The University Web Search is changing on 22 March. It will feature new ways to search content and access results, including autosuggestions and a customised output for profile pages.

The University Website team had the honour to be invited to the inaugural Thunder Day event, organised by the Hubert Burda publishing company in Hamburg, Germany. The main theme of the day was how open collaboration can help when delivering digital content through the web.

Before we turn our attention to the upcoming academic year, our team is taking a step back to review the most significant achievements of 2017. The main areas of focus are on web strategy and governance, continuous work to support the University web development community, EdWeb enhancements and procuring a replacement web search service.

Just before leaving for my summer holidays, I had the great chance to travel to Canterbury and the University of Kent, where the annual Institutional Web Managers Workshop (IWMW for short) was hosted. This was the 21st year for the conference, which underlined the success of this long-standing networking and collaboration opportunity.

I had the chance to attend the inaugural DIGIT Leaders’ Summit at Our Dynamic Earth. This event was focused in how technology has permeated all facets of modern organisations, becoming an equal, if not integral, partner in setting core business strategies.

A set of activities to support the development of a long-term University-wide web strategy has kicked off recently, by recruiting the new role of Head of Web Strategy and Technologies.

Back in September 2016, the University initiated a procurement exercise to replace its current central search engine. As we are nearing on deciding the successful vendor, it’s a great time to provide a project review, revisit the vision and explore the opportunities this new search engine will present.

We are nearing the end of 2016. This provides us with a great opportunity to review our actions, highlight our achievements, learn from our experiences and set our goals for more success in 2017. These are just a few (but definitely the most significant) areas we worked to develop and improve this year.

Our team has relocated, starting Monday 21 November, to Argyle House, near the Edinburgh College of Art Lauriston campus. This will provide us with an opportunity to collaborate closer with colleagues in LTW and other ISG divisions, while taking advantage of the new facilities.

The move to EdWeb has offered the University a unique opportunity to shift to a new, more collaborative culture and take full advantage of the available knowledge and resources. UWP have taken the initiative of mapping a development collaborative framework for EdWeb through a project co-funded by the College of Science and Engineering.