[WEB4LIB] website training and review - what works?

[Brian Cockburn]

May I suggest anything by Jakob Nielson and a book called Web Site
Usability:  A designer's guide by Jared M. Spool and others.

The book is mostly e-commerce related but that is the environment that is
informing students expectations regarding functionality and usability
anyway.

BAC

Brian Cockburn
Digital Services Librarian
James Madison University
VMail:  540.568.6978  EMail:  cockbuba at jmu.edu
Public Calendar:  http://calendar.yahoo.com/cockbuba

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On
Behalf Of Carrie Phillips
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 9:34 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] website training and review - what works?

Greetings, WEB4LIB,

These questions are geared to those of you in academic library settings...

Here's our situation:

Our campus has recently overhauled its website design and architecture, and
I've had to redesign the library portion of the campus site to match
visually.  We're now hearing two-fold rumors about campus that students are
having trouble finding our library home page from the campus home page, and
that once they do find us, they are having trouble knowing where to go to
find what they need (research databases, etc.).

The first part is difficult to fix:  the new site's architecture was set up,
in the mind of the design firm, to appeal to the prospective student, and
the "meat" of the library's section of the campus site *is* hard to find.
We're not able change the architecture, so we need to educate our users.  If
any of you have been in this situation, what educational methods work??  How
do we get the word out?

The second part is easy to fix, since we have complete control of the
library portion of the website architecture (once the patron finds us on the
campus site), but we're not sure how to fix it.  We'd like to form both
student and faculty focus groups to sit down with us and tell us what they
can find on our site and what they can't.  Have any of you tried this?  Is
it a good way to work this kind of a problem out?

We have a small campus of 1100 students and several faculty members who I
think would be interested in working with us on this.  I'm hoping some of
you can tell me what your past experiences have been with this kind of
thing.

Thanks for your time.  Please reply to phillipsc at bluffton.edu.

--
Carrie Phillips
Computer Technician/ILL Assistant/O-PCIRC
Musselman Library
Bluffton College - BLC
280 W. College Ave., Ste. 4
Bluffton, OH  45817
Ph. 419.358.3275
Fx. 419.358.3384
phillipsc at bluffton.edu