Library subdomain names

[Bret Parker]

I am used to finding the library on a college website (if not under library), then under "Academics."  No harm in listing it under more than one label, if you have the real estate. "College Life" can be another such label.

>>> On 8/5/2013 at 1:20 PM, in message <CAH2DjRtKD8dJX7hGqNAKDR=c_E93yNqG9Bhgpp9S_D+Zup73PQ at mail.gmail.com>, Stacy Pober <stacy.pober at MANHATTAN.EDU> wrote:

Richard,

Thanks for sharing. 

We are going to be one of the first subdomains, though others are planned as part of some overall website changes.

Until I read the responses, I was unaware that a direct link to the library had been taken off our college's home page. That is a recent change, and not a welcome one. I think that having it hidden in the "Quick Links" section makes it less accessible, and I will certainly initiate a discussion on this. 

I just tried to find some research on this issue, and had a little trouble finding what I needed. Found tons of articles on library webpages and the links on them, but less on library links on the college home pages. If anyone can point me to some studies of library link placement on college and university homepages and their effect on usage, that would be really useful. 

I had not thought about the "McLibrary" connotation... which seems really obvious now that you pointed it out! 

Thanks for the responses.

Stacy

On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins at gmail.com> wrote:


This is something that institutions of all sizes wrestle with, as they have ever since the Web era began. When do you use subdomains? When do you use a "folder" - virtual or real - anchored off the main site? When do you create a new domain? Disney screwed this up with their "go" subdomains. CBS uses cbsnews.com instead of news.cbs.com.

But you folks appear to have it simple. From a glance it appears that the major entry points at manhattan.edu are manhattan.edu/topic - About, Admissions, Academics. What's wrong with manhattan.edu/library ? Seems clean and simple.

I do believe in generous redirects based on log analysis. I just tried http://www.cbs.com/news and it failed to give the obvious redirect. 

Frankly, making your main link mclibrary.manhattan.edu because of a previous choice of a proxy server strikes me as an unfortunate choice, though understandable based on history. But is your library branded in any way as "mclibrary" ? Not a good brand. 

I'd worry more about why a search from the manhattan.edu home page doesn't bring up your library at the top of the hit list, and why the library is not more prominently featured on the home page.

Just 2 cents' worth from far away. Good luck! 

/rich


On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Stacy Pober <stacy.pober at manhattan.edu> wrote:


As part of our web redesign, we are being given the opportunity to have our own subdomain in the college's website. 

The most logical name would be "library" but that one is already being used for our EZproxy server, and it would be most onerous to change over 100,000 EZproxy links in our catalog, libguides, etc. 

We've thought about some alternative subdomain names such as lib or mclibrary. Anyone have some library subdomain naming wisdom they'd like to share? 

-- 
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Library
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu 
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-- 
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Library
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu 
============================ 
To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib 
Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/ 
2013-08-05 

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2013-08-05
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