Library Web Page Use

[Craighton Hippenhammer]

Could also be "Re:  University home page as public relations magazine"

While I haven't been able to find the use statistics that I asked the list members for, I have received plenty of commisseration concerning library links on institution home pages.  It's also interesting to realize that we're not the only university out there that has been outmaneuvered by marketing/PR types.

In the Penn State study mentioned below, Astroff says this:  "Almost a quarter of the colleges and universities that belong to ARL do not provide an immediately visble active link to the library on the university home page....  An unambiguous conclusion of this study is that the Web page designers of 24 percent of ARL member institutions do not consider the library a primary destination for their Web visitors."

She then gives several examples of home page as public relations magazine, such as Kent State, Southern Illinois, and the University of Nebraska, and then concludes by saying, "The interior pages of these sites include links to the libraries along the same patterns identified above. But if university home pages begin to cover only what look like press releases, users will find themselves yet another step away from online resources. Many of the home pages examined gave the weather report.  They would better sever their users if they gave direct access to the library."

The question is, "Do we fight'em, or like some have mentioned here, join'em?"

Craighton Hippenhammer
Information Technology Librarian
Olivet Nazarene University
chhammer at olivet.edu


>>> "Christofferson, Angela" <christoa at seattleu.edu> 12/07/01 11:46AM >>>

Hello,

The only study that came to my mind was the article in the June 2001 issue
of LITA titled "Searching for the library: university home page design and
missing links" by Roberta Astroff.  I don't remember it having the
statistics that you are looking for but it may have a lead to those
statistics....
  
Angela Christofferson
Lemieux Library - Seattle University
Coordinator of Information Technology Applications


Wednesday, December 05, 2001, 9:40:35 PM, you wrote:

CH> Is anyone aware of a study that compares the use of academic library web pages to the use of the rest of the academic web site?  Most of the studies I've read tend to evaluate the library site
CH> use only.  What I'm interested in is how many hits do library pages get compared to academic non-library pages, perhaps broken down by department.



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