Web Page Review March 27, 2008

Two library web sites that are well-designed and user-friendly are Columbia College (Chicago) Library’s and Ames Library’s at Illinois Wesleyan University. The simple layout and aestheticism of each page assist in easy scanning, navigation, and searching. Each of these web sites follow many of the principles listed in Smashing Magazine’s 10 Principles of Effective Web Design and would serve as excellent models in revising Dominican University’s Rebecca Crown Library’s homepage.

Columbia College Chicago Library’s homepage is divided into four color-coded sections—Research, Help, Services, and About—and then sub-divided into the most frequently needed informational categories. This table arrangement makes the page user-friendly, accessible, and aesthetically pleasing, which follows SM’s principle #3: manage to focus users’ attention and principle #6: strive for simplicity. While there is not a search box located on the homepage, the search boxes (found in the Research section) maintain a consistent color scheme and format. One can easily change to an advanced, an I-Share, an eBook, or a WorldCat search as well.

The Ames Library’s homepage also uses a table format to sort information; however, four main categories are listed in the center of the page—Resources, Technology, Services, and Help with Research¬¬, three other sections are listed on the right side of the page—Quick Links/Catalog Search Box, Library Information and Highlights, and the left side of the page features a Meebo AskAmes box, other ways to contact librarians, and a search box for the whole library. The Quick Links search box allows for several types of searching (by title, author, etc.) and/or advanced, I-Share, and WorldCat searches. While there are many links located on the homepage, this design follows SM’s principle #8: communicate effectively with “visible language” through clear organization, economization, and simple typography.

Both of these web sites account for users need to scan, not read (as cited in SM’s 10 Principles of Effective Web Design). However, one “mistake,” according to Jakob Nielsen’s Top 10 Web Design Mistakes of 2005, of both the Ames Library’s and the Columbia College Chicago Library’s web sites is the unclear differentiation between visited and unvisited links. Different colors are used on the Ames Library site, but the colors are too similar to each other. The Columbia College site does not show color differentiation for visited links (nor does the Rebecca Crown Library web site).

The Rebecca Crown Library web site consistently follows the design and format of Dominican’s other web pages. The site also utilizes white space and a table format for dividing important informational links, making the page easy to scan. However, the division is not clearly or colorfully organized, making the page somewhat muddled. Thus, following Columbia College Chicago Library’s format with color-coded sections and lines would enhance the overall aesthetics of the Crown Library page. Another way to improve the Rebecca Crown Library web site would be to incorporate a search box—hopefully one that allows for different types of searching–on its homepage similar to the Ames Library web site. This would help lessen the amount of clicking one would have do in order to find the desired information/resource. The last way to improve the Rebecca Crown Library’s web site would be to put the Meebo, Ask Away box, and other library contact information on the homepage (again similar to the Ames Library site), which would provide users with a clearer picture of assistance.

Web 2.0 Tool Review: Facebook March 24, 2008

This past February, CollegeDegree.com rated Facebook, a popular social media site frequented by students, as #2 in their 25 Useful Social Networking Tools for Librarians list. Thus, this is one web 2.0 tool that should be given more attention in libraries because of its social networking opportunities, its promotional and sharing capabilities, and its overall popularity.

What is Facebook? (brief background & information)

On February 4th, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook exclusively for Harvard students, but within four months, 30 more college networks were added due to its extreme popularity. The site branched out to work networks, and finally in 2006, Facebook opened to anyone with an email address. Facebook’s growth in the fall of 2007 was staggering; over 1 million new users signed up every week, totaling over 50 million active users. It is the 6th most trafficked site in the US, a top photo sharing site, and the 5th most valuable US Internet company.

Anyone can join the network and create a profile, make friends, and enjoy the plethora of applications offered. However, libraries (or any other group) are able to join, create pages—with blogs, pictures, and videos–, and have users become members or “fans” of their organizations.

Why is Facebook a Good Web 2.0 Tool?

Some of the reasons Facebook has been rated so highly for librarians is because of its popularity and its group lists for librarian-centric patrons like FacebookAppsForLibraries, Library 2.0 Interest Group, Librarians and Facebook, NextGen Librarians, Digital Reference in Facebook, American Library Association Members, and Libraries and Librarians. These groups all have over 2000 members who share web 2.0 tools and technologies, link to news stories and information, and discuss different tools and resources for schools and libraries. Thus, librarians can network and collaborate with other professionals in order to get new ideas and to discuss tools.

Additionally, as Susan Jacobs stated, “with so many students, teachers, and librarians on Facebook these days, the social media site has become somewhat of a platform, offering developers a way to create and share application for education.” And Facebook provides all sorts of great tools designed to make learning easier for students, including the following: Flashcards, Wikiseek Search, JSTOR Seartch, Notely, Study Groups, Get Homework Help, Notecentric, Class Notes, Calendar, To-Do List, etc. Facebook also offers teachers and librarians several useful education applications that they can implement in the curriculum: SlideShare (create and send presentations to students), Webinaria Screencast Recorder (record and share videos with students), and BookTag (share and loans out books to students, plus create helpful quizzes for studying).

