Today, we’re introducing a new version of our digital archive platform. This update improves the user experience based on your feedback!
The digital archive interface has been rebuilt from scratch to improve the browsing experience. We’ve made images larger to make it clearer what you’re looking at, and to differentiate what’s a folder versus a file. This new interface also loads faster than the previous version, has improved loading states, and does a better job keeping track of your navigation when moving between pages.
Our search interface now provides even more context for keyword searches. The snippet view feature will now display roughly four times more content around matching text, making it quicker and easier to tell if your search results are relevant.
And right up front, we’ve made it easier to quickly jump into browsing our collections. We’ve added a new “Explore the Archive” section to the homepage that lets you jump right into the archive, without needing to go to a separate page. New and notable additions to the archive are presented in the “Featured Collections” bar further down the page.
We think these small changes will make the research experience even better than before. We’re continuing to explore new features for future iterations of our archive frontend, including a new viewer for image files, character recognition for Japanese magazines, and—eventually—integration with the full library catalog.