[WEB4LIB] Re: web navigation

[Andrew Mutch]

Prentiss,

Rules are made to be broken, right?
:)
I don't think it is wrong to have "expedient links" that bypass the normal
navigational heirachy - I've done the same thing on our Township's home page - we
highlight those links that have shown the most traffic from our traffic analysis.
However, it's important that the destination pages provide a link(s) back to where
one has come from so that the visitor who hits that resource can then continue to
navigate the site back to the "home" and "global" levels.  This is especially true
because visitors who bookmark a site and "deep linkers" won't encounter the
"normal" navigational hierarchy - so your pages have to provide it for them.  It's
important to have a navigational structure and flow but it shouldn't be so rigid
that it only offers one way to go.  This might provide a better explanation than
I've given:

http://webreview.com/pub/98/05/15/thing/navkit5.html

I sympathize with the decentralized nature of your site - again, I play web
"coordinator", not "webmaster" -  so I have to deal with the same issue.  If you
can get everyone to provide a link back home on each of their pages - you've
probably won half the battle - preferably at the top and bottom of each page.  If
they can also provide a link back to their department "home page" - well, that
will probably save most visitors.

Good luck!

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, Mi

We also have

> That said, I've probably been guilty myself of offering expedient links
> to pages rather deep in our structure (is this what the database people
> mean when they use the term "drilling down"?)  The platonic ideal I've
> shot for is what I call a "transparent hierarchy" -- where you have
> broad categories but offer links to frequently-sought items within each
> category, which not only serve to save a couple of mouse clicks but
> also serve to illustrate the meaning of the categories.  Yahoo uses
> this, as does the "below-the-fold" section of the existing Rice web
> site:
>
>         http://www.rice.edu/
>
> But of course the real world isn't truly hierarchical, and sometimes
> the most useful broad categories overlap, so you end up putting things
> in more than one place.  Also, sometimes the most illustrative or
> high-demand links are not a neat two steps down on the tree but are
> three, four, or N steps down.  I think most of my choices have been
> justified, but it sounds as though a number of my links may violate
> your principles.
>
> > It seems to me that if one is going to present a navigational scheme on the
> > home page, this navigational scheme needs to be carried through the entire
> > site, including the sub-sites.
>
> That sounds good in the abstract, but the reality of our web is that it
> is highly decentralized, with literally hundreds of departments
> collaborating on it (not to mention thousands of individuals).  We can
> educate, urge, and cajole but I don't think we're ever going to get it
> to all fit nicely in a top-down scheme.  I see our role as one of
> managing the chaos rather than trying to eraducate it.
>
> -- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle at rice.edu
> -- Webmaster, Rice University / http://is.rice.edu/~riddle