[Web4lib] Library Website

[Patricia F Anderson]

Hi, Jan,

We are also in the process of planning a web redesign. Our current 
situation is that we designed our current web site's look and feel almost 
7 years ago -- eons, in web-time! It was designed with a primary focus on 
text and to meet the then standards for web-accessibility. Our community 
includes a lot of people with minimal computer expertise and we have a 
significant overseas community. Our biggest constraint is that we cannot 
hire an assistant with web skills, but have to hire a clerical position, 
and then train them to assist with the web coding, and that this position 
has historically had a high level of turnover. Our second biggest 
constraint has been that for the past four years, everytime the idea of 
changing the web site was brought up, our graduate student population 
strongly resisted the idea.

Our process for evaluating the site has been designed in part to discover 
what it is that our patrons most want us to keep or change, and also to 
get community buy-in and feedback on the process and proposals. Our 
process (ongoing) has included these steps.

1. Review weblogs and statistics to discover what pages on the site are 
most used.

2. Survey the patron population to solicit feedback. Questions included 
demographics; usage patterns; for the resources the stats showed were most 
used, how patrons located these or preferred to use them; ease of use; 
prioritizing resources available; and open-ended questions. The latter 
were the most valuable and gather the most surprises for us. Our open 
ended questions were:

  - The most important service the library provides for me is [blank].
  - The most important research tool for me is [blank].
  - If there was one thing about the web site you could change, what would 
that be?
  - If there was one thing you would not change about the current web site, 
what would that be?
  - What would you like to see on the web site that is not there now?
  - What else would you like to tell us?

3. Focus groups. Here we both gathered feedback about our current site 
(likes / dislikes), and also showed mock-ups of design directions we might 
take for our future site.

4. A card-sorting task, to discover how patrons mentally categorize our 
various resources, tools, and services.

All of these steps yielded surprises and useful information. I know many 
processes other groups have used are more extensive, but we had very 
limited time and money for this. Our budget for this has been about $200 
total, not including staff time. So we were trying to get the most bang 
for our buck. Even though it is possible to do much more, I think we 
gather a lot of very helpful information, and I am happy with how this 
process is turning out.

I hope this is helpful! We are still in the middle of collating our data, 
so perhaps other groups who have already completed this type of project 
will have more useful insights.

  -- Patricia Anderson, UM Dentistry Library, pfa at umich.edu

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Jon Goodell wrote:

> Please excuse cross postings.
>
> My library, a community college library that serves about 8,500 students and several hundred faculty, is exploring updating its website (www.pulaskitech.edu/library).  I have looked at several dozen community college websites to draw ideas from.  Do you have any favorites?  Which are considered the best?  I am also interested in your opinions as to what makes a good community college library website.
>
> Also, if your organization has recently gone through a website overhaul, I would be grateful if you could share your experiences.
>
> Thank you,
> Jon
>
> Jon Goodell
> Technology Services & Reference Librarian
> Pulaski Technical College - Ottenheimer Library
> North Little Rock, AR
> 501-812-2718
> jgoodell at pulaskitech.edu
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