[WEB4LIB] Re: Library Web Page Use

[Daniel Messer]

Dan Lester wrote:

> I'd say that the university homepages are, in general, becoming
> marketing tools.  The marketing and PR folks have realized that this
> is how most corporations are doing things, and thus they should do the
> same.  And, they may well be right.

    I think they're 100% right in using the web page as a marketing tool.
Anyone who doesn't think that a university is a business is living in Happy
Fantasy Land. Universities are special in that you pay the same money you
would to a corporation, receive the same respect that you do at the DMV, and
pay money to just attend. And yet people still want to go. Universities are
businesses, and since there's more than one university, there's going to be
competition for money. And the new millennium way to pull in money is to use a
snazzy website.

> Also, does anyone who is coming
> to the home page from off campus really care about the library?
> Should they?

    Well, I did, but then again, I wanted to be a librarian. :) I think that a
prospective student SHOULD care about how the library site is put together.
After all, depending on the major, they're probably going to be using that
site quite a lot. They're going to want functionality. Who cares about nifty
images when you need a magazine article by Hunter Thompson for an English 323
class and you need it NOW! But like I said, a prospective student SHOULD
care... Whether or not they actually do, I haven't the foggiest.

>
> CH> The question is, "Do we fight'em, or like some have mentioned
> CH> here, join'em?"
>
> I'd suggest that we do neither.  We ignore them.  We're not likely to
> change them.  They don't matter much to us anyway for the various
> reasons stated above.

    Not a bad idea. If they (the PR folks) aren't willing to hold massive
arguments over how we (the techie library types) design pages, then fine, the
PR junkies can do their own thing. However, when PR starts telling a library
how its site should be set up, and its obvious that PR hasn't been to a
library since the bicentennial, then there's grounds for some argument.

Dan

--
Mondai wa
The subject in question...
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Daniel Messer, Technology Instructor
Yakima Valley Regional Library
102 N 3rd St Yakima, WA 98901
(509) 452-8541 x712
dmesser at yvrls.lib.wa.us
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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
                     -Hunter S. Thompson