[WEB4LIB] homepage highlights WAS RE: Feedback on css webpage sought

[Alnisa Allgood]

At 1:50 PM -0700 7/15/04, Elena OMalley wrote:
>Hey, we do that, I think (http://www.emerson.edu/library). Spotlights and
>highlights are one of several developing trends, I think. It's the 
>great screen
>real estate debate. Libraries are sometimes unwilling to sacrifice links or
>info on the homepage that we see as being useful for many users over the
>long haul to make room for publicity/promotion that's more ephemeral.
>And sometimes it's just that we'd like to do that, but we haven't
>had the time or resources to update the site from the last redesign,
>at which time the goal was "Don't make our users drill down - put as
>much as possible on the homepage." Sometimes it's just difficult, for one
>reason or another, to give up the splash logo or photo of the building from
>its best angle.

Nice. I had never been to the Emerson site. I actually like the 
building images, they make your library look clean and inviting, 
never a bad thing.  And your navigation is clean and fairly succinct, 
which is hard to do.

Navigation is always an issue. I admit to pointing to the UCSF's 
library http://www.library.ucsf.edu as a library that I like, but 
also a great frustration. The have great service groupings. I always 
consider them 8 primary services offered at most academic libraries, 
displayed on 4 tabs, and the wording is succinct. Of course I hate 
that the repeat the navigation in the central body, as well as in 
pop-up menus. The repetition of the same items three times on the 
front page is just overkill. I think nice succinct nav menus, with 
pop-up menus that let's the user see what's in the section without 
clicking through, is more than sufficient.

Alnisa
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    Alnisa  Allgood
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