FAQ Cleanup and Maintenance
We took a closer look at our frequently asked questions (FAQ) content on the Libraries' website. We set guidelines and reviewed each FAQ, resulting in the removal of over 200 of them, which created a better experience for users trying to find quick answers to their most asked questions.
Overview
In 2024, the User Experience department received a suggestion from Ask Us Librarian Kristin Snawder about adding a link to our FAQs to a more prominent place on the website, the Ask Us page. The Web Team agreed that making this change would be an asset for users; however, this sparked a conversation about the need for an FAQ content review. We found that we had over 360 FAQs on our website, many of which had not been revised in several years. We established the FAQ Cleanup Task Force, which reviewed, updated, or unpublished FAQ content.
Prior to the cleanup we had 369 FAQs. We removed 217, leaving us with 152 total FAQs on the website.
How We Did It
Cleanup
The FAQ Cleanup Task Force (made up of four members from the Access Services and User Experience departments) began this project by creating guidelines for FAQs. These guidelines include:
- Criteria for creating, updating, or unpublishing
- Best practices for writing FAQs
- FAQ category definitions
- How to submit or update an FAQ for review (by the newly formed FAQ Content Team, described below)
Utilizing the guidelines, each member of the task force was assigned a set of FAQs to review and make a recommendation to keep, update, or unpublish (that is, remove from public view). Then we reviewed each FAQ as a group, making the final decision together. We proceeded to make updates as needed or to unpublish FAQs with content that was no longer relevant. However, some FAQs that we decided to unpublish did contain relevant information for our users. For those, we worked with their content owners to find a better place for that information on the website.
After finalizing the FAQs, the FAQ Content Team, a new team made up of three members from Access Services and User Experience, took a similar approach to updating the categories for them. The team individually reviewed each FAQ's current categories and made recommendations on which ones to use; then we reviewed and made the final decision as a team. This included recommending new categories and renaming current ones, as well as creating definitions for all of them.
Maintenance
In addition to reviewing newly created FAQs, the FAQ Content Team will conduct an annual review of each FAQ and make decisions on keeping, updating, or unpublishing content in accordance with the guidelines. This team will also review newly submitted FAQs and decide whether they meet the necessary criteria. If so, they will be published, and, if not, the team will recommend that the content be placed in a more appropriate location on the website.
