Last month you may have noticed that search.nd.edu had a slightly different look. Not only did the site get a facelift, but the entire infrastructure changed as well. In the past, search at Notre Dame ran on a dedicated device housed in and maintained by the Hesburgh Library. This device, bought from Google, allowed us to have our own search ecosystem, but there were a number of downsides. Not only did the library have to put resources toward the maintenance and management of the device, but it also had to be upgraded every few years. One other problem was that it was fairly labor intensive to update the public interface for the device. So even after the university as a whole moved on to mobile friendly websites, search.nd.edu lagged behind.
We are pleased to announce that we have moved Notre Dame search off the old search appliance and into Google’s Custom Site Search. This move has several benefits:
- Reduced cost
- Reduced maintenance
- Improved search results
- Improved ability for custom design
With this new functionality, we have rebuilt the user interface to be mobile and tablet friendly, so no matter what device you’re using, you’ll get a vastly improved interface.