[WEB4LIB] Library web site organization

[Julie J. Lea]

This may be slightly off topic but I think it may be of interest.
At a recent conference, the director of the Canton Public Library
(http://www.cantonpl.org) described their new web site as an effort to
combine traditional approaches to the Internet by librarians and
commercial providers of information such as CNN or Amazon.  
Their approach seems to be that a more dynamic site that had more in
common with something like CNN would be a site that users would be more
comfortable using and would likely return to, time after time.  

I have been very impressed with the site.

Julie Lea
Technology Librarian
Chelsea District Library


On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Tim Smith wrote:

> I don't know if this is a silly idea or not, but it's something I've been
> thinking about and mulling over with some of my colleagues for awhile now,
> and I'd like to hear other folks' reactions. From looking at the various web
> pages of colleges and universities, it seems that most of us--my library
> included--use a pretty traditional "libraryish" model to organize our home
> pages: online catalog(s), databases, reference sources, electronic journals,
> information about our libraries, pathfinders/subject guides, etc.
> 
> This is an arrangement that we are very comfortable with, but which is often
> baffling to our users. They are likely to be more familiar with a mostly
> subject-based organization such as Yahoo's, for example. And most of us are
> doubtless pretty comfortable browsing in an directory like Yahoo or the
> Librarians' Index to the Internet, burrowing down to what we want to find,
> even if it doesn't follow normal library-like organization.
> 
> My question--you surely saw it coming--then is whether it would work to
> arrange a library's web site like Yahoo or LII. Rather than splitting
> databases, reference sites, etc. into separate categories on the home page,
> use a top-level subject hierarchy, with functional or format categories
> underneath. I doubt that most of our users think in terms of format first.
> It's pretty abstract, and is not entirely satisfactory anyway: where do you
> categorize a multi-format database?
> 
> Are there any library web sites already doing this? If so, which ones? If
> not, why not? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this type of
> arrangement as opposed to what we're doing now? I seem to recall a bit of
> Yahoo-bashing on this list a little while back, but I'd really like to see
> some further discussion on this subject.
> 
> Tim Smith
> 
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>     Tim Smith                    Phone: (740) 593-2634
>     Reference Dept.              E-Mail: tsmith1 at ohiou.edu
>     Alden Library, Ohio Univ.    Fax: (740) 593-2959
>     Athens, OH 45701
> 
>     "Technology has replaced reflection" -- Utah Phillips
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