Moreover, according to TechCrunch, Facebook has just launched an instant messaging tool as well as additional privacy controls, including the ability to create various friends groups with different permissions for each. While the chat will only be one-to-one for a while, there is no limit to the number of chat sessions that can be open at any one time. Users won’t have to install chat as an additional application; it will automatically show up the bottom of the screen.

How can libraries use Facebook?

Any library can make a Facebook page that informs patrons of upcoming events, links them to library and online resources, starts discussions of current topics/books/etc., and allows patrons to make suggestions. However, school districts and academic library systems may benefit from a Facebook page the most because (1) it’s so popular with users of these generations and (2) it could be a fun way to connect students, staff, and librarians across the district/campus. With the new privacy features, one might feel more comfortable joining such a group and sharing information with others. A Facebook page would allow patrons to become more familiar with the staff and the services of the library in a non-confrontational or intimidating way.

While there are other social networking sites (like MySpace or Ning) out there, Facebook may be the best for libraries due to its innovative applications, new privacy and chat features, and overall popularity with patrons of all ages.

Post #5: Evolution of Tagging March 17, 2008

As an avid patron of Amazon.com, I have found their tag clouds especially useful. This was the first website that I remember employing tagging in the consumer world, but I figured it probably started elsewhere….and indeed, it did….and many years before Amazon.com employed this feature.

One of the first consumer products to include tagging was the Lotus Magellan product in 1988; in 2001, Bitzi, a digital media encyclopedia, started to allow tagging of any media that had a URL. But tagging didn’t become extremely popular until sites like Flickr and del.icio.us allowed users to set their own tags. However, because users were allowed to informally and personally choose their own tags, more ambiguity was created. Nevertheless, tagging between web/blog servers has led to the rise of folksonomy classification, the concept of social bookmarking, and other forms of social software–empowering Web 2.0 tools and users. More and more web users not only use tagging to find more information or products, but they also tag their own pictures, blogs, etc. Even libraries are jumping on the tagging bandwagon–LibraryThing, probably being the most prominent.

On his site, Thomas Vander Wal, a principal and senior consultant for InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., and a technology blogger, discusses how tagging services still have a long way to go in order increase portability, functionality, and disambiguity. Technorati is one company/site that has made great strides in trying to set up blog tags and tag searches in order to solve the problem of too many tag term variations; however, many problems still exist.

I found Vander Wal’s analysis intriguing because I have found myself lost in the world of tag clouds that sometimes irrationally direct me to random sites/information that have nothing to do with my original topic. Tagging is just another example of a great Web 2.0 tool that has progressed over time, but still has a long way to go in order to become more functional and user-friendly. Libraries need to be aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of tagging in order to better assist patrons in finding their desired information, while also providing users with room for creativity to make their own tags.

Post #4: Web 3.0 Search Engine? March 8, 2008

Recently, I came across a Newsweek article entitled “Revenge of the Experts”. (Quick summary: The article questions whether or not the era of user-generated content on the web is on the way out with the rise of edited information/sites by professionals. ) This automatically piqued my curiosity because as a GLIS student I have been inundated with information about Web 2.0 tools and because as an English teacher I must teach my students to be wary about the information they find on the Internet, given the inaccuracies, frauds, and spammers on some of the sites. While I love Web 2.0 tools like Wikipedia and YouTube, I do rely on more expert sites or databases for important research or questions I may have, so I can see how more “expert” sites, rather than user-generated or social-networking sites, could be on the rise.

One new search engine that was featured in this Newsweek article was Mahalo.com, which markets itself as the world’s first human-generated search engine. Mahalo uses human beings in seeking out the sites that best fit the user’s request. Mahalo “guides” or experts, who are paid, submit search results pages to a centralized database, which users can then access for search results. Their results do not contain any links to spam, mediocre, or deceptive sites. It also breaks the search term down into different types of results for the user. For example, “julius caesar” is broken down by the top 7 recommended sites, and then sub-categories about his life or other genres related to the term like movie, play, Shakespeare, blogs, etc. I love the guide note feature, located on the right-hand side of the screen, that shows a picture of the search term (if available) and lists fast facts–very user-friendly and engaging.
There are some downsides of Mahalo.com, though. One concern is that Mahalo does not have pages written for all search terms, i.e. “Antigone.” However, the page will return Google results alongside tabbed results from other search engines and online services, so a user isn’t at a complete loss. One can also request Mahalo guides to write a page for a specific search term.

Despite Mahalo.com being an “expert”-generated site, it still contains some Web 2.0 features. For example, one can sign up for a RSS feed of Mahalo’s top newsfeeds or add/become a friend of Mahalo or Mahalo Social, so you can share your results with friends/colleagues. Plus, if you use Mahalo Follow, you can simultaneously submit links to your Twitter or Del.icio.us accounts. They also allow the public to recommend links for a page or discuss a page on the message board. There is even a program, called Mahalo Greenhouse, where anyone can write search result pages and get paid for each page that is accepted to Mahalo (note–you have to be accepted by the experts!).

After spending some time with Mahalo, I am impressed. As a librarian, I would list this search engine on the library’s webpage for users. Of course, this site won’t help all users since there are still many terms that do not have pages written for them yet, but at least Mahalo supplies some of the best results for a given topic, rather than searching through the millions of pages/links listed on the basic search engine sites.