[Web4lib] city swallows library website

[Andrew Mutch]

Robert,

As someone who works on both a government and a library web site, I'm
pretty  sure that most government web sites are not intentionally
inefficient. I'm sure there are sites run by organizations who seek to
limit access to information. But I think more sites are victims of more
mundane failings. These can include:

* Turf wars - In addition to the usual office politics, real politics can
stifle what information is made available.

* Who's in charge - Many government web sites seem to have fallen under
the control of their PR staff who think of the web site as a vehicle to
send out press releases, not providing easy access to information. Or
sometimes the techies get hold of the site and they often don't look at
information in the way that the average visitor does.

* Vendor Rules - The development of many government web sites are
outsourced to vendors who often have a standard system that they like to
push. Discussion of the "development" of the web site revolves around what
colors and images to plug into the templates, not what information should
be made available.

* Information Novices - Let's face it, most government organizations are
focused on delivery of services, not organization and presentation of
information. The people making decisions about how information should be
organized and presented don't have a strong background in those areas and
the web sites reflect that.

Many of these problems are not inherent to government web sites. There are
many library web sites (and corporate web sites, etc.) that suffer from
the same problems. I think we're more aware and critical of them in the
library world because we often have to work with and sometimes have to
integrate with a governmental organization (local, county, state, school,
university, etc.) that doesn't recognize the same set of values when it
comes to access, organization and presentation of information. For
libraries in that situation, you have to work hard to make the case why
the values that are important to the library should be reflected in the
web site. Although there may be resistance to that, in the long run it's
the visitors to the web site who reap the rewards of bringing library
values to a governmental web site.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library / Charter Township of Waterford
Waterford, MI


> Greetings,
>
> Do you think the problem with the government sites might
> be intent?  In libraries, we are ultimately focused on
> the efficient delivery of information to the end user, or
> at least it seems that we should be.
>
> Within administrative government there seems to
> be a greater focus on regulating the flow of information
> and finding out who wants what and why. When I look at the
> Chicago site as an example, the links refer to a user
> session rather than the information itself.
>
> Libraries are rarely, if ever, are criticized for
> not providing information - administrative government
> often is and can end up going to litigation over access.
> So, if a web developing vendor wants to sell to administrative
> government, perhaps what is valued as a service is intrinsically
> different than what librarians value.
>
> *************************************************
> Robert L. Balliot
> 1-401-421-5763
> Skype: RBalliot
> Bristol, Rhode Island
> http://oceanstatelibrarian.com/contact.htm
> *************************************************
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Dan Lester
> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 3:33 AM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Cc: andy at petdance.com; cinda at hcck.us
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] city swallows library website
>
>
>    ----- Original message ----------------------------------------
>    From: "Leo Robert Klein" <leo at leoklein.com>
>    To: web4lib at webjunction.org
>    Received: 5/3/2007 9:48:56 AM
>
>    >For an example of absolute hell in unusable URLs, point your browser
> to:
>
>    >http://cityofchicago.org
>
>    >Then click on any of the links.
>
> Well, did they take lessons from ALA and take it a step further?  Or did
> ALA
> use Chicago as a model?   After all, we know where ALA lives.....
>
> dan
>
> Show Up, Suit Up, Shut Up, and Follow Directions
> dan at riverofdata.com
> Dan Lester, Boise, Idaho, USA
>
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