Courtney McDonald

It's All Good: My talk on content strategy at Designing for Digital 2023

Slides and session handout for my talk at Designing for Digital: A Conference for UX & Libraries

Content strategy article trilogy

Read our three open access, peer reviewed articles on content strategy & academic libraries

Hope is the thing with feathers: a poetry project

a cool community sourced poetry project for National Poetry Month 2020

Library-Authored Web Content and the Need for Content Strategy

After a lengthy absence, I’m back to share (somewhat old) news about an article I co-authored with Heidi Burkhardt: Library-Authored Web Content and the Need for Content Strategy [freely available]. Somewhat old news, I say, because this was published in September 2019 in the open access journal Information Technology

Making Dreams Come True ... By Killing Them Softly: A Confab Story

In our last episode, we left our heroine at a crossroads … WOULD HER CONFAB PROPOSAL BE ACCEPTED? just submitted @ConfabEvents proposal. whether selected or not, feels like a win to have pushed thru barriers (no-time, negative self-talk, mental-block, &c.) and put something out there. ???? #yesyoucan #goals #contentstrategy #realtalk — courtney

Confab EDU Catch-Up

In my continuing effort to bring this blog up to date, another look into the past … Confab Higher Ed! Are you interested in content strategy? (Um, you should be!) Make it a point to attend a Confab conference. You’ll be glad you did. I had the opportunity to volunteer

Open access article: Account-based recommenders in open discovery environments

Earlier this year, Jim Hahn & I published an article, “Account-based recommenders in open discovery environments” in Digital Library Perspectives – it is of course findable through the publisher’s site via https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-07-2017-0022, but it’s also openly available through both the Indiana U and U

Goodbye, Hello

I’m back! And only 515 days after my last entry. [As my former colleague Anne Haines and I frequently used to say to each other: “Content strategist, heal thyself.”?] Plenty has transpired since my last post in March 2017, but I’ll skip to the biggest news. This spring,

ACRL

#acrl2017 - it's a wrap

Hello, friends. I wrote a post on Thursday titled ACRL2017 – Day Zero, implying to myself and you that I would be posting daily updates from the conference. HAHAHAHA. It’s always good to aspire, right? This was my ninth ACRL – yes, ninth – and I was giving some thought to that

#acrl2017 - day zero

Greetings from Baltimore, where I and a record-attendance-crowd of around 3400 academic librarians have gathered for the 2017 ACRL Conference. I always look forward to this biennial event not just for the session content but also (obviously) for the opportunity to reconnect with friends and former colleagues, and to meet

Better Libraries by Design at #alao2016

Many thanks to the folks at ALAO for inviting me to keynote their conference this morning – I really enjoyed it. The slides are now available online: Also is this cool or is this cool? Sketch notes of my talk! Thanks, Binaebi! Sketchnotes: Better Libraries by Design by Courtney Greene McDonald

#NowWhat16 - I'm late but it was great

In this extremely late – as in, almost six months in draft late – latest update from your humble correspondent, this seasonal migratory web librarian chronicles her travel to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to attend the Now What? Conference (April 13-14). First, let’s get this out of the way: anytime I

content strategy

#erl16 & #d4d16 – #libux awesomeness in Austin [pt 2]

And we’re back for the exciting conclusion of “#libux Awesomeness in Austin!” In our last episode, I focused on ER&L, which took place Sunday April 3 – Wednesday April 6. Overlapping a bit with ER&L is its sister event, Designing for Digital: Designing the Future of

agile

#erl16 & #d4d16 - #libux awesomeness in Austin [pt 1]

The first week of April, Robert and I attended Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) and Designing for Digital in Austin. We returned with our brains full of ideas and our tummies full of tacos – so it was a successful week on all counts. In fact, as I’m

meetings, friends, food & #trenchUX at #alamw16

We’ve just returned from the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston, where the weather was a welcome reprieve from last year’s literal blizzard in Chicago during the event (although as a former Chicago resident, my heart swelled with Windy City pride to see how the snow was summarily dealt

mobile

Adventures in the UAE #sibfala15

Robert & I were honored and delighted to be part of this year’s Sharjah International Book Fair and ALA Conference in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates last week. Michael Dowling, Director of ALA International Relations & Chapter Relations, and the Sharjah Book Authority (the organizers of the Book Fair) were

content strategy

Today on ACRL TechConnect: Rethinking Library Web Governance

With my colleagues Anne Haines & Rachael Cohen, I wrote a piece that was published today on the ACRL TechConnect blog, “From Consensus to Expertise: Rethinking Library Web Governance.” [the blog has since been discontinued, so this link is to the archived version on the WayBack Machine.] In it we

Great Content, Great Experience @ #NISOVC15

It was fantastic to be part of yesterday’s NISO Virtual Conference, Interacting with Content: Improving the User Experience. Lots of interesting, thought-provoking content! I pulled together a storify for my future reference – hope you find it interesting as well. You’ll find it below the break … [View the story

content strategy

Coming soon to a computer near you

Happy fall everyone! It’s finally begun to get that crisp, autumnal feeling around here – much anticipated by yours truly, to be sure. I’m very much looking forward to being part of two fantastic events this month, both focused on user experience & libraries. They’re both still open

Baked Good: The Pastry Box Project

A couple weeks ago, a piece I wrote was published on the Pastry Box Project. My essay is called The Stuff of Life. It’s about my grandma, and library websites, and content strategy. I got to reference metadata in the context of black holes. I think I might be

UX (& PDX) for the People - #acrl2015

I’m still unpacking from ACRL 2015, both literally – oh my laundry! – and metaphorically. ACRL National Conference is always an especially anticipated event for me: what’s not to love about an amazing collision of content and community, generally in a great manageably-sized city? In recent years, it seems my

LTC2015: thoughts on a great conference + keynote & slides

This past Wednesday I had the honor of being the opening keynote speaker for the 2015 Library Technology Conference, held on the Macalester College campus in St. Paul Minnesota. I cannot say enough good things about the conference organizers, the event, the attendees, the programming. It’s wonderful to attend

er&l

Designing for Digital: slides & writeup @ DLF

It was such a pleasure to be a presenter and participant in last month’s Designing For Digital conference – (briefly) lost luggage notwithstanding! Glad we finally made it to Austin. Sad our luggage seems to have stayed behind. Super easy to decide what to wear tomorrow, right?! 😉 — courtney g. mcdonald

out & about : spring 2015

I’ll be hitting the road a bit this spring – you can find my schedule below. If you’ll be at any of these events, I hope you’ll find me to say hi and chat! * January 30 – Feb 2 / ALA Midwinter, Chicago IL – stop by and chat on Saturday

new year, new site

Happy 2015! I’m not much for resolutions, but I do like to take some time at the new year to think about what I might keep, what I might change, and what new things I’d like to look into. This year, I decided it was time to put