Trend in library web site design?

[Eric Rumsey]

In the process of redesigning our library web site's home page, we surveyed
many other library home pages. We came across a general design template
that we like a lot. This design might be called the "tips of the iceberg"
(TOTI) approach, because its purpose is to show the user the "high spots"
of the site, that lurk beneath the surface. As is now fairly standard
practice in library home page design, the TOTI template features 4-8 main
headings, represented on the home page by large text links, which go to the
separate sections of the site - i.e. Library Services, Collections, Web
Links, etc. In the standard design template, such links are usually
followed by a narrative description of what's in the section. In contrast
to this, in the TOTI design each large section heading has under it a few
links from the section, with no additional text description. These links
may be hot links from the section, likely to draw the user's
interest/attention, or they may be chosen because they give the user some
indication of what sorts of things are listed in the section (thus serving
both as description and as links). The idea behind this design, clearly, is
that space on the top of the home page is too valuable to be taken up by
mere description - Why not fit in as many links as possible? A nice touch,
often used with this design, is to have a link at the bottom of the
sub-section links, called something like "more," that links to the main
section page, thus reinforcing in the user's mind the idea that the few
sub-section links shown are only a small subset of what's available in the
section.

Listed below are examples of library home pages that use the TOTI design.
All are medical/health science libraries except the last -

UCLA
http://www.mednet.ucla.edu/biomed/default.htm

Yale
http://info.med.yale.edu/library/

Johns Hopkins
http://www.welch.jhu.edu/

University of Iowa - Our newly designed home page, which actually uses the
TOTI design for only some of the main links on the home page.
http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/home.html

University of Delaware - This is the general university site, apparently
designed with library input, since the URL was formerly the library's URL.
http://www.udel.edu/

Most of the library sites that I looked at are in medical/health science
libraries, since that's where I work. Has anyone seen this sort of design
used at other library web sites?

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Eric Rumsey,
Webmaster, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/home.html
<eric-rumsey at uiowa.edu>
319-335-9875 (voice), 319-335-9897 (fax)