This past spring staff at the University of Minnesota Libraries were charged by the Minnesota Digital Library to explore the possibility of replacing the current CONTENTdm discovery layer with a more effective solution. Our intent was to leverage new technologies by which we could increase user satisfaction of our site through increased response and interaction. The resultant prototype has to-date exceeded our expectations and allowed us to think about discovery and UX design in new ways, decoupled from the constraints of CONTENTdm. This presentation will discuss the work done to create these customizations, including the use of the CONTENTdm API, the Blacklight (blacklight.org) discovery platform, and several open source image and document viewers. This new discovery integration successfully reduces user response time and allows for the creation of a more attractive, flexible and feature rich interface in order to deliver this digital library content. This project also continues to lean on the CONTENTdm application, particularly the vital role it plays as the administrative backend that supports the complex Minnesota Reflections project.
