recommendations needed for a good web design book

[Sheryl Dwinell]

We're in the process of revamping our web site and as a member of our
library's Web Committee I've been looking at a number of books on web design
and HTML. I'd definitely recommend anything written by Laura Lemay and
anything published by O'Reilly.  About the Siegel book...I've read it and
it's 'killer'.  The designs are great and I think they work perfectly well
for the companies for which he designs.  It's not so much that it goes
against the grain (not really sure what that means, but hopefully, it's not
more of that stodgy, unwilling to accept change, librarian stereotype), but
that it's just not practical given the average academic library's situation.
At our library, we don't have the graphics expertise and manhours to try to
wow anyone with the cleverness and 'flash' of our web site. Instead, we
spend our limited time creating (hopefully) an easily navigable and
aesthetically pleasing site that serves the information needs of our users,
informing them of the resources and services available at the library.
Further, I tend to think that we need to be more aware of the varying levels
of computing power/software amongst our users. Mr. Siegel's book is visually
striking and there are some clever uses of HTML that we could incorporate
into our site, but like it or not, I think you have to be a bit more
conservative when creating a library web site.



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Sheryl Dwinell
Cataloger/Database Management Librarian
Memorial Library, Marquette University
P.O. Box 3141
Milwaukee, WI 53201-3141
dwinells at vms.csd.mu.edu
414-288-3542
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