One of the hang-ups that always seems to occur when displaying information in high profile areas is deciding what information is the most important. In the context of a newspaper it is commonly referred to as information that is displayed above the fold and on the front page. The web has a similar principle which is information above the scroll line and information on the home page. Organization of this information is often a challenge because all of this information is always important to someone. Consequently the Home Page of a web site can become a crowded space if not managed correctly.
We have struggled with this problem on the ALD website and in the past have made several decisions to support the prospect of displaying a lot of information on our home page. Often web staffers had to field debates as to whose information was most important. We compromised by creating our featured area at the top, and the latest at your library section at the bottom. The featured area was and still is an area reserved for information that is high profile and the "latest at your library" section was reserved for other items on the home page arranged alphabetically in a list.
OK now that I have sufficiently bored you with the background let me get to the gist of a discussion the web group had last week surrounding this issue. We were looking at new design possibilities for the home page and I brought up the possibility of displaying information in "the latest at your library" section in a blog like format where the newest information always went to the top in a rather indiscriminate manner. The pro side to that idea would be that it would take the guess work out of any debate on what information is important and what is not. The down side is that the information is more fleeting. We then discussed the possibility of adopting this "new information rises to the top" philosophy throughout the web site so that every page behaved in the same manner of the home page. This was not possible however because many sections of our site do not lend themselves to that style because information there is more stagnant.
In any event the issue is still not settled and we will continue to explore possibilities. In the mean time John L. has worked on some mock-ups to help us see these concepts visually. The very rough mock-up that I have attached to this story shows two new sections on our home page. You can see that we have replaced the news feed with a section called "Library News." In this section we wish to feature timely and to a certain extent important items. This is where we'll announce library closures, announcements of big event etc. The information here can be highlighted in red and it can be relatively static in that information here will not change out daily. The other section that we created is a "what's new" section similar to that on StaffNET. This section will be an aggressively dynamic section that could change every time a new item is added to our site. Depending on the day, this section could change out minute to minute. In order to keep this information from being overly fleeting we will include a link to all of the older "what’s new" items so interested patrons could browse through if they chose to.
Please let me know what you think and if you have any thoughts on what was discussed in this post.
7 comments:
I like the new lean, mean look - we librarians love information, but sometimes too much information is, well, too much! "Less" is often better as long as "more" can be easily accessed.
The problem that I see with a library website is that it serves at least two purposes, and each has different priorities as to how and what information should be displayed.
The site is an information portal - new information needs to be displayed so that patrons can use & understand the changes/additions. But the site is also a marketing tool - events that are happening soon should be displayed so that patrons know what is coming up next - not what was just added to the schedule. The website for the entertainment venue Gothic Theatre (gothictheatre.com) gives the event schedule in chronological order (next event at the top of the list) with newly announced news listed in an adjacent column in reverse chronological order (newest info at the top). Customers can see both the next event and read the latest club information at the top of the page. On the ALD page, a well defined area like the new "what's new" box that might say something like "what's happening" would work. The box could list the next few events with links to more detail on an events page.
Somewhat off the subject, I'd recommend not linking directly to the calendar page from a homepage item. That happens with the "Cottonwood Club" listing on the current page - and makes the patron perform another step to get information instead of providing all that info after the first click. And finally, could we please stop using the [more] link in the middle of a sentence. A brief, complete sentence doesn't seem hard to create - the patron can follow a link to more information if needed, but shouldn't have to click a link to finish a sent...[more]
Somewhere among the myriad discussions about website ideas was the idea of pulling new program information from the calendar to place on the homepage somewhere. I think it was the idea of a program that would run automatically and find programs going on that day which still had open seats. "Whats Happening Today" or something like that could be what it's called to convey to patrons programming.
To entice patrons to programs, E'vanced does have an RSS feed feature so patrons could sign up to find out when programs are happening. I'm not familiar enough with it to know if it can limit my selection of new programs to just the ones I want, e.g. I only want to know about storytimes at SH.
The Douglas County Library web page does a good job of listing new information and current events in a simple, yet effective style.
As to Cynthia's comments - I'd be cautious about letting a software program select what programs are listed on the district homepage. I realize that staffing concerns are a problem all over, but the homepage of the website is similar to the front page of a newspaper - you don't want a software program selecting the "top story" - some things need human touch, and something that is as important as the homepage of the library website shouldn't be left to automation.
If we want to move away from the More issue...I suggest having just title links to the featured items (maybe with the exception of 1-2 main features)
The reason the More exists is that information is bein pulled in from another place and the system is trying to fit it into a different fixed space...the More is automatically added after a certain number of characters.
It would be great to have what is happening this week or even today in terms of events if we can find an easier way to interact with Evanced.
Andrew is right that patrons have an extra click to get to the info they need...and right now the only way to avoid that is to have the web team redo data entry on the web that Programming has already done on the Evanced Software.
Whenever you try and make two disparate softwares play nice with one another...you often have to "make do". Something to think about for future technology endeavors. Sometimes it really might be worth the time and effort to build what you need vs purchase it.
Since it's a library webpage, I know it's a little bit different concept, but...
When I visit my favorite blogs/newsites, I usually do so on a regular basis, and since the newest stories are always listed on top, I always scroll through and read them until I get to what I've already read. It makes it easy for me to see what I need to read and what I haven't read, and always keeps me coming back for more. Hope that makes sense. I guess my point is, I like the newest stuff on top idea (just from what I know so far.)
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