’s what some of that work looks like over the course of a year: 

2,068
classes led by Harvard librarians
94,337
research questions answered by Harvard librarians by email, chat or in person
41,460
articles or chapters scanned and delivered electronically to users

Our Work in Action

We’ve been documenting our work throughout this process. 

From Strategy to Code: How We’re Designing New Pages

Making Our Navigation Useful and Usable

Why We Write Differently on the Web

About Harvard Library

Harvard Library is a world-class academic library, an unparalleled resource for learning and research. Engaging users through curated discovery, digital collections, reimagined physical space, and specialized research support, Harvard Library delivers exceptional experiences to its user communities.