As mentioned in previous blogs we have been talking about making changes to the website. Specifically, going green. Here is the color choice with sample content put up on the page. Because it is so small, you may not be able to tell the following features:
*the search box is a drop down choice of the following:
- Books to check out
- Audio books to download
- Movies to check out
- Music to check out
- Recommendations
- Arapahoelibraries.org
- Advanced search
*the small box you see to the right of the photo is called What's New and will be populated by the newest material added to the website each day. It gives the user the ability to "window shop" for information he/she may not have thought of but catches his/her eye
*the box above the ALD Live log on the right side is called Library News. Here you will find the articles and information which now reside at Latest @ your library
*the buttons on the left side are named this
- Books & Movies
- Downloads
- Programs & Events
- Community
- Research Tools
- About Us
- Parenting
- Teens
- Kids
6 comments:
Hi there--I'm happy we are streamlining a little bit! I'm glad to have fewer options on the left hand menu. Having said that, though, I'm going to also say the following:
I'm worried that people won't pull down the search menu to see all the great options. I really like how Denver Library puts all the choices on the screen and provides pop up submenus as soon as you roll over. I realize that is a clicky-clicky (oops--technical term there) rather than a searchy solution, and I am in favor of training our patrons to search rather than click around blindly, esp. as we hopefully move towards more federated searching options, but hiding that list of things you can do still bothers me a little. Will the drop down list pop up and stay up when you roll over it, or will you have to hold the mouse button down to see them all?
Also, this is probably a result of my spending way too much time with my J. Jill catalogs, but I think I'd prefer the second, lighter green color to be more "leaf" or "spring" and less "olive" or "khaki"...
Also, here's something from a staff-on-the-floor perspective: right now, our patron webpacs are limited to being catalogs, so people don't stand there and surf or do email, right? Now that there are fewer staff computers on the floor, we are being encouraged to help the patrons at the patron terminals using patron-side apps (ie, not Millennium, b/c we're supposed to be teaching patrons how to do things on their own & they don't use Millennium). This is okay, but it's a little limiting when the patron remembers a title one way and you can't find it in ALD or Prospector. At a staff desk, I usually jump to Amazon and noodle to try to pull up the correct title, or to see if it's brand-new, etc. On the current patron terminals, my workaround to do that has been to "search the web via Google" for amazon.com, click on it from the results page and search before backing out and searching for the confirmed title in ALD or Prospector. Without any way to jump to the web from a patron terminal, when we get stuck we are going to have to linger around for a staff terminal to open up, which is creating the bottleneck we were hoping to avoid by putting more patron terminals out there. Not very seamless!
My 2 cents, more like a dime, sorry...
Melissa D
Melissa has an excellent point about needing a jump to the web from the website or the catalog. The last time I worked at KO the staff computers were busy, and I needed to get to the Internet to help a patron. Without the link to Google...the patron would have had to wait. Good thinking Melissa...
From the Bib Services point of view:
I’m not a big fan of this proposed website. Too confusing. And it looks as though I can no longer search a title and see it in all its available formats on one page (though I may be wrong about that). The drop-down boxes - what does that mean: "books to Check out"? Does this search the catalog? If not, where IS the catalog? Or are you saying you "oughta check this out" as in, take a look. Or both?
Is there a good reason to obfuscate a simple search for materials? Are we not trying to provide a straightforward, easy-to-use search tool for our library holdings and databases?
I looked at all the library websites you provided links for. Most are straightforward. One was appalling (Boston Public). I also looked at Douglas, Jefferson, and Denver and I have to say Denver has it all together. The colors are good, it looks interesting, searching for materials is the first option and if that’s not what you want, THEN you can click on one of those other buttons after Search. Is that clear or what? Which is the hallmark of a good website, in my opinion. I don't want to see an innovative site, I want to see a useful site. If its colors and graphics are pleasing to the eye, all the better.
Thanks for this excellent forum for expressing our opinions!
P.S. Our current website is good. Just change the first Search option to ‘Online Catalog’ instead of ‘This Site’ and we’ll look as good or better than any library site in the country.
I am confused about the "recommendations" option for search. I think it works as a link to staff picks, but not as a search. If I am looking for a good read, I don't have any search terms to enter. Even if I put in science fiction, our current data does not include that information so no results would be returned.
I like the green and the font, it's much easier on the eyes, I don't feel overwhelmed looking at the page. The tan color on the right seems a little hard to read, but it's hard to tell with the page being small. I don't understand the drop down box...maybe as a secondary search option, but I think as a primary it is giving too many options and is a little confusing, I wouldn't know if I am supposed to click on something, or is it just an option? And is it limiting my search? I do like the idea though, because I know sometimes I am looking for my search to be limited to a certain type such as downloadable and I don't really know how to do that right now, so I end up browsing through a lot of stuff I don't want to. I prefer general as an initial search option though. I think it is a definite improvement overall!
I showed a printout of the sample page to various members of the staff (my selection criteria for including them was that they happened to be here today). The general feedback was that they liked the green, however they were concerned about the contrast of the white text on the gold (or brownish) background. Of course the fact that this was a printout, and probably at ¼ size should be taken into consideration as well. That and the fact that we don't know what the high contrast version would look like. But I thought I should share.
-email from Joel P and posted with his permission-
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