Week 8: Web design
From the articles, the recommendations for Tusmore Library website (www.tusmorelibrary.wordpress.com) development are:
1. Website has a vision (Gambrell, 2015). The library’s vision and purpose statement, in brief, have been provided on the homepage. It helped guide and inspire the developer during website development, and the information will assist patrons to understand what they are going to experience from the website.
2. Limit the number of primary (main) navigation items to seven, and keep them simple (Gambrell, 2015; Piola, 2018). Tusmore Library’s primary navigation items on the homepage are; hours and location, what’s on (activities and events), toy library, catalogue search, other services, social media (connect us), and search, which are the primary navigation items used by most libraries. The primary navigation items represent the highest-level of website content categories (Gambrell, 2015). In addition, limiting to seven navigation items on the homepage offers a more convenient experience for patrons in navigating the website.
3. Eliminate library jargon in the website (Gambrell, 2015; Piola, 2018). During the website’s development, the content provided in the website was examined to ensure that common English language was used, without library jargon, since the jargon can be a barrier for patrons and reduce their good experience. Some examples of common English used in the website rather than jargon are; use of “borrow from other libraries” rather than “inter-library loan”, and use of “books or magazines” rather than “material”.
4. Simplify search (Gambrell, 2015; Piola, 2018). In the Tusmore Library website, a “library catalogue search” navigation button was located at the top of every page (header), and also in the middle of the homepage. This make it easier for patrons to find, since “search” is the most typical action a patron will undertake on the website. In addition, a “Search” item was considered to be inserted in the footnote as part of a site map. However, with the free WordPress version used, this was not possible.
5. Make the website accessible and usable (Gambrell, 2015). During the website development stage, website accessibility and usability were two of the key design justification criteria adopted to serve the purpose of the website, as stated in the homepage. The accessibility checklist from the Government of Western Australia was used as a guideline for the website’s development and assessment. A number of accessibility tools (WAVE, A11Y, and Access Assistant Community Edition) were used to test the website to ensure its accessibility. In terms of usability, a number of usability tests have been undertaken to ensure that the website can be easily used. The tests included using different devices (laptop, tablet and smartphone) with different operating system (MS Windows 10, iOS and Android), viewed through different internet browsers (Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Google Chrome, text-only browser using “Links”), viewed through 200% text size enlargement and viewed/listened through a screen reader tool (ChromeVox Classic Extension – Google Chrome).
References
Gambrell, K. (2015). 7 Best practices for creating a user friendly library website.
EBSCO. https://www.ebsco.com/blog/article/7-best-practices-for-creating-a-user-
Piola.(2018). 8 Tips to improve your library’s website design.
https://meetpiola/8-tips-to-improve-your-librarys-website-design/
Fon's Blog 
Hi Fon,
Welcome. I hope you enjoy the course.
Jo
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Good discussion of the 24/7 library in Foster. Do you have any strategies for how libraries in larger city libraries might implement such a system?
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Implementation of 24/7 staff-less libraries in a big city is a major challenge, as the model is more successful in rural areas than cities due to the more peaceful rural setting where vandalism is generally less (Johannsen, 2017). However, the 24/7 model was successful in the city of Copenhagen, and this model was widespread in all public libraries by 2016. The most common challenges and problems with 24/7 were found to be inappropriate space utilisation by young people and the homeless, which has caused libraries to stop providing staff-less facilities in some areas. However, patron satisfaction (from a scale of 1 to 10) was measured at an average of 9.2 with the model, and they were generally very happy with the opportunity to be able to use their libraries over a longer period of time (Petersen as cited in Johannsen, 2017). The success factors of the 24/7 model in large city (like Copenhagen) libraries were to ensure that a suitable security system is in place to cope with the challenges and problems, and that the residents have developed local ownership in libraries use (Petersen as cited in Johannsen, 2017).
Reference:
Johannsen, C. G. (2017). Staff-Less Libraries: Innovative Staff Design. ProQuest.
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
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Interesting discussion on the topic of IoT. You have given a good overview of many the issues. What do you think the challenges that IoT present to libraries’ IT leadership are?
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The major challenge that IoTs presents to libraries’ IT leadership is to create security management awareness to patrons who use the libraries network and devices (Massis, 2016). Librarians also need to be trained to be able to address the on-going security issues with patrons (Massis, 2016).
Reference:
Massis, B. (2016). The Internet of Things and its impact on the library. New Library
World, 117(3/4), 289–292. https://doi.org/10.1108/NLW-12-2015-0093
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Good discussion on the topic of the influence of algorithms. You have raised a number of interesting points. Do you think libraries have an education role in this space?
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I think libraries have an education role in this space too (but not exclusively). Libraries can educate internet users and patrons (where the facilities are available) to be aware of the importance of this issue.
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Excellent evaluation. You have made good use of the literature to support your discussion. Including screenshots of the webpage would have helped illustrate some of your points. Good awareness of the accessibility issues. Seventeen navigation buttons seems quite excessive. I hope you found this activity useful.
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I think the activity has been very useful and practical. I have now developed a good website awareness of usability and accessibility. Anytime I browse a website, I try to evaluate if the website is usable, accessible and also identify the improvement areas (by talking to myself).
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