[WEB4LIB] Site Map vs. Site Index (newbie type question)

[Richard Wiggins]

My guess is both terms are used in slightly different ways by different
folks, but site maps usually reflect some or all of the site's areas in a
hiearchical fashion.  Apple's goes a couple layers deep:

http://www.apple.com/find/sitemap.html

A lot of sites offer A-Z indexes.  My bias is that they are more useful than
site maps in many cases.  The A-Z is, well, duh, an alphabetical list of
topics.  It's either one big page or 26 (or 27 or 36 pages).  It's like the
index in the back of a book, flattening the hierarchical structure into a
linear list. One of my favorites is the BBC's:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/a-z/

At Michigan State we built a combined A-Z and registered keywords service
out of the same database.  See:

http://keywords.msu.edu/ 

My problem with site maps is they are inherently organized the same way the
site is, so if the user is having a problem finding things, they may
continue to have the problem.  

You might want to check out what Nielsen Norman has to say about site maps,
or, more generally, get a book on information architecture such as the
Rosenfeld/Morville book (new edition out soon).

/rich


On Thu, 13 June 2002, cruby wrote

> 
> I am struggling with our main library web page on our company intranet.
> Every time I think we finally have the page designed so that people can
find
> stuff we either add a new service or my manager decides something is buried
> too deeply and wants me to bring it to the top level.  If I put everything
> on the first page, the page is going to get really crowded (it's all ready
> looking too busy and we just updated the format two months ago!).  I'm
> wondering if I need to go to a site map or site index for our page.  Being
a
> relative novice at this, the really fancy stuff we have like JavaScript I
> have had another department do, I am not sure what the difference is
between
> a site map versus a site index.  Can someone either give me a good
> explanation or a source to check for an explanation or point me to some
> examples of the two?
> 
> Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Carolyn
> 
> Carolyn Ruby-Weilage
> Library
> Micron Technology
> Boise, ID 83707
> cruby at micron.com (e-mail)

____________________________________________________
Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com