from the january 22nd staffnet article - update on website

by Oli Sanidas and reprinted here as is

Cynthia Kiyotake and Oli Sanidas attended the January 16 Staff Committee meeting and were happy to provide a number of updates on the ALD websites.

Cynthia Kiyotake and I attended the January 16 Staff Committee meeting and were happy to provide a number of updates on the ALD websites.

The new ALD teen website is finished and was launched January 7. Please check it out if you haven’t already and let us know your thoughts on the Digital Services Blog (aldds.blogspot.com).

Looking to the future, the online catalog will be changing to reflect patron feedback regarding the site. These changes will not happen until late 2008-early 2009. Why? We conducted our first-ever patron survey about website usage in 2007, and discovered that the website=the catalog for our adult patrons. (Online access to the ALD catalog is the number one priority for adult users of our website, followed by locations and hours information.) Our takeaway from this is that any major changes we make to the website (like making it more “web 2.0” or interactive) need to be timed with upgrades to our catalog. Based on our 2008 Strategic Plan, catalog upgrades are scheduled to happen in late 2008-early 2009, so website changes will occur then as well. One of the upgrades we’d like to see at that time is a new “faceplate” for the catalog, using a product like Encore or Aquabrowser. A new “faceplate” would present the catalog differently to patrons, in a more attractive, user-friendly way.

In the meantime, however, you can expect to see some smaller changes to the website, including a revamp of the locations/hours section, and more information about the individual libraries, including pictures, information about amenities offered, and the ability for each facility to add articles/information specific to them. Another thing you will see in the next few months is a more user-friendly interface to allow patrons to search the catalog at a specific library (for example, KO patrons can search just the KO catalog.) This is already available as an advanced search function, but it will become easier.

One thing I clarified for Staff Committee is that the discussions around Encore and Aquabrowser do not have to do with federated searching. Federated searching is different, and is about integrating databases into catalog search results. Money for a federated searching product has been included in the DS budget for a few years now, but we have yet to find a product that does what we would like it to. The search continues.

In general, because we now know of the importance of the catalog to our patrons, our focus throughout 2008 will be on finding in-house ways to pull information out of the catalog and present it attractively. Our focus is not so much on the generation of original content; it will be more about re-packaging the information we already have. Similarly, the general philosophy guiding our web development is that we do not have to create a space for everyone within our website; rather, we need to pay attention to the niche communities that already exist on the internet, and go out and develop an ALD presence in each of these places (e.g., myspace, EONS, Wikipedia). This is a fundamental shift in the philosophy of what our website, and our larger web presence, should be. Please visit the DS Blog to share your thoughts, and to read more about the DS team’s thoughts, on the future of the web and our websites. The DS blog also contains links to sample Encore/Aquabrowser pages, if you’d like to see how these catalogs work and how search results are presented. See blog entry on July 16 for info and websites using Aquabrowser, see entry on October 4 for Encore.

Please also take a look at the survey on the ALD Website (through January and February) about searching for magazines and newspaper articles (called Tell Us How You Do It). We welcome staff participation in this survey!

Questions or ideas about our websites? Tell us on the DS blog or contact Cynthia at x19306.