LibGuides seems to have finally begun its long journey to Bootstrap 5. In the abstract, this is really good news. New features! Modern tools! No longer having to worry about Bootstrap 3 being EOL! All good stuff.

But in practice, I think this might ultimately mean a lot of work for our library. Our library homepage is a heavily-bootstrapped group homepage. I expect that a lot would break if we simply flipped the switch to Bootstrap 5. The official list of breaking changes is daunting (and this list only covers the 4 to 5 part of the migration!).

Also, the migration timelines are still unclear to me. So far, Springshare has only launched Bootstrap 5 for the A-to-Z lists. I asked about subsequent timelines on the Springshare Lounge earlier this afternoon, but it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I assume many people are (quite rightly) busy with the non-Bootstrap parts of the holiday.

My thought is to pitch this whole situation to my co-workers as a chance to do a redesign. If lots of things are breaking anyway, why not make it better? I bet we can come up with some constructive, iterative ideas for improvements.

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