[WEB4LIB] Re: Library Web Page Use

[Isabel Danforth]

Part of our public library mission is to be a the place to visit to  learn 
anything about the community, as well as providing the more traditional 
library services.  I have been using Pico Search to index our pages and 
just recently have added the addresses for both the  town and school to our 
indexing.  So now if you go to our library home page, you can search our 
web site as well as that of the town and the school system.  Hopefully our 
address will be the easy one to remember.   Just go to 
http://russelllibrary.org  and click on search the library, town and school 
web pages button.

Isabel


At 04:25 PM 12/10/2001 -0800, Karen G. Schneider wrote:
>This isn't all that far from towns (including my own) where the city
>page doesn't link to the library.  I wrote them as a "concerned citizen"
>(twice) and was told that the library "was on the site"--yeah, sure,
>buried two levels down.  I used the city pages when I moved here to find
>local services. The city pages had all kinds of info on who to call for
>utilities, tv, etc.  But I only knew there was a library because I
>walked past it on the way to the corner store (well, and because I had
>heard of it through library channels).
>
>Did the library bond fail because the library wasn't on the city's home
>page? Probably nothing as direct as that... but keeping the library
>invisible is a good way to lower it in folks' priorities.
>
>I'd say to the folks feeling the tweak of over-eager editors, take a
>deep breath, fix the italicized commas, and start barking back at the PR
>folks demanding to know why the link to the library isn't more
>prominent. Whether or not they *use* the link, students, prospective and
>otherwise, alumnae, faculty, and anyone else associated with the college
>or university should *perceive* the library as an equal player with the
>other academic services.
>
>----------------------------------------------
>Karen G. Schneider                 kgs at lii.org
>Coordinator, Librarians' Index to the Internet
>Information You Can Trust!      http://lii.org
>----------------------------------------------
>
> > Another point: what statement is the college/university making if the
> > Library does NOT appear on the main page?
> > In my opinion, if scholarship is important to the institution, then
>there
> > SHOULD be a direct link to the Library from the main page.
> > Also, any potential student would more than likely want to check out
>the
> > library page. Having to dig does not send a good message...
> > - Rick Palladino, Iona