P.O.L Editions is a book publisher with deep roots in the world of contemporary French literature. The distinct P.O.L books, with their classic typography and white patterned covers, have been a primary resource of new writing in France for more than two decades. Their publications of poetry, theatre and experimental prose receive many prizes and appeal to a large audience throughout the Francophone world.
The project
Kahn+Associates was asked to improve the existing P.O.L website (www.pol-editeur.fr) to address several issues. First, there was the need to improve access on a site that was already the primary information source on several hundred authors and a thousand books.
Second, there was the requirement to reinforce P.O.L's contemporary image by expanding the site to include appropriate Web 2.0 features such as blog posts by authors, tags linking books, and improved access to video and sound recordings of readings.
Third, as features had been added to the site over the years, the workflow had become fragmented and inefficient. There was a need to unify and streamline the workflow to keep the website accurate and up to date.
Our approach
We began by building a set of requirements. P.O.L wanted their author pages to be THE resource for the literary public. The new site would do a better job of exposing the rich multimedia content, which already included a hundred videos of author readings. The Taggraph system, developed by Sembiki, was chosen to show connections between books. A place for blog posts by authors was added, along with tighter integration of agenda items and author pages.
Fig.1 — P.O.L sitemap
We reduced the number of sections to four and added a general search box to locate books and authors quickly. Taggraph would be employed to visualize thematic connections between books by different authors. An updated version of this planning diagram (Fig. 1) is now used as the sitemap for the finished site.
The solution
The new site was created with our IT development partner Croisix, who specialize in custom PHP websites for medium and large companies. The new Home Page design divided the page between news about P.O.L authors and books, the latest videos of author readings, author blog posts (renamed Atelier) and the latest agenda items. The rich content was immediately exposed and available to the interested reader.
Fig.2 — Home page design
Taggraph (Fig. 3) now permits the visitor to browsing the book catalog in a small window or a full screen version, starting from recent publications, an author or a theme. The P.O.L team developed a set of "thèmes", as they call their use of tags, so that the reader can easily see groups of books. With a single click they arrive at the book page.
Fig.3 — Taggraph full screen
The author and book pages were the heart of the old site. The P.O.L author page already included a biography and list of published books, while the book page included both a synopsis and excerpts of press reviews. The new design sought to maintain the quality of this information, much of it unique in French literary publishing, while making it easier to read and richer in connections. The new version (Fig. 4) includes video and sound recordings for many books and authors. Relevant agenda items appear on the author page, and the reader can now subscribe via RSS feed to an author, receiving updates about readings and new publications.
Fig.4 — Detail of author page for P.O.L author Atiq Rahimi
The new general search and catalog search was designed to support several types of users. The catalog search now provides sample completion for author names and book titles, helping the reader find the author she is looking for. Readers can also find books by year of publication and book professionals can use the ISBN number to get to the book page.
The new site provided the opportunity to replace what had become a fragmented collection of data management and web publishing with a unified CMS. Our new system allowed the editorial group to continue using an off-line database to manage all the information concerning the books in print and under development, creating little or no impact on this critical part of the workflow. This structured data is now imported into the CMS, which integrates it with photos, tags, PDFs of first pages, agenda items and news. All these tasks are managed by a simple web-based user interface in a unified back-office system. The page for managing agenda items (Fig. 5) is a case in point. The editorial staff now enters publication and expiration date, and no longer has to editorially remove past events. HTML widgets permit the editors to describe and link books and authors in the event descriptions.
Fig.5 — Back-office user interface for Agenda
The result
The new P.O.L site was launched in 2010. The growing collection of video and sound recordings, matched with the award-winning book list, makes the site one of the liveliest literary sites in France. The new site has also significantly reduced hosting and maintenance costs for the client, freeing up scarce resources and helping the staff to maintain the quality of their work in less time.