Accessibility is the driving force behind this change. By April 26, 2028¹, public libraries with populations under 50,000 must comply with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.1, Level AA. This Americans with Disabilities Act requirement is administered by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. And beyond that, making libraries accessible to all is an important part of the overall library mission.

While we've used accessibility plugins to add some accessible functionality to the websites, WordPress is not currently compliant to the level our sites must reach. And even if WordPress does reach accessibility, an update of WordPress, a theme, a plugin could break that accessibility. 

Library Market is WCAG 2.2, Level AA compliant. Whenever they go through a major upgrade, an outside auditor checks the upgrade for accessibility. 

¹Update: During the transition process the deadline was pushed back from April 2027 to April 2028. However, we are still pursuing the same timeline.

We like how Library Market handles website accessibility. Additionally,

• Library Market was founded in 2011 in order to build websites for libraries; their websites are built specifically to showcase library resources. 
• Library Market will handle hosting and security. Staff time can now be directed entirely to content. 
• They guarantee a 99.9% uptime.
• Library Market will help us design a mobile friendly website.
• We will have a pool of common resources that you can easily pull onto your page. An example: You want to highlight genealogy resources. You can add a database block, check that you want to show the genealogy databases, and it's automatically added. SCKLS will maintain these commonly shared State Library resource links--your time can be spent on other matters.
• Participating libraries will now have access to a shared Library Market Calendar that can send automated email reminders for your events.

The Library Market calendar will allow your library to:

• Easily add series to your events calendar
• Take registrations
• Send confirmations and reminders to registrants
• Add attendance numbers to programs; if you make use of the Age categories you'll be able to run a report at the end of the year to easily generate numbers for the State Library report.
• You can restrict registration to Staff Only if you would like to make sure that those registering meet certain requirements, such as having a library card.

It's always a good idea to periodically review the information on your webpage--sometimes a library will make changes that don't get duplicated on the webpage. Or, there might be new services or policies that you want to list. This is an excellent time to review all of your information and get started with completely up-to-date content. 

SCKLS will populate an Info Sheet with the information we currently have for your library. Some items we will leave blank, and some provided information may need updating.

Once you finish your Info Sheet, SCKLS will prep your new webpage with all of the content. SCKLS will then provide training on updating your website.

One of the reasons we required libraries to purchase a domain name was for the SSL certificate, but another very important reason is that that domain can be easily redirected to your new Library Market webpage. So if you have put yourtownpubliclibrary.com on brochures, bookmarks, and more, none of those have to change. You patrons will still go there, but soon they will see the new Library Market webpage instead.

Yes, you can continue to update your WordPress website until your library has been moved over to Library Market. 

When the Library Market website and calendar are ready, I will be contacting libraries and scheduling a time for us to complete the move for you:  we'll redirect your library's domain name to point to the new Library Market webpage, and then you'll get your login credentials and training on how to update your webpage and calendar. I'll also show you where to find additional training materials.