It has been a year since the launch of Middlebury’s redesigned and repurposed web site, and to mark the occasion we thought it would be fun to call attention to innovations made possible by the makeover.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but should serve as a jumping off point for all of us at the College to celebrate—and learn more about—the capabilities of this flexible medium.

A Home for Stories

At least 50 topical stories—in the form of slideshows, videos, narrative text— live on our home page at any one time, offering both first-time and returning visitors an expansive window into the life of Middlebury College. http://www.middlebury.edu

MiddLab

The website’s home for student and faculty research, MiddLab not only offers a stylish setting to showcase research at the College but is a true forum in which discussion is not only enabled, but encouraged. We especially love the way it allows people to integrate multimedia with written documents and makes it easy to do cross-departmental interaction on a theme. http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middlab/

Library Quick Search

It’s never been easier to plumb the depths of our library holdings. Not only can users easily search the library catalog, but they can now access articles, journals, and video holdings, and more. (The old site included a simple box for a library catalog search, but the new site allowed for the provision of a much more elegant and comprehensive portal.) http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/lib

Gateways for Strengths

Middlebury has long been known for its institutional strengths in the fields of international education and environmental affairs, and now our home page reflects this. “Middlebury International” and “Sustainability” joins standard higher ed categories such as “Academics,” “Art,” and “Athletics,” as top-level links on our home page. http://www.middlebury.edu

Story Carousels

Interior pages no longer have to be static repositories of information that gets changed once every few months (or years!). Story carousels situated along the bottom of the page provide departments and divisions with the ability to highlight an ever-changing selection of stories, news, and information relevant to their site visitors. http://www.middlebury.edu/admissions/

Academic Departments at Your Fingertips

Access to academic department pages are just a click away now, as opposed to three not-exactly-intuitive clicks on our previous site. http://www.middlebury.edu/academics

A Dynamic News Room

Linked from the home page, our News Room can now harness the power of many information sources to create a dynamic landing page that includes headlines, a feed of stories (“dispatches”) from MiddMag, recent mentions of Middlebury in the national media, a feed of what’s going on in the Middlebury blogging world, and a blend of multimedia content in the carousel at the bottom of the page. http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom