[WEB4LIB] link annotations

[Tara Calishain]

At 12:56 PM 7/25/2001, Martin, Julie wrote:
>We've got some debate going on about the value of providing annotations 
>for the resources we link to on our library web site. We link to a large 
>number of databases, newsletters, electronic journals, and web sites 
>relevant to our company.
>
>We're in the process of a redesign and there are strong feelings on both 
>sides of this issue. Some people feel the annotations are unecessary, and 
>that after you've used a resource once they just clutter things up. 
>Other's feel that librarians add value by providing some descriptive 
>information about the resource and what it's unique features are. In 
>addition some of our site-licensed publications have access information 
>users need to login, session limits, etc, that users need to be aware of. 
>Some of this could be provided via a link to an information page.
>
>Personally, I prefer to know what a link is before I follow it, especially 
>if there are a large number to choose from. But I'm probably too close to 
>the issue here, and would like to get some objective feedback.
>If anyone has information on usability studies that address this issue I'd 
>be interested in seeing those as well.

I think annotations are incredibly important, and make a list much more 
useful than it would
be if it were just links. If there's a design issue, perhaps you could put 
the descriptions in a
title link (so the descriptions show up in the status bar) or as the ALT 
text on a small, quick-loading
image like a bullet.

Tara