Ossining Public Library
A new website for a public library in Westchester County, New York
The Ossining Public Library hired Studio Simpatico for a full website overhaul. We worked closely with Ossining to restructure and organize their content, and designed and built an easy-to-update, responsive site using WordPress.
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A foundational pillar of the Ossining community for 125 years, Ossining Public Library offers infinitely more than just books; it serves as a primary gathering place for the Westchester County village. Offering everything from ESL classes to yoga instruction to “Magic the Gathering” game nights, the Ossining Library awesomely breaks all antiquated stereotypes of both libraries and librarians. The library staff approached Studio Simpatico in late 2017, in search of a partner to help them redesign their website and develop a visually appealing, easy to navigate digital experience for their patrons.
Capturing the spirit of the library
From our first onsite kickoff, our team was instantly moved by the library’s steadfast commitment to the community, its bustling event spaces, and the librarians’ warm relationships with their patrons. From the get-go, we immediately identified our top project goal: Accurately capture and communicate this authenticity on the website. To help convey the dynamism of the space, we ensured that events (fed from an API provided from the Evanced calendar system) were given top billing on the site’s homepage.
from the client Working with Studio Simpatico on our website redesign was a phenomenal experience from start to finish. The amazing website they created for us is beautiful, modern, and fresh, and designed with user experience in mind, making for a fantastic site in terms of aesthetics and ease of use. The team was able to take vague ideas of mine that I couldn’t totally articulate and use them to create a website that reflected exactly what I was thinking of and hoping for.
Mallory Marinaro Teen Librarian, Ossining Public Library Easy to find content and resources
In the initial project kickoff, the Ossining staff emphasized the diversity of their constituency, along with the varying levels of comfort with technology. This led to another primary project goal: Ensure that the site be easy to use, that the content is intuitively organized, and that resources are easy to find. The integration Simpatico built using Gravity Forms allows librarians to create and place forms wherever they choose, allowing them to streamline numerous operational workflows. Whereas patrons were previously forced to print PDF forms and submit them to the library in person, the new website allows room reservations and general inquiries to happen with the click of a button.
Empowering librarians with the ability to create their own website content
As we like to say: rather than think of ourselves as designers of static website pages, at Simpatico we view ourselves as designers of tools that allow our clients to build and create. The Ossining Public Library is anything but static; the same should be true of their website’s content management system. To this end, we built a dynamic custom theme for WordPress (using Advanced Custom Fields Pro) that gives librarians the ability to build their own pages using a collection of modules designed by Simpatico.
from the client Through every step of the project, the team was patient, charming, funny, reliable, prompt with responses and indulgent of my many questions. I cannot say enough about how wonderful this experience was!
Mallory Marinaro Teen Librarian, Ossining Public Library