[Web4lib] Re: Future of Libraries

[Stewart Baker]

I just have to jump in on this and derail the discussion a bit by
disagreeing wholeheartedly with Andrea's statement that "many libraries have
the best, most user-friendly internet sites around."

This is simply not true.  In fact, most of the time I feel the opposite way
about any given library's web page.  This is largely because, as Andrea
pointed out, there simply aren't many librarians who have that skill set,
having focused instead on, well, things that are more library-oriented.

Thus, a lot of library pages are (or seem to me to be) of a sort of
"organic" nature.  What do I mean by "organic" in this context?  Basically,
I mean that it has no planned out structure.  For an example, I will offer
up the current website of the library for which I am the webmaster.
However, I will also note that this site "grew" to its current muddled state
over the course of about 5 years, and that I've only been here since March
and am in the process of creating a new site.

So here it is: http://library.csudh.edu

Organized?  No, not really.  Easy to use?  I certainly don't think so.
Accessible?  Hardly.

And this isn't the worst site I've seen by far.  That title is probably held
by a small public library somewhere, and I do not blame them for it.  When
faced with the choice of "Pay someone $50/hr for a good website" or "Do it
by myself and use budget for something else", pretty much all libraries opt
for choice 2 (at least, judging by the state of most websites I've seen).

As an example of what I'll call "SPL (Small Public Library) Design" here's
the page for Allen Parish public library: http://www.allen.lib.la.us/

I can't find it right now, but a friend of mine re-designed this site for a
school project, and if it's okay with him I will share it later when I can
get in touch with him.

Even beyond just lacking site design know-how (again, something I am not
blaming people for) many library pages have problems with terminology.  That
is to say, the terminology they use makes perfect sense to librarians but
zero sense to patrons.  This might just be an academic library problem, but
it's certainly one I see here at work.  How many patrons know that a
database means what a librarian thinks it means?  (to me, it means something
else entirely.  Hello SQL!)

These aren't specifically library problems, though.  Many high-profile
multi-million dollar businesses have the same issue.  The worst page I have
had to try to use in a long time is the FedEx one, which tells you to do
things that you can't do, and which is generally maze-like and
incomprehensible.  (seriously, go check it out)

So what needs to be done?  Ideally, everyone will magically learn good web
design overnight.  More realistically, I'm not sure.  It's a big drain to
learn web design if you're busy doing a bunch of other things (which is
certainly the case in small public libraries) so it's not like everybody has
the time to do it.

Maybe a group of "design-savvy" and "tech-savvy" librarians could put
together an easy-to-implement template for use by smaller libraries?
Something open-source that you could just stick on your web server and then
fill in the blanks.

Anybody else up for that?

Sorry for all the rambling.  I like to hear myself type.

-- 
Stewart Baker
Web Services Librarian
Cal State Dominguez Hills
Webmaster, infomancy.net