{"id":26059,"date":"2021-03-08T20:57:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T20:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peoplecravemedia.com\/blog\/?page_id=26059"},"modified":"2026-10-28T15:33:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T15:33:39","slug":"nnlm","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplecravemedia.com\/blog\/case-studies\/nnlm\/","title":{"rendered":"Network of the National Library of Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FEATURED CASE STUDY:<\/b><\/p>\n

Network of the National Library of Medicine<\/h2>\n

The mission of the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) is to advance the progress of medicine and improve the public health by providing all U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public's access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health. The Program is coordinated by the National Library of Medicine and carried out through a nationwide network of health science libraries and information centers. The current website can be viewed at: nnlm.gov.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"The<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

The Challenge:<\/h2>\n

Spanning a five-year period\u2014between May 2016 and April 2021\u2014my full-time employment with University of Pittsburgh afforded the unique opportunity to define, design, and deploy a cohesive creative strategy for a national campaign. Inheriting the project in 2016, our team started with formidable tasks: decades of sprawling content required curation, evaluation, and pruning; the existing website design was excessively outdated by ten years; and the user experience was horrific.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

The Solution:<\/h2>\n

The primary website was improved and enhanced in both form and function. My personal task was to establish a visual vocabulary that could be reused over a suite of products including web, mobile, print, and kiosk displays. These creative identities would need to hold their own ground for the five-year period. Additionally, all projects required compliance to federal accessibility standards. From hardware to software, we employed solutions that simultaneously improved site performance, boosted usability, and ensured a secure platform for content development across a broad spectrum of technical expertise.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Bootstrap 4 Theming<\/h3>\n

Adopted from a previous freelance project, I brought the front-end framework of Bootstrap, paired with a dependency on the Font Awesome family, to the creative solution of redesigning a visually outdated website. The strength of Bootstrap is the mobile-first philosophy that prioritizes usability and responsiveness of a website, in addition to a comprehensive library of reusable components such as carousel sliders and card displays.<\/p>\n

All subsequent projects would reuse the defined visual vocabulary that we established, including the selected components. Through a consistent use of form and function, all of the NNLM web properties looked the same, as if they all belonged to the same family which is no small feat.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Section 508 Compliance & Accessibility<\/h3>\n

Government contracts are typically followed with a list of rules and regulations, federal guidelines and compliance checkpoints for all generated content. In compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, all of the website templates were developed to allow equal access to information, regardless of any disabilities that a user may possess.<\/p>\n

Visual design themes and elements were produced to be compliant to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. Through a series of monthly web scans all content on the primary website was reviewed to ensure the accessibility standards for content development and visual elements were being continuously met.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Content Management Framework<\/h3>\n

Drupal 7 was selected as the back-end framework for most of the NNLM website properties. With extensive options for customizing and theming, extending functionality through available modules, and endless community support for the product, Drupal was a solid choice for this federal project.<\/p>\n

With security in mind, each Drupal installation was carefully monitored for available system updates to core files or installed modules. Server management and maintenance was of paramount concern.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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WordPress Multisite<\/h3>\n

An integral communication tool for the Network is their collection of regional blogs. Each of the eight Regional Medical Centers and six national offices required support for a total of 16 blog installations. A suitable solution was to migrate the individual blogs in to a WordPress Multisite. This strategy proved valuable in the monthly maintenance of core and plugin updates.<\/p>\n

Additionally, a custom WordPress theme was designed and developed. By utilizing Bootstrap components and the defined website styles, a consistent look and feel was maintained across all web properties.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

One Style to Rule Them All<\/h3>\n

All new projects added throughout the contract would need to adopt the established styling, ensuring the consistent look and feel over multiple websites and thousands of pages of content. With the development of a Website Style Guide, all properties implemented the visual rules and regulations for NNLM.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

The style guide is comprised of:<\/b><\/p>\n