The Library Web Site of the Future, written by Steven J. Bell, is yet another essay about what is wrong with library web sites, and yet it is not just another essay…
It is a strong critique that touches upon many aspects of our web presence, and emphasizes that users, both students and faculty, are increasingly bypassing it and seeking information elsewhere. Read it with a critical eye towards your library’s web site, but I suggest taking some of it with a grain of salt.
Bell’s conclusion is that libraries have erred in not following the lead of marketing design experts, that we are moribund because we don’t let our sites be transformed into an “advertiser of campus wares to those who would buy into the brand.”
I suspect the answer is that our web sites tend to be moribund because we let them be. We tend to design by committee, attempting to force what should be a easily navigated collection of resources into a click-fest labyrinth.
Try having someone unfamiliar with your website navigate it with a general purpose in mind (“I want to find a full-text magazine article.”) and see what blind alleys they encounter. This is about the simplest usability test you can create, and it can be telling. But it is only the start.
Bell suggests that focusing on usability is a misstep, and that it is simply “rearranging the deck chairs on this Titanic.” I think that the problem is that usability is not a misstep, but only the first step in a different direction.
We need to make accessing our resources so straightforward, so open, and so universal that people will use them because it is the path of least resistance to the information they seek.
There are many elements to this, and Bell is right in many of his criticisms, but libraries need to be as universal as possible. Keeping our resources in a silo, no matter how good the resources, does not generate traffic. We need to open it up as much as we can, and continually push to open the rest.
In addition, we need to get our resources where our users are. Do you use RSS to get information to users? Do you use social networking to get information to users? Your resources, if disseminated the right way, become your best marketing strategy. Figure out where your potential users are, and then figure out how to connect your resources to wherever that is.
You don’t need to turn your site into a product to be marketed; you need to get your product to market.
found via LISNews
