Library Voice

Paul and I hope you enjoy the talk.  Please use this chat room to interact during the presentation.

Jeff Wisniewski
University of Pittsburgh

Simplicity Rules
Everyone wants to be like Google.  But Google is a single purpose site.  Library websites differ because they serve multiple functions. 

Content is king, but design matters alot.  Novice users judge in the blink of an eye, and may only judge based on how your site looked.  With an increase in professional design, comes an increase in credibility. 

Need to design your website for what your users are doing.

The rule of seven
Somewhere between 5 and 9 categories for top level navigation

The 3 click rule
This rule is dead
Design for SCENT
Users will click so long as they feel they are on the right path

Design for 800 X 600
Best to optimize for 1024 X 768
Need to think about other platforms, such as handhelds
Use CSS media types  (there is a CSS media type for handheld)  I really need to look at this. 
Make sure you have a flexible design. 

Colors for the web
Most users browse with 24-bit color rendering

For Redesign Inspiration
Take a survey or the general web.  Don’t just look at other library websites. 

How often do you redesign?
A constant, more iterative design is less disruptive. 

Follow your own conventions
Be consistent with what you call things

Established web standards and conventions
home link in the upper left
if you have a banner, make it clickable

Does greater bandwidth give us more design freedom?
Mobile users are on slower networks

Need to support all browsers
For basic content—YES!

Separation of presentation and content means that you don’t have to design a text-only version of the site

CSS support for layout is good enough for modern browsers
“Be a

The very top of the page is most likely to be ignored or only looked at briefly.  “banner blindness”
Don’t put anything at the very top of the page if it is mission critical. 
Google heat map shows what parts of the page are visible to the user, while showing which parts are ignored.  Note to self, the top right is ignored. 

Flash can be used for effective animation and interactivity

Mouseover menus raise usability considerations.  The menus often require ninja-like mouse skills

Tell people when you are going to be opening a new window. 
Content such as PDF, Word, etc, it makes sense to open in a new window. 
Tabbed browsing makes this less of an issue. 

What about scrolling?
these days users are comfortable scrolling
but keep most important content above the fold

Images of people
generally images increase trust
labeled people increase credibility the most

IL2007

Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan

Rather than blogging every single slide, I am pulling out key notes that can apply to my specific library. 

Make your library website two-way.  This will allow them to give feedback.  We allow this on our blogs, which are moderated.  Also, our FAQs allow for users to submit questions. 

Blurring of jurisdictional lines.  Online, everyone’s patrons are your patrons.  Personally, I get questions quite often from people from other universities and even other countries.  This is often very difficult for academic libraries to try, as many only want to serve their own patrons.  Often this is the result of license restrictions, but I imagine it is still a mostly cultural thing. 

Is your library on Wikipedia?  Perhaps your library should be on the page for your town.  I just added our local libraries on the Athens, Ohio page in the Community Web Links.

List your library in a wireless directory.  wifi411, jwire, wi-fi zone, etc.

Solicit email addresses with sign-up sheets so that users can opt in for newsletters, etc.

What about experimenting with SMS reference service?  How would we staff it?  Would we just have a librarian carry “the SMS phone” for the duration of their shift?  Can librarians get their libraries to help pay for a texting plan?  This seems like our next avenue that we need to go in, but the details need to be worked out. 

Should academic librarians be using Twitter?  Would students read it?  What sort of things would we Twitter at the library?  I have a Twitter feed  that I used and embedded on my wiki and blog, but took it down once I started posting personal things (updates of the kids, etc).  Perhaps I need to revisit the idea for reference and work stuff. 

IL2007

This goes in the tech-to-try pile:

Giving  your Facebook profile a Second Life
If you are like me, you probably have some of your Second Life friends among your Facebook friends. And until recently, we had no good way of connecting the two worlds. But now we can; and there isn’t just one, but two Facebook applications that can help you with that.

Via: the Chronicle

Clif Bar encourages you to cut back on global warming, and your love handles, by taking the Clif Bar 2 mile challenge.  Since 40% or U.S. urban travel is 2 miles or less, riding a bike for short errands is easier than it seems.  Are you up for the challenge?