[Web4lib] city swallows library website

[Andrew Mutch]

Rich raises many good points. However, in defense of the Michigan.gov web
site, they did implement user-friendly URLs and redirects at the
department and resource level:

Department of History, Arts and Libraries
http://www.michigan.gov/hal

http://libraryofmichigan.org/
[redirects to HAL site]

Emerald Ash Borer [redirects to actual site]
http://www.michigan.gov/eab

The horrible URLs are still there but they have tried to address some of
the problems created by that system.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI



> However you sort out the city Web presence versus the library's, fight for
> a
> usable domain and URL regimen.
>
> Under the administration of the previous government of Michigan,
>
> 1) The Library of Michigan was placed into a new department of History,
> Arts, and Libraries.
>
> 2) The state Web presence was outsourced to IBM, which then
> hosted Michigan state government content in Colorado.
>
> 3) IBM consultants chose a content management system (Vignette I believe),
> and all state agencies were folded into a Michigan.gov domain, with URLs
> generated by the CMS...
>
> The CMS, at least as implemented in this case, generates HORRIBLE URLs.
> The
> URL for the home page for the Library of Michigan, comes up as this:
>
> http://www.michigan.gov/hal/0,1607,7-160-17445_19270---,00.html
>
> That's the URL for the *home page* of the Library of Michigan.  Try giving
> that out on the radio or on a business card.
>
> Here is the memorable, hardly-radio-friendly, and utterly
> indistinguishable
> by human eyes, URL for the news from the State Librarian:
>
> http://www.michigan.gov/hal/0,1607,7-160-17445_19270_29769---,00.html
>
> Michigan and the Midwest face a pest, the Emerald Ash Borer, that
> threatens
> to kill all our ash trees.   An official brochure from the state Dept of
> Agriculture advised people to go to Michigan.gov and search for that pest
> by
> name.  Why?  Because the URL would not have fit in the brochure, and no
> human could transcribe it into the address bar.
>
> Whatever you fight for in terms of content control, fight for citable
> URLs.
> Why not libraryofmichigan.org?
>
> /rich
>
>