Having a clear, attractive, and easy-to-navigate website that allows users to quickly find what they want is essential for any organization—including a library. This workbook makes website creation easy—no HTML required. This book teaches all of the essentials for designing and creating a simple, professional-looking website for any library. By using cut-and-paste templates from familiar software programs, readers can create complex websites in short order—without learning confusing HTML coding. Three final chapters cover using style sheets, address the potential benefits of HTML5, and overview content management system based websites. By using this guidebook as a reference, even those without previous knowledge about web design will possess enough basic information to create a great web page—and, with a little practice, prepare a full library website.
Libraries can build Web sites unrivaled in content - commercial databases, online catalogs, community resources, Web indexes - but it takes a well-designed interface to make the content accessible, in the library tradition of access for all, you must not only consider the 50 million plus people in the United States with some kind of disability, but also users running Netscape 2.0 on a 486. As librarians in the acclaimed JSTOR electronic publishing project, authors Kristen L. Garlock and Sherry Piortek have worked with dozens of participating libraries in troubleshooting problems and soliciting user feedback. Drawing on their experience, they identify the methods behind the best library Web site designs.
User experience (UX) characterizes how a person feels about using a product, system or service. UX design incorporates the practical aspects of utility, ease of use and efficiency to make your web design and functionality decisions with patrons in mind. This results in a better design, a more intuitive interface, and a more enjoyable experience. This book shows you how to get there by providing hands-on steps and best practices for UX design principles, practices, and tools to engage with patrons online and build the best web presence for your library. You ll find out how to conduct a usability test, perform a card sort, make decisions on how to build the architecture of your site, create personas as a cornerstone of your website planning process, create a content strategy, and perform an experience-based evaluation of your site.
"Exploring the myriad issues regarding web accessibility, this book specifically focuses on the design and implementation of web-enabled teaching tools. Educators from across the United States and Canada present their ideas on such topics as legal implications, overcoming organizational barriers, and course designs for the electronic classroom. Also discussed are special opportunities provided by web accessibility in education, such as web-based distance learning and teaching technology for blind or visually impaired faculty."
Technology has revolutionized the ways in which libraries store, share, and access information. As digital resources and tools continue to advance, so too do the opportunities for libraries to become more efficient and house more information. E-Discovery Tools and Applications in Modern Libraries presents critical research on the digitization of data and how this shift has impacted knowledge discovery, storage, and retrieval. This publication explores several emerging trends and concepts essential to electronic discovery, such as library portals, responsive websites, and federated search technology. The timely research presented within this publication is designed for use by librarians, graduate-level students, technology developers, and researchers in the field of library and information science.
A library's web site is the face of the institution in the virtual world. If users don't quickly, easily, and intuitively find what they need, they will move on to other sites - possibly for good.
Managing the process of building and maintaining an effective library website can be as challenging as designing the product itself. Web Project Management for Academic Libraries outlines the best practices for managing successful projects related to the academic library website. The book is a collection of practical, real-world solutions to help web project managers plan, engage stakeholders, and lead organizations through change. Topics covered include the definition and responsibilities of a web project manager; necessary roles for the project team; effective communication practices; designing project workflow; executing the project; and usability testing and quality control. The techniques recommended are drawn from the experiences of the authors and from library and project management literature. The book is an essential text for library staff working as project managers or on web teams, library administrators, library school faculty and students, and web consultants working with libraries. - Field-tested web project management guidance grounded in the literature of librarianship, project management and web development - Consideration of the special needs of academic libraries - Practical, step-by-step guidance for novices and experts in libraries of all sizes
Volume 8 of the series Creating the 21st-Century Academic Library is focused on new services, directions, job duties and responsibilities for librarians in academic libraries of the 21st century. Topics include research data management services, web services, improving web design for library interfaces, cooperative virtual reference services, directions on research in the 21st-century academic library, innovative uses of physical library spaces, uses of social media for disseminating scholarly research, information architecture and usability studies, the importance of special collections and archival collections, and lessons learned in digitization and digital projects planning and management. Data management services are highlighted in the context of a consortium of smaller liberal arts and regional institutions who share a common institutional repository. Survey research plays a role in a number of chapters. One provides insight into how academic libraries are currently approaching web services, web applications, and library websites. A second survey is used to explore the role of librarians as web designers, and provides detailed information related to job titles, job duties, time percentages related to duties, and other duties outside of web design. Comments of those surveyed are included and make interesting reading and a deeper understanding of this new function in libraries. More generally, is a survey study exploring how librarians feel about the changes that are currently happening within the profession, as well as how these changes have personally affected their job duties and their current job assignments. Case studies are include one that features QuestionPoint in the context of a cooperative virtual reference service; another shows how research and scholarship can be disseminated using social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, ResearchGate and Google Scholar, among others; a other studies explore the importance of user engagement and buy-in before moving forward on digitization; and one shows how information architecture and usability emerge from the redesign of a public library website and whose successful completion involves user surveying, focus groups, peer site reviews, needs analysis, and usability testing. Two chapters deal with the changing legal context: the importance and understanding of copyright and author rights in the 21st-century academic library, and the basics Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). It is hoped that this volume, and the series in general, will be a valuable and exciting addition to the discussions and planning surrounding the future directions, services, and careers in the 21st-century academic library.
Stay current, meet educational standards, and keep your students coming back again and again by incorporating the latest technologies into your school library. Both theoretical and practical, this book will provide you with a strong introduction to a variety of technologies that will serve you—and your patrons—well. Each chapter addresses a different aspect or kind of technology. You'll learn essential skills, planning and funding techniques, and what hardware and software you'll need. You'll find plenty of information on creating or maintaining your library's web presence through websites, blogs, and social networking, as well as on various tools that you can use and apply to your curriculum. Many state standards include technology components, and this guide shows you how to meet them and stay up to date. You'll also learn what you should watch for in the future so you remain essential to your school.
Using practical examples from librarians in the field, this book lays out current issues in online learning and teaches librarians how to adapt a variety of library services—including instruction, reference, and collection development—to online education. Recent studies highlighting the challenges faced by online learners show that skills librarians are uniquely qualified to teach, such as information and digital literacy and source evaluation, can improve academic performance in online courses and enhance the online learning experience. Just as embedded librarianship was developed to answer the needs of online courses when they emerged in the early 2000s, online learning librarian Christina Mune now teaches "online librarianship" as a set of realistic strategies for serving a variety of online education models. Each chapter of Libraries Supporting Online Learning addresses a different strategy for supporting online students and/or faculty, with all strategies derived from real-world practices. Librarians will find information on best practices for creating digital literacy tutorials and dynamic content, providing patrons with open access and open educational resources, helping patrons to avoid copyright issues, promoting peer-to-peer learning and resource sharing, posting to social media, and developing scalable reference services. The tools and practical examples in this book will be useful for all educators interested in increasing the efficacy of online learning.
