[WEB4LIB] Re: Library Web Page Use

[Daniel Messer]

    Wow! Now that is a problem and one worthy of solving. Looking at the home page for my old college (www.cwu.edu) I notice they have the same problems as you mention. There is no direct link to the library's site off the main page. Now I know for a fact it wasn't always like that. I chose CWU after browsing through its web page and checking out its library and I remember clearly finding the link straight off the main web page.
    It seemed to me to be a foregone conclusion that a university's library(ies) is the lifeblood of information and research for the student body, if not the entire entity as well. Thus it seemed that a direct link to the library should be easily available. Sadly I see that is not the case, not even with my alma mater. Along with statistical tactics, which I'm told work very well against marketing and business folk, you might also look into rallying some further student and faculty support. Maybe if the marketing and PR people were to be bombarded by a ton of e-mail from students and staff about how the web site needs direct linkage to the library, they may open their eyes. If nothing else, it'll give you some firepower for those meetings. If needed, you could have each person who sends the e-mail CC it to you so you also have the
copies.
    I learned many things in college and some of the best lessons never came from a book. One of those lessons was that, if you really want to win, deal with the enemy (i.e. the dean, the bureaucracy, the department, etc.) using similar tactics to their own.

Good luck!
Dan

Craighton Hippenhammer wrote:

> Our Computer Center is under the VP of Finance/Administration, and not the Academic Dean. This has all sorts of implications on the development and use (and disuse) of technology among professors, and therefore by implication, everyone else in academics, especially students.  Our "Academic Computing Center" (real name: Media and Technical Support [Doesn't that name just speak volumes?]), is pretty good, but has no clout because of the Academic Dean's obliviousness.  And now a new center of power has arisen on campus: marketing and public relations has gained control over the campus website.  Look at the order of the black buttons in the bar across the top of the new page: http://www.olivet.edu, which will tell you volumes about what is important on our campus.  And you have to go through an "About" page to get to library resources.
>
> Every time the campus website has gone through a redesign, I have had to fight to get a direct link to the library back on the institution's home page.  All three times, I've been successful, but here we go again.  I suppose this issue is just a flash point, really standing for so much more.  But if there is no access, or difficult access, from the institution's main Web base to the library, it only makes our job as librarians and cybrarians that much harder.
>
> I know we're not the only library that has this problem.  How many college and university homepages have you been on and either couldn't find the library site or only found it circuitously?  Their reasons may be different from ours:  I don't know.  But something's going on, and it isnt right.  For you guys that have total control over all things Web, I can understand your non-comprehension of our plight.  But "bragging rights?  How about just plain survival, and the on-going struggle to get rid of impediments constantly being thrown in our way?

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